Food

How Just Salad keeps innovating the menu while moving its sustainability mission forward

From scratch-made bowls to next-gen meal kits, Culinary Director Jhonny Castro is differentiating the fast casual from its competitors.

During the last year, Just Salad continued to prioritize menu innovation by launching warm bowls, introducing marinated chicken thighs as a protein option and creating meal kits for consumers cooking at home.

Jhonny Castro, culinary director of the 42-unit chain, describes his culinary journey from the prep line to head chef, collaborating with the Just Salad team to set the health-focused fast casual apart from its competitors.

Jhonny castro

Jhonny Castro

Listen as he talks about the brand’s sustainability mission and scratch-made offerings, the culinary figures that inspire him and how he plans to evolve the menu as we move through 2021.

Find more episodes of this podcast on Spotify.

Members help make our journalism possible. Become a Restaurant Business member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.

Multimedia

Exclusive Content

Operations

Hitting resistance elsewhere, ghost kitchens and virtual concepts find a happy home in family dining

Reality Check: Old-guard chains are finding the alternative operations to be persistently effective side hustles.

Financing

The Tijuana Flats bankruptcy highlights the dangers of menu miscues

The Bottom Line: The fast-casual chain’s problems following new menu debuts in 2021 and 2022 show that adding new items isn’t always the right idea.

Financing

For Papa Johns, the CEO departure came at the wrong time

The Bottom Line: The pizza chain worked to convince franchisees to buy into a massive marketing shift. And then the brand’s CEO left.

Trending

More from our partners