I know Life Time fitness has something similar to this and I remember it not being that crowded. I was thinking it would be ideal next to business districts. Packing healthy food for work is very difficult. People would pay a premium if a place solved health and convenience for them. Still confused why there aren't more Sweetgreens knockoffs.

Crossfit gyms in NYC are seemingly all partnered with some Paleo meal provider. People prepay for a plan and just pick up the food from the fridges.

There are already 45,000 salad shops across the US. Subways chopped salads are pretty good.

sometimes, sometimes not. the lettuce is wilted and disgusting a lot of the time.

There is a new place in Saint Louis called Crushed Red (its a salad shop and its good) that is, literally, crushing.

They have plans to possibly over-expand. But, that means currently, they are doing well.

I knew there was a huge void to be filled. LOL at saying Subway is a comp. Subway is absolutely disgusting -- I am actually talking about a salad place with quality ingredients.

this is so stupid

Crushed red is a cool name, but they also do pizzas. Which of their products is more popular, the pizza or the salad?

im seeing freshii next week on their IPO roadshow. Its bascially the salad type place you guys are talking about

their growth in Toronto has been phenomenal. CEO is a real entrepeneur. Can you find out their sales per store in the US vs Canada? One thing I wonder about with these Canadian success stories is they just don't work out great in the US .... look at David's Tea - did very well here and now that they've expanded into the US they're probably going to to go bust.

But year freshii is basically the thing you guys are describing ..... I'm not sure how well it would do outside of big cities though. They have a location near me that is only open Monday to Friday as they serve the local business district.

Great for healthy fast casual, pricing is reasonable (think it's 10% cheaper than a Whole Foods salad bar and maybe 10% more expensive than a Chipotle type place)

Salad, by a long shot. They don't really do pizza. Its more like flat bread.

I really do like their product though.

Was reminded of Freshii too


They did an Undercover Boss Canada episode at Freshii a couple of years ago - looks like they've got the full episode on youtube in case anybody's interested (it starts around 1m 30sec):

PS. Was also reminded of Freshii being part of this moment in poker history, from the 2012 All-Star Showdown thread

Freshii looks interesting.

-fast growth
-nice same store sales growth
-sexy young CEO (dude could legit be a male model), top 40 under 40 in Canada. Kid definitely has lots of confidence and swagger, always nice to see that. Looks like he has a vision of building a massive global brand.
-It's 99% franchisee stores, 300k franchise investment which is low for LSR's (probably due to low square footage requirements), 6% royalty. Seems like the franchisee's are set up to be quite successful, and the best franchise salespeople are the franchisee's themselves.

I went to Sweetgreens today just to try it out. It was disturbingly overpriced and no better than any random deli/grocer in NYC.

And Chase sent me a fraud alert for suspicious activity.

Seems like you are the exception:

https://www.yelp.com/biz/sweetgreen-new-york-2

For a chain in NYC to get those reviews is impressive. It is a great company.

Or, the kind of people who eat at a place like this are sheep who love what they think people think they should love. It's the new thing - their clientele go crazy for that, and the ready-made instagram and snapchat opportunities that come with it. Let's see where things stand a year from now, or sooner if Freshii lands.

There was a video posted today of a fast-food place that touches on a couple of the trends that have been mentioned in this thread - salads, and use of technology to replace servers and cashiers ...

Saw on yelp that the bowls are something like $6.95, so they're not super pricey - but they're all vegetarian

Not sure what to make of the lack of human interaction? Definitely different ...

It's an interesting concept that's been tried a lot. I remember reading what they found in Japan and parts of Europe is you could eliminate human interaction almost entirely but you get a big boost with very minimal human interaction just give it a human "touch."

Japan has a lot of fast food places where the entire purchase process is devoid of human interaction except someone will hand you the food (even if it's a pre-prepped bento)

Maybe if it's caught on in other parts of the world, there might be some interest in N. America too?

Guess if self-serve is faster and cheaper those are nice things ... although yes, sometimes it can be nice to have someone there to laugh at one's jokes and say 'have a nice day'

No one goes to Lugers to be served by the ******* German waiters.

Wolfgang's Steakhouse is much better than Lugers

He can't exactly get beer at those places. If I'm going out to eat, I'm drinking beer, well I guess I'm always drinking beer.

In my area, the big thing is giving people something to do. A new brewery opened up with shuffleboard tables, darts, pool, golden tee.. all free.

There's a new "fowling" place opening up and taking over an old brewery that's been long out of business. A beercade is also opening up.

I keep seeing stuff about edible insects (mainly crickets) being the next "other white meat". There are a growing number of bug products, but do you think buggery's will start popping up? Would you eat a salad topped with bugs? How about a bug burger on a bug role with a side of bug fries? Does the type of bug matter to you?

There was something like this on Shark Tank a couple of years ago. Supposedly they're very high in nutrition and cheap, plus can be ground up to avoid the ick factor. It seemed like an idea with success written all over it, yet here we are a couple of years later and nothing has seemingly come of it. I just think people can't get past the bug factor.