Snappy Salads is a fast casual chain that reflects today’s hottest trends in dining—vegetable centric, high-quality ingredients, and quick. You might be surprised to learn the concept was born in Texas, but not if you check out these clean eating capitals, which shows Houston, Dallas and Austin all in the to 10. We spoke with Tiffany Boyd, Director of Catering and Events to learn more about the Snappy Salads brand and how it is satisfying customers and evolving.
What sets Snappy Salads apart?
The biggest difference is quality of product. We use very high quality ingredients such as our extra virgin olive oil and fresh squeezed lime. Everything is prepped in-house; we make the dressings from scratch, chop the tomatoes and even crumble the cheese. We use environmentally-friendly sugar cane and pulp catering ware, cornstarch utensils and a reusable bag- not plastic.
We offer organic fair trade ice tea and lemonade for catering instead of soda. Our oil is non-GMO soybean oil, which is really hard to source. All of our oils are high quality and most of our dressings are made fresh from simple recipes (only 6-7 ingredients) and no preservatives.
What’s the most popular order at Snappy Salads?
The Grilled Avocado Salad is our number one selling salad across the board. It’s unique because we grill the avocados and tomatoes — it’s fresh and light as it is but some people add chicken or steak to make it heartier.
Your salads are main dishes, but are they “a meal?”
Chris Dahlander, our CEO and the founder of Snappy Salads wanted a filling salad that would appeal to men like himself—so our salads are hearty, filling and often full of protein. We can add grilled chicken, beef tenderloin and rich avocado. Our tagline is: “So good, even guys like our salad.”
What sides do you offer to round out your salads?
We offer one daily bread—it changes everyday and is one of about eight different kinds of bread we bake in house. It’s a big loaf cut into big chunks and you can get it with one of four different spreads: garlic lovers, mediterranean olive, honey orange butter and herbed gorgonzola. Other popular accompaniments are our sweet potato chips or chips with salsa.
How does a healthy brand approach dessert?
We want to offer healthy options because it just makes sense after eating a salad. We have fruit as one healthy option. The brand’s owner is a health nut, but realized people wanted a sweet bite so we also offer the Yummy Lemon Cookie which is actually more like a lemon bar. It’s tart and sweet and it’s the only one we offer.
What are your newest additions to the Snappy Salads menu?
Newest is the piadina, a kind of grilled Italian sandwich. We wanted to do something different than tortilla wraps and it’s nice to have an option that’s soft and very flavorful. The bread is grilled, then the sandwich is filled, packaged and sent out. It’s not served hot but made fresh. We have added warm bowls to the menu in-store and and are looking to add them to the catering menu. We are also considering adding a create-your-own salad bar option.
Do you see a demand for vegetarian, vegan and gluten free options?
Yes, customers ask for gluten-free and request vegan and vegetarian too. Most of our dressings are gluten free. It’s interesting how our most popular entree is vegetarian- which proves that if something tastes good, it tastes good, even if it’s vegetarian.
What other catering trends are you seeing?
We’ve seen demand for healthier and lighter options for catering versus BBQ or Italian- which leave groups feeling sleepy. We’ve also seen people ordering in from mobile apps because there’s a convenience factor in being able to order online. The “Snappy” in our name is about being fast. Sometimes we are even faster than fast food.
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