Just Salad on Being a Sustainability-Minded Restaurant

On this episode of Emerging Brands, Sandra Noonan, Chief Sustainability Officer at Just Salad, home of the world’s largest restaurant reusable program, talks about the Just Salad concept with a mission to make everyday health and everyday sustainability possible.

Just Salad is a restaurant chain founded in 2006 in New York City and their cause empowers customers to eat with a purpose. When it comes to leading the brand, prioritizing sustainability is at the top of Noonan’s list. Just Salad is the first United States restaurant chain to carbon label its menu and has partnered with research scientists at the University of Pennsylvania, Tulane University, and Harvard University to study the effects of its carbon labels on consumer behavior.

Noonan shares how she reached out prior to her joining the team, to the Chief Executive Officer and founder of Just Salad, Nick Kenner. Kenner was tired of plastic salad bowls piling up in trash bins and thought there had to be a better way. The philosophy behind there must be a better way has really persisted throughout the company's growth.

Noonan talks about the Reusable Bowl Program and how it works in two ways:

-Purchase a bowl for a dollar and every time you bring back your reusable bowl you get a free topping.
-Delivery or pickup you can opt in to the bring back bowl program, it will be professionally cleaned when you bring it back.

The carbon labeling program at Just Salad, will help consumers to understand the carbon footprint of what they eat. Noonan discusses the partnership with three universities designed to study the impact of carbon labels and how consumers would make choices to purchase one salad over another.

Noonan explains Just Salad’s partnership with Arcadia on an offer that would enable their customers to choose clean energy for their homes. Arcadia is a company that empowers homeowners or renters to support clean energy through their utility bill. This partnership fits perfectly with the Just Salad mission to make everyday health and everyday sustainability possible.