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Key Takeaways
- While working in finance, Nick Kenner noticed that everyone in his office was ordering salads.
- That simple realization sparked the idea for Just Salad, now one of the country’s fastest-growing fast-casual brands.
- Kenner’s early years were filled with long days and operational struggles, but hiring smart, building systems and focusing on fundamentals helped Just Salad grow from a single shop to a national brand.
Nick Kenner didn’t set out to reinvent lunch.
He was working in finance, learning quickly and genuinely liked the work. But he started to feel that pull, the thought that maybe he could build something of his own.
In New York City, ordering lunch out for the office was a daily ritual. Kenner began noticing what people in his office were ordering.
“I’d look around, and every day it was the same thing,” he says. “Different ages, different backgrounds, different job titles. It didn’t matter who they were or what they did. Everyone was ordering salads.”
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That was the lightbulb moment for Just Salad, which is now valued at $1 billion.
He saw an opening. The demand was clear, but the options weren’t great. So he decided to try it himself. “How hard could it be?” he laughs.
In 2006, Kenner and a friend opened the first Just Salad in Manhattan. The space was about 900 square feet — small but right in the middle of the action. There wasn’t much like it at the time. The menu was fast, fresh and affordable, and from the first day, the place was packed.
“We weren’t making money yet, but it showed us what we needed to see,” he says. “People wanted this.”
Kenner spent much of his time at the store in those early months, learning what it took to operate a restaurant and bringing in a bookkeeper to help manage the numbers. It was his introduction to the reality that even good ideas require structure, systems and a lot of learning.
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Since then, Kenner has raised more than $200 million to expand Just Salad nationwide, proving that a smart idea backed by persistence can scale far beyond its first 900 square feet.
The reusable revolution
It all starts with the reusable bowl.
The one regulars bring back again and again, proudly skipping the stack of disposables at the counter. It is a small act, but it captures what Just Salad is all about.
Before the first store even opened, Kenner noticed a problem. During testing, salads were served in plastic clamshell containers that piled up by the bagful. Every night, the trash was filled with discarded plastic, and it drove him crazy to see how much waste a single day could produce.
“It made me sick to look at,” he says. “We were just throwing them out left and right. The garbage was filled with plastic, and it didn’t make sense.”
That frustration turned into action. The reusable bowl began as a simple fix, not a marketing idea. Guests could buy one, bring it back and get a free topping like avocado with every visit. The incentive worked. The bowl has become part of Just Salad’s identity, and it’s kept millions of single-use plastic bowls out of landfills.
But for Kenner, sustainability goes beyond plastic. Food waste hits him just as hard because he understands how much effort goes into every ingredient. He thinks about the farmers, the trucks, the packaging and the prep. Seeing any of that end up in the trash feels wrong.
That mindset drives how Just Salad operates. The company tracks kitchen waste daily, partners with suppliers that share its environmental goals and labels every menu item with its carbon footprint so guests can see the impact of what they order.
Kenner calls it practical sustainability. “If you can make it easy for people to do the right thing, they will,” he says.
For him, it is not about perfection or publicity. It is about respecting the process, people and resources behind every meal. The reusable bowl might have started as a reaction to waste, but it became a symbol of what Just Salad stands for: doing things the right way, one decision at a time.
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Key Takeaways
- While working in finance, Nick Kenner noticed that everyone in his office was ordering salads.
- That simple realization sparked the idea for Just Salad, now one of the country’s fastest-growing fast-casual brands.
- Kenner’s early years were filled with long days and operational struggles, but hiring smart, building systems and focusing on fundamentals helped Just Salad grow from a single shop to a national brand.
Nick Kenner didn’t set out to reinvent lunch.
He was working in finance, learning quickly and genuinely liked the work. But he started to feel that pull, the thought that maybe he could build something of his own.
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