Fed up with the lack of healthy fast-food options available in Gilbert, Roushan Cristofellis decided to do something about it. She and her husband are opening Salad and Go, a gourmet salad drive-through, on the southeast corner of Gilbert and Guadalupe roads next month.
“It’s hard to eat healthy,” Cristofellis says. “There’s not a lot of options for on-the-go. There’s some quick-service restaurants where you can find some healthy options, but they’re more expensive and not very convenient. So we thought: What if you could get something healthy at a drive-through?”
After having “the best Caesar salad we’ve ever had in our lives” at Bourbon Steak in north Scottsdale, the couple convinced the resort restaurant’s executive chef, Daniel Patino, to create 10 salads – each featuring local, natural and organic ingredients – that will make up Salad and Go’s menu.
“The costs of our ingredients are expensive,” Cristofellis says. “What we’re trying to do is not cheap, but we really want to make it convenient and affordable for people. We can’t be a replacement for fast food if we’re charging $9 for a salad.”
By focusing on just 10 salads (which also will be available as wraps), Salad and Go is able to reduce its food-inventory costs. Also, the stand-alone building is just 656 square feet with no interior seating (there’s only a small patio), allowing Cristofellis to save on things like utilities, furniture, and staffing.
As a result, all salads will be just $5.50 for a large 48-ounce container. Diners can add free-range chicken for $1.25, or marinated steak, shrimp or Gardein (a plant-based chicken substitute) for $2. All the dressings, and even the croutons, will be made from scratch on-site.
Having spent seven years as an elementary school teacher in the Kyrene School District, Cristofellis also is focused on a healthy children’s menu, which will have such offerings as all-natural peanut and jelly on wheat bread with a side of carrot sticks and milk ($3.99).
Beverages also will include milkshakes made with Cloud Top organic non-fat frozen yogurt ($3.95) and Boylan all-natural sodas ($1.95-$2.25).
Although Salad and Go still is under construction, Cristofellis is planning a Feb. 27 ribbon-cutting and a Feb. 28 grand opening. She says she and her husband have secured funding for five more locations, all of which will be in the Gilbert area.
But Cristofellis, who grew up in Chandler but moved to Gilbert three years ago, says Salad and Go is more than just a business. It’s also part of the couple’s personal quest for better health. Her mother-in-law has had two heart attacks, and her father-in-law had a quadruple bypass. Her own father has gotten a couple stents.
“We’ve really started looking at, at a young age, if we don’t make changes now, we don’t want to be in the same situation,” she says. “So in the past few years we’ve really looked at what we’re eating.”
