Salad and Go isn’t gone after all.
Two months after the Gilbert-born drive-thru chain filed for bankruptcy and closed every store overnight, a new ownership group is bringing the brand back to Arizona.
Mike Myers confirmed to MXSW that he and Tom Misitano, his co-founder of Hospitality First Concepts, have partnered with Daniel Patino, Salad and Go’s founding chef, to rebuild the brand in the state where it started.
The group now owns Salad and Go’s intellectual property, including its trademarks and logos.
‘‘When I saw the opportunity to rebuild Salad and Go, I couldn’t pass it up,’’ Myers said. ‘‘Tom has been my longtime partner and was an original investor in Salad and Go. And Daniel’s passion for what he does is infectious. Bringing the three of us together to rebuild this brand just made sense.’’
The plan: reopen locations in Arizona, operate corporate-owned restaurants, and offer franchising opportunities nationwide.
Back to basics
Myers and Patino broke the news on On The Delo, David ‘‘DeLo’’ DeLorenzo’s Arizona hospitality podcast. ‘‘Salad and Go is officially coming back to Arizona,’’ Myers told the host. ‘‘We officially have two locations we’re starting with out of the gate.’’
Myers said that after reviewing the chain’s financials, he concluded the restaurants themselves weren’t the problem. ‘‘It’s not anything Salad and Go really did on a store level that really kind of gave them some troubles,’’ he said.
He also said his research put the average Salad and Go drive-thru visit at about four minutes.
Changes in the kitchen
At its peak, Salad and Go prepped food at a central distribution center and shipped it to stores. The relaunch will make everything in-house, and every salad will still be built to order.
‘‘People thought that we had everything already pre-done, like pre-built salads,’’ Patino said. ‘‘We make them as you’re ordering.’’
Expect a tighter menu at first. Patino said the team will be ‘‘very thoughtful’’ about what it serves so it can execute every item well, and Myers said he’d rather do ‘‘eight or nine things really good.’’
Patino, who trained at the California Culinary Academy and cooked at Stars, the French Laundry, Daniel, Charlie Trotter’s, and Michael Mina, said he designed the roughly 750-square-foot kitchens like a fine-dining cold station so crews never have to leave their stations.
Patino also said several of the chain’s longtime growers called him right after the bankruptcy news broke and asked him to reach out if he ever brought it back. Those included the farm that grew its romaine in Scottsdale.
Where could they land first?
No locations have been announced. But as MXSW reported last week, Patino’s company, Beyond Salt and Pepper LLC, did more than buy the brand at auction. It paid $180,000 for the name and recipes and picked up two store leases for $1 apiece:
- 3299 E. Williams Field Road, Gilbert
- 1040 W. Southern Ave., Mesa
A judge in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas approved the sale on Wednesday. That makes those two former Salad and Go drive-thrus an obvious starting point.
From meteoric rise…
Salad and Go launched in Gilbert in 2013, founded by Tony and Roushan Christofellis, who recruited Patino, who then was executive chef at Bourbon Steak at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess resort, to create the recipes.
The idea was simple: cheap, healthy, fast food, served from tiny drive-thru-only buildings, with salads in signature orange bowls.
It caught on fast. Private equity firm Volt Investment bought out the Christofellises in 2021, and former Wingstop CEO Charlie Morrison took over in 2022 with plans to grow into the thousands.
The chain more than doubled in size, pushing into Texas, Oklahoma and Nevada and peaking at roughly 150 stores. It even moved its headquarters to the Dallas suburb of Coppell in 2024.
… to abrupt bankruptcy
Then the expansion unraveled. In September 2025, Salad and Go closed more than 40 stores. In January 2026, it pulled out of Texas and Oklahoma entirely, closing 32 more and moving headquarters back to Arizona.
On Aug. 4, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. All 70 remaining stores in Arizona and Nevada closed the next day. The company blamed soft consumer demand, past growth problems and rising costs, plus a July Cyclospora outbreak that rattled confidence in salads industrywide, even though Salad and Go wasn’t implicated.
The stores themselves mostly went to beverage chains. 7 Brew won the bulk of them, outbidding Dutch Bros with a $123.5 million deal for 63 locations in four states, including 36 in Arizona. Swig, Dutch Bros, and Just Salad picked up others in the follow-up auction.
The Christofellises, who now run Angie’s, called the closure heartbreaking.
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