A healthy alternative to fast food will open this weekend in North Stafford.
Salad Creations – a place where hungry vegetable lovers can create their own salad with over 40 different options – is slated to open Saturday.
The restaurant sits in the Stafford Marketplace shopping center off Va. 610.
It’s a new idea in fast food that will do very well in the neighborhood, said manager Grady Nease.
“There’s a lot of greasy fast food places out there right now, and all you hear on TV is how obesity is a problem, so now we’re bringing people something different to choose from,” said Nease.
But store employees who know salads say that just because it comes on a bed of fresh greens doesn’t always mean it’s healthy.
“You can come in here and make a salad, load it up with bleu cheese and extra proteins and then you have a large meal there,” said co-manager Chris Cowen.
The concept is simple: walk in, decide how big your salad should be, choose from four types of lettuce and then tell them what type of toppings you want in it, much like customers do at Subway restaurants.
There are also 11 featured salads to choose from if you don’t want to make your own.
They also offer Panini sandwiches, wraps and soups.
Where all salads may sound the same, Cowen said it’s the way they chop the lettuce – with a gadget that looks like a double pizza cutter – is what sets them apart from their competition.
Salads cost between $5.49 and $7.49, wraps and sandwiches $6.99 and soups $3.99.
The company was started in Florida by a neighbor of Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers founder Dave Thomas, said Cowen.
Salad Creations opened their first test franchise in Virginia in Charlottesville and later expanded to Blacksburg. After opening restaurants in Arlington and Harrisonburg, this will be the fourth Salad Creations restaurant in Virginia.
