For a franchise system, local is very hard, i’d love to tell you everything we serve is locally grown, but that’s not true for us or any competitor. We do source high-quality local products when we can. But the truth is, in a place like New Jersey, where I’m based, the growing season is really short. I think the important thing for most consumers is knowing where their food is coming from. There’s nothing wrong with produce being from the San Joaquin Valley. All food goes from farm to table; consumers just want to know that the people who grew it cared about it the way they do.

Paul Steck

Categorized in : U.S.

We’re always looking for new products, and our autumn seasonal salad is going to have roasted Brussels sprouts on it, five years ago, if someone told me a cutting-edge salad place would be serving Brussels sprouts, I wouldn’t have believed them. We’ve seen a real diversification of the American palate lately—they serve sushi in some high-school cafeterias now.

I want my onions grilled when I order them, and I want my pita warm from the oven, not the microwave. To me, that’s fresh. while most of the industry has gone to bagged lettuce product—there’s a whole wall of that stuff in the grocery store now—we take full heads of lettuce and chop them each day.