Salad days, thanks to DIY meals

Rob Cassels (left) and his business partner (and father-in-law), John Anthony, at work. Picture / Martin Sykes

Rob Cassels has spent his life making people drinks, but turning his hand to salads last year has proved that - to use the name of the venture - Salad Works.

After setting up and running boutique Auckland bars Lime, Soho, Plum and Pickle, Cassels launched the create-your-own salad bar at Chancery Street a year ago.

That bar has been making 1500 salads a week for office workers seeking healthy lunches.

Now, turnover is set to double with the opening this week of a second bar in Broadway, Newmarket. Cassels estimates that the city has room for at least five more.

Salad Works is one of few instances where the words "fast food" and "healthy" go together.

It offers a range of ready-made salads, but the most popular are the make-your-own variety.

Customers choose from three different leaf bases: A Nero base with a Caesar salad mix, an anti-oxidant mix with baby spinach, broccoli and carrot ribbons or the crunch mixture with cabbage - priced at $3.50 for small and $5 for large.

To that, add from a wide selection of ingredients such as lime and chilli chicken, spiced meatballs, smoked salmon, cherry tomatoes, jalapenos, dukkah, feta and baby beetroots, priced from 50c to $3 each.

Then pick a dressing, made daily on site.

Although he shuns the word "gourmet", Cassels said his products could rival salads served up at top city restaurants.

Cassels, who has made a career out of hospitality, began as a 17-year-old at White's - the oldest and one of the most exclusive clubs in London.

He continued with bar work "because it was the perfect travelling job" and that is what brought him to New Zealand 10 years ago.

It was in 2004, as his stomach rumbled while hunting for a site for a new city bar, that he realised that rather than another cocktail bar, what Auckland's CBD needed was more options for lunch.

His wife, Rachel, had recently returned from New York raving about a salad bar she had been to off Times Square.

With all the big-name fast food chains making serious pitches at health food, Cassels was confident that the time was right to introduce the concept of salad bars here.

Father-in-law John Antony got on board (putting up the initial capital) and the pair picked the Chancery Street site, within a three-minute walk from some of the busiest office blocks in the city, opening in the second week of January last year.

Within four months, the bar was breaking even on a weekly basis, with sales growth averaging 5 per cent each week since.

Although 75 per cent of the customers are women, Cassels never set out to target them.

He created the slightly quirky brand himself and keeping it subtle has been a conscious decision. "Toss" - the name of his company - was decided against early on, largely because he did not think it would work outside Auckland.

"Salad Works" had a double-meaning he liked.

"The word salad does a lot. We haven't had to over-emphasise the words fresh and healthy."

Wider health trends were also helping them tremendously.

"Every time McDonald's advertise their salads as healthy it's good for us," he says.

It was always his intention to open new bars and, last September, he realised it was time for No 2.

Having the formula nutted out, a strong brand and market, the opening in Newmarket was one of the easiest openings of his career.

Being a busy shopping area, Cassels expected the Broadway Salad Works to be busier than the city store, and its opening meant the company was now "seriously profitable" with turnover expected to double at least.

There was room to expand the Chancery kitchen to provide the food for up to seven sites in Auckland and Cassels thinks he will be ready to look at Salad Works No 3 about mid-year.

He did not discount the possibility of franchising or bringing an investor on board to expand. Several approaches had already been made.

While it was still largely unrivalled, Cassels wants to focus on getting ahead in terms of brand awareness while the company has the chance.

Being able to anticipate demand was important.

He says: "You don't get anywhere by being second."

Cassels spends the morning at Salad Works, overseeing the operations and occasionally, lending a hand at the bar.

In the afternoon, he makes time for his other interest; writing.

After the publication of his first book - Cocktail Keys last year - he is close to pitching two other bar-related books.

He hopes a pilot for an animated children's TV series will be picked up in the United States, and a children's book trilogy has been on hold during the Newmarket Salad Work's opening.
 

Winning ingredients

* Salad Works founder Rob Cassels believes quality product and exceptional service are the most important principles for any hospitality business.

* Quality product: "Understand why your customers are buying your product. "Knowing people were coming to Salad Works for a healthy lunch was the key to developing the brand and helped me make decisions such as going for organic tofu and free-range eggs over cheaper versions."

* Customer service: "Having good staff isn't luck, it's a conscious management decision you make."

* Cassels does not try to fit staff into his mould, but gives them room to develop their own style of serving customers. "How customers get dealt with is one of the most important things.

* "Too many businesses only pay lip service to this."