Arizona-born Salad And Go is making its final drive-thru run Wednesday, ending a 13-year run with all 70 of its Arizona and Nevada stores set to close permanently. The shutdown follows a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing and caps a brutal year of market retrenchment for the once-fast-growing chain. For Valley customers, a quick salad, wrap or breakfast burrito on the way to work is about to become a memory.
The company told Arizona’s Family that Wednesday would be its last day, with CEO Mike Tattersfield describing the closure as painful for the people who built and supported the brand. Salad And Go began in Gilbert in 2013 and grew around small drive-thru locations selling made-to-order salads, wraps, breakfast items and drinks.
From Valley Growth Story To Full Shutdown
The announcement arrives only months after Salad And Go abandoned its Texas and Oklahoma footprint. In January, Mike Tattersfield told the Phoenix Business Journal that the company would close 32 stores in those states and move its headquarters back to Arizona, part of a plan to concentrate on the brand’s home market.
Nation’s Restaurant News later described the remaining 70 outlets as roughly half of the 146-unit system at the end of 2024 and reported that Tattersfield acknowledged the company’s earlier growth strategy was flawed. The reversal is especially sharp because prioritized restaurant expansion was once the chain’s stated strategy over a proposed Phoenix-area distribution center.
The Lettuce Outbreak Was Not Linked To The Chain
Salad And Go also cited July’s Cyclospora outbreak as a factor that weakened confidence in the broader food industry, while stressing that the chain was not implicated. The company’s official FAQ says it does not use iceberg lettuce and did not buy ingredients from the supplier identified in outbreak reports; the FDA investigation tied the multistate illnesses to recalled shredded iceberg lettuce and Taco Bell exposures.
That distinction matters because salad-focused operators felt fallout even without being named. The Associated Press reported that foot traffic at Chopt dropped 24% on July 18 compared with a typical Saturday, while weekly spending at Sweetgreen fell 10 percentage points year over year during the first half of July. Salad And Go’s statement framed the outbreak as an added blow on top of consumer-demand pressure, growth problems and rising costs—not as the sole cause of the closure.
What Chapter 11 Means For The Shutdown
Chapter 11 is normally a reorganization process, not an automatic liquidation; the U.S. Courts say it generally allows a business to keep operating while it proposes a plan for creditors. In Salad And Go’s case, the company has announced that operations will end Wednesday, so the bankruptcy case will determine how the wind-down, leases, debts and other claims are handled. Those details will emerge through court filings and orders rather than the closure announcement itself.
