Google, Chopt partner to create innovative plant-based menu items

Ron Ruggless

If you’re an employee at a Google campus, you’re likely to see some new plant-based menu options for lunch. Chopt Creative Salad Co. is expanding its partnership with technology company Google to provide innovative plant-based food options on its corporate campuses in New York and California.

The partnership started with the opening of two concepts in different Google cafes. In April, Relish, a “veggie lab,” debuted at Google’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, and Out of the Box, a plant-based kiosk, opened this September at Google’s New York City campus. A second Relish unit is planned for 2018.

Chopt co-founder Colin McCabe says the salad brand, which has restaurants in four states and the District of Columbia, found a good cultural fit with Google.

“With Google, we spent a great deal of time getting to know each other upfront before we ever spoke about specific projects or initiatives,” says Chopt co-founder Colin McCabe. “During that time, we found that our values were closely aligned; we’re both focused on finding new ways to make plant-based food exciting and accessible to a greater number of people.”

Both Relish and Out of the Box push the boundaries of vegetable flavors and dressings, McCabe says in an email.

“Like Relish, Outside the Box challenges diners to reimagine what vegetables can and should be,” he says. “Yet, unlike its sister concept, it does so in a more focused, streamlined and deliberate manner.

Outside the Box, which opened Sept. 27 at Google in New York, rotates four platforms such as spiralized noodles and vegetable gyros. McCabe says those platforms are designed to showcase vegetables in new ways.

“Making plant-based food exciting and accessible to America has always been Chopt’s North Star,” he says. “And Outside the Box has challenged us to explore ways that we can do so in a truly scalable model.”

Some of the ideas for Outside the Box came from innovations at Relish in California, which began as a temporary project in April and became a permanent foodservice addition to the campus at the request of Google staff, McCabe says.

“To reimagine vegetable eating, we needed a place to play and explore what was possible,” he says. “Relish served that role for the team.”

McCabe called Relish “part incubator, part laboratory.” It features vegetable preparations that “push the envelope,” including fermented, freeze-dried and powdered vegetables as well as vegetable broths and vegetable frozen confections.

“Some of these innovations found their way onto the menu at Relish, others made their way to Outside the Box and some still remain in development for the future,” McCabe says.

He says Relish and Outside the Box tap into what his co-founder, Tony Shure, has called the three revolutions of energy, technology and good.

“To solve big problems, you need to partner with like-minded people who have a bias for action,” McCabe says. “At Google, the drive to innovate is really strong; it’s not just about what products they create, it’s about how they work together to create those products.”

Chopt, which was founded in 2001, has been working on plant-based menus for more than 15 years, he says. That knowledge and Google’s innovations helped both companies, he adds.

“The net impact of this work is that we are going to make a positive impact on the environment,” McCabe says. “By changing the balance in people’s diets from meat to vegetables, we open up a world of sustainability that we simply haven’t seen before.”

The Outside the Box and Relish projects at Google, he says, “provide us with an opportunity to explore what’s next and get important feedback about where we are headed.”

Besides the two Google ventures, Chopt has restaurants in Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

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