Fresh ingredients sourced locally, homemade dressings made daily, and a wide variety of healthy options for your bowl of greens. These are what SaladStop! offers, a company official said in a recent press event in Cebu.
“What we take to heart at Salad Stop is the whole sourcing and farm-to-bowl concept. In Cebu, we are sourcing 99% of our produce locally. We work with the local farmers and the only item imported from Manila is our spinach. All the rest we source here,” said SaladStop! director and co-owner Katherine Desbailles Braha.
What SaladStop! wants to do is “bring freshness back to the table.”
Very good response in Cebu
Braha was in Cebu last October 17 for a media event in the SaladStop! at the Ayala Center Cebu, the company’s 10th outlet in the Philippines and the first outside Manila.
SaladStop! Cebu has been open since July and the response has been “very, very good,” said Braha.
“We were very pleasantly surprised by Cebu. We were expecting it to be a little bit slower than Manila but definitely we’ve seen a huge crowd,” Braha said in an interview. She said they decided to open in Cebu upon frequent requests via social media of their Manila customers.
SaladStop! offers a wide variety of healthy choices, Braha said, comprising 60 different toppings and 18 homemade dressings.
Homemade dressings made daily
“We take pride in our dressings. Everything is homemade so we don’t use any paste. Because it’s made from scratch, it has a 2-day shelf life and we have to do it daily,” she said.
At SaladStop!, “diners can either make their own or try 10 specially crafted signature salads and wraps.”
The restaurant highlights what they call as the “Eat Wide Awake” movement, which stresses the importance of proper nutrition and diet toward a healthy lifestyle.
“To us an important question is where the food comes from and also for us to be 100 percent transparent,” she said. Braha said people can use their website to make their own salads and calculate the nutritional information.
SaladStop! has an app that allows people in Singapore, where they started, to pre-order and earn points. This will be made available to Cebu next year yet.
Good-tasting and healthy food
“Contrary to popular belief that good-tasting food can only be prepared fast if it’s unhealthy, the Desbailles family proved everyone wrong by establishing SaladStop! in Singapore back in 2009. The very first store offered a number of quick and healthy but flavorful alternatives to a society that was increasingly dependent on fast food,” the company said in its information sheet.
With their Eat Wide Awake push, SaladStop! said they want people to “stop and think about their food. Understand where it comes from and dream about the hands, soil, and time that made it possible.”
Braha said the company is considering to open another branch in Cebu next year. They will open 2 more outlets in Manila this year. SaladStop! is currently present in Singapore, Japan, and Indonesia. She said they will soon open in Barcelona and Korea.
