MAD Greens, known for its tasty salads, scratch-made dressings, healthy kids meals, nutritious juices, and hearty paninis, recently refreshed its menu by adding two innovative and slightly spicy seasonal offerings and removing a few menu items, all in a continued effort to curb food waste and streamline operations. Changes to the menu were driven by team member ideas and guest feedback with a collective determination to regularly evaluate operations and continually offer fresh, distinctive, new flavors for guests to enjoy.
The Genghis Khan salad, which is inspired by bold Asian flavors, returns to the menu as a fan favorite from 2015. The seasonal salad mixes mango, roasted corn, piri piri shrimp, wonton strips, green onions, carrots and baby mixed greens topped with the extremely popular sriracha almond vinaigrette, providing a flavorful, spicy finish to the dish.
MAD Greens added the MAD Banh Mi panini, offering a twist on the classic Vietnamese sandwich. It was co-created by two team members based on their love of the craveable and spicy Banh Mi flavors. The panini combines roasted chicken, a pickled carrot, cucumber and onion slaw, layered with Swiss cheese and spicy sriracha almond vinaigrette. Both of the new menu items are available until July 10, 2017.
MAD Greens also added The Pancho Villa salad back to the menu based on overwhelming customer demand. The seasonal salad combines quinoa, MAD spice pumpkin seeds, grilled citrus chicken roasted corn and baby greens topped with a cilantro chili lime dressing. It’s available in all markets for a limited time only.
“We value the opinion of our guests and our talented team members, and are always looking for new ways to improve our offerings and operations,” says MAD Greens CEO Darden Coors. “The addition of the two seasonal items and the menu refresh showcases MAD Greens’ distinctive personality and our drive to delight and satisfy our customers with every visit.”
As part of the refresh, MAD Greens made a concerted effort to discontinue ingredients that were the highest contributors to food waste and low customer demand. For example, portobello mushrooms were removed from the menu. However, vegetarians, vegans, or any guests seeking to enjoy a meatless salad or wrap still have plenty of options such as the organic piri piri tofu or warm quinoa. Both ingredients are overwhelmingly more popular than the portobellos that were previously offered.
Finally, fresh juice options were narrowed down from seven to four. Some of the original juices contained allergens (e.g. bee pollen) and others used ingredients that were not found anywhere else on the menu (e.g. bananas, pineapples and mint), so they were prone to waste and year-round quality ingredient availability was inconsistent. By having fewer permanent juice offerings on the menu, MAD Greens can further tap into the creativity of their team members for upcoming seasonal and limited time offerings.
“We made small changes to just about every part of our menu and we are already seeing a positive impact on food quality, reduced food waste and improved speed of service,” says Lucas Clarke, VP of marketing for MAD Greens. “For example, our least popular wrap – the Bollywood and its associated curry mayo dressing – were discontinued and upgraded to a Spicy Caesar Wrap. By adding a spicy wrap spin on our very popular MAD Caesar salad, we are better meeting our customers’ cravings, and not throwing away unused curry mayo dressing.”
