You’ve asked us about these, tasted them, been confused by our pricing, and sizes, and lack of lettuce, and loved them (beet in particular). Now it’s time to explain what we’re up to with these “salads.”

Back when Rolando and I started to imagine this menu there were no soups. At some point we let go and decided to let the salads become soups in the winter, which makes sense on many dimensions. So when it’s cold out you get to eat root vegetables, and grains, and legumes in soups. And now that it’s warm out this part of the menu is giving way to salads showcasing the best seasonal vegetables.

More after the break.

We don’t have a catchy marketing name for these, but our idea is to rebel against the giant bowl of leafy (not too flavorful) green stuff you find everywhere. Somehow mesclun greens have become as tasteless and generic as the out of season vegetables that top them.

So we’re creating a vehicle that let’s us celebrate what is in season, enhance it a bit with seeds or nuts or cheese etc, and is hearty enough to leave you full. Our salads are simple and minimally processed. We’re proud of our vegetables and want to show them off. And they’re small. That’s because we want you to try several, or pop one alongside your sandwich.

A few of you have mentioned the excessive packaging. Yeah. It is biodegradable, part of our march towards 100% biodegradable everything. But it’s still a lot. We’re doing 2 things about that: (a) we’re upping the serving size to 12 ounce from current 8 ounce and (b) we’re going to sell re-usable salad bowls along with a salad lover card for our frequent customers.

As with everything we’ll keep listening to you all, and make changes, and make mistakes, and learn. Stay tuned…