Today we’d like to introduce you to Tony Shure.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Colin McCabe and I founded Chopt in 2001 as just two college students in New York City who were looking for a healthier food option that was exciting. When people thought of a salad, they typically only saw it as what came before the meal. We saw the potential to create a new concept that focused on making salad itself the whole meal through creative toppings and innovative homemade dressings. Fast forward 21 years, and we now have over 80 restaurants that span the East Coast in New York, Washington, D.C., Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, Tennessee, Connecticut, Georgia, Alabama, and North Carolina.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
In any business, there are bumps in the road. 21 years in business is a pretty long road. We opened up our first restaurant seven months before 9/11. What I’m proud of is that when confronted with challenges, Chopt has always evolved and gotten better. With the most recent and extended challenging period, the global pandemic, one of the silver linings to come out of these last few years, is that we believe we are even more convenient than ever before, with our focus on digital ordering including Group ordering through the website or app and online curbside and in-store pick-up. We’re about to open our first contactless store in Ballston, VA that features tableside QR code ordering/delivery and self-serve kiosks and we believe that these new ways of serving our communities are more convenient than ever before.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Chopt is a fast-casual creative salad brand and we are striving to transform the way people eat with innovative and customizable salads that people will get excited about, satisfied by and interested in what we’re serving up next.
We’re known for the quality and freshness of our ingredients for our inspired homemade dressings and for our rotating menu of limited-time only salads, warm bowls and wraps that make eating as fun, creative and healthy as possible. Whether that’s going all the way across the world to find new flavors for our destination menus or mindful sourcing from local purveyors to ensure the freshest ingredients. Our “flavor formula,” as we call it, for our salads is a blend of texture, crunch, heat, acid and spice to create the perfect bite again, and again.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Number one is that we’ve learned the most from our guests. Number two, obviously Colin McCabe and I have been doing this together since day one, but running restaurants takes teamwork and there’s not enough space in this Q&A to list all of the people that Colin and I are so grateful for.
Contact Info:
- Website: choptsalad.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/choptsalad/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/choptsalad/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Chopt
Image Credits
Chopt Creative Salad Co
