Salad and Go, the Arizona-born drive-thru salad chain known for affordable, fresh fast food, is closing its doors for good. On August 4, 2026, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced that all remaining locations would permanently close on Wednesday, August 5, 2026. The shutdown marks the final chapter for a chain that just over a year ago operated roughly 140 restaurants across five states.
What Happened to Salad and Go
Salad and Go confirmed in a company statement that it filed voluntary petitions for relief under Chapter 11 bankruptcy on August 4, 2026, and would serve its last customers the following day. CEO Mike Tattersfield called it “a painful day for everyone who built, worked for and loved Salad and Go,” adding that the brand’s mission had been “brought to life every day by an extraordinary team and embraced by guests who made us part of their routines.”
At the time of the shutdown, the chain operated about 70 drive-thru locations across Arizona and Nevada, down sharply from its peak footprint that once stretched into Texas, Oklahoma, and other markets.
Why Salad and Go Is Closing
According to the company, the closure resulted from a combination of factors that had been building for months. In its release, Salad and Go said it was “ultimately unable to overcome sustained pressure on consumer demand, past strategic growth challenges and rising costs.”
The company also pointed to a Cyclospora outbreak reported in July 2026, noting that Salad and Go itself was not implicated in the outbreak, but that it “weakened confidence across the industry and compounded these challenges” for fast-casual and salad-focused restaurant chains more broadly.
A Timeline of Closures Leading Up to the Shutdown
The final closure did not happen overnight. Salad and Go had been shrinking its footprint for nearly a year before the bankruptcy filing:
September 2025: The chain closed 41 restaurants across Texas and Oklahoma, citing poor real estate decisions in some of those markets.
January 2026: Salad and Go announced it would exit Texas and Oklahoma entirely, closing 32 additional restaurants — 25 in Texas and seven in Oklahoma — by January 11, 2026. The closures affected around 600 employees and also included the shutdown of the company’s Dallas-area commissary kitchen and headquarters, which relocated back to Phoenix, Arizona.
August 2026: With only about 70 locations left in Arizona and Nevada, Salad and Go filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and announced the permanent closure of every remaining store.
The Rise and Fall of Salad and Go
Salad and Go was founded in 2013 in Gilbert, Arizona, by Tony and Roushan Christofellis, who built the concept around small, largely seating-free drive-thru locations supported by central commissary kitchens. The idea was to make fresh, healthy food as fast and affordable as traditional fast food.
The brand was sold to private equity firm Volt Investment Holdings in 2021, which relocated headquarters to Texas and brought on former Wingstop CEO Charlie Morrison in 2022 to lead an aggressive nationwide expansion. Under that push, Salad and Go grew rapidly into Texas, Oklahoma, Nevada, and beyond, reaching around 140 company-owned restaurants by early 2025. Morrison left the company in 2024 following disagreements with the board over strategy, and the aggressive growth model — including a large central kitchen built to support hundreds of restaurants — later proved to be a financial burden the company could not sustain.
What This Means for Customers and Employees
For loyal customers, especially in Arizona and Nevada where the brand maintained its strongest presence, the closure ends access to a menu built around affordable salads, wraps, breakfast burritos, soups, and specialty lemonades and iced teas. For employees — many of whom the company affectionately called “Greenies” — the shutdown represents a significant and sudden loss of jobs, following the hundreds of positions already eliminated during the earlier rounds of closures in 2025 and January 2026.
Salad and Go’s collapse also adds to a broader wave of restaurant bankruptcies and closures across the industry in 2026, as chains continue to grapple with rising costs and shifting consumer spending habits.
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