Greenlane
New Concept Creation | Culinary, Brand, Experience
Designing craveable salads for life in the fast lane.
12
SECONDS: THE TIME IT
TAKES TO BUILD A BOWL
180
SECONDS: AVG. TIME FROM
ORDER TO PICKUP
In today’s restaurant landscape, being health-forward, value-first, delicious and convenient rarely play well together. Given how much demand there is for all three, this creates a whitespace in the market that an ambitious brand can own.
Greenlane is exactly that. This distinct new salad-centric ‘fast food’ concept defies industry norms by delivering on health, value, and convenience simultaneously in a beautifully experiential drive-thru format. Led by Erica Spector Wishnow and Judd Wishnow, the Greenlane team partnered with TCE to bring this vision to life.
Background.
How did you find the right market “whitespace” for Greenlane?
By a combination of experience and market research. Our staff researchers analyzed consumer behavior, and conducted interviews with our target audience. This showed us that there was an unmet need for food that was less expensive than premium salad, healthier than typical QSR drive-throughs, and more convenient than most freshly prepared food. That defined the whitespace opportunity for Greenlane, or where they could “win” in the marketplace.
How did you create the menu to achieve the business' objectives?
Like the best innovations, we started with the customer experience. Our experienced consulting team knew that drive-through customers would want to wait about 2 minutes from order to pick up. So we had to design salads, wraps and bowls that could be built fresh in under 20 seconds. Of course, it had to be delicious, and financially viable at the same time. So those strategic considerations strongly guided our creative decisions on the menu.
What did the brand identity have to achieve?
With drive-through salad being such a new food and beverage innovation, Greenlane needed a visual identity that would capture attention, and then quickly communicate to unfamiliar audiences what this new proposition was about.
What did the architecture have to achieve?
We saw the drive-through structure as a natural billboard for the brand. We covered the structure in brand imagery of fresh produce used in the bowls, salads and wraps. In this way, the food, the brand identity, and the architecture all worked seamlessly together as part of one experience.
How did you build consistency and reliability into the recipes?
Our chefs and consultants design the recipes for crave-ability AND simplicity. So they are quick to prepare, easy to learn, and consistently executed. By investing in strategic menu design, Greenlane has been able to scale faster, and will continue to harvest the rewards for years to come.
What were the business outcomes?
At The Culinary Edge, we design successful business outcomes first and foremost. Within three years, Greenlane has grown to ten locations, which is a testament to a great client, and the design of a concept which is scalable from the get go.