When Just Salad joined Opus, they had 50 locations. Today they operate 115+, with 2,000+ team members trained across eight languages — and a drive-through format, 10% reduction in food waste costs, and new store opening time cut from seven days to three.
The growth didn't come at the cost of standards. It came from building a training system that scales with the brand.
"Opus has freed our managers from training at the store level so they can just focus on the customer — and we've seen a huge impact on how our brand is being recognized."
Alex Chavez, Senior Director of Operations Admin, Just Salad
The Challenge: Consistency
Just Salad runs on three core priorities, which the founder calls the 3 C's: Culture, Consistency, and Connection. All three have to be present in every store, every day. But as the brand accelerated from 50 to 115+ locations, one C was hardest to protect.
"When it comes to back of the house, the biggest C was consistency," says Alex Chavez, Senior Director of Operations Admin,. "You can have great culture in your stores. You can have great connection with guests. But the backbone of the store is the consistency in the back of the house."
The previous training system couldn't keep up. Content was text-heavy and desktop-based. Managers relayed information to frontline teams in person, with no visibility into who had actually completed training or how well they understood it. As Just Salad prepared to grow, that model wasn't scalable — and it wasn't consistent.
The Solution: Training Built Into Every Shift
Just Salad knew that for the 3 C's to hold at scale, training couldn't be a separate initiative. It had to be part of how every shift runs — accessible to every team member, in every location, from day one.
With Opus, they built a training program that works the way store teams work: mobile-first, media-rich content, translated so team members can train in their preferred language. Team members pull up training on their phones mid-shift. No back-office computer, no separate login flow. The program now reaches team members across eight languages, with nearly 30% of the workforce completing training in a language other than English.
Four years in, Just Salad has logged more than 117,000 completed assignments across the network, with average course feedback of 4.5 stars or higher. The numbers reflect something harder to manufacture than completion rates: a workforce that actually engages with the training.
400+ trainings covering every dimension of the operation
Just Salad's training library is comprehensive by design. Consistency requires that every team member — regardless of role, location, or language — is working from the same standards across every part of the business.
Their 400+ trainings cover:
- New hire onboarding
- Culinary & kitchen prep (see a BOH training example)
- Menu changes & LTOs
- Standard operating procedures
- Workplace safety, food safety & compliance
- Marketing promotions (including app rewards)
- HR benefits & policies
- IT & tech training
- Leadership development
- Corporate initiatives (including sustainability)
- English as a second language
Content creation that used to take two to three days now takes about 10 minutes — and every course is built to the same format: short, video-first, with no memorization pressure. Reference materials stay on a training iPad on the floor, so accuracy doesn't depend on recall.
💡See it in practice: Just Salad's Back-of-House Training
Consistency in the kitchen starts before a team member ever touches a prep station. Just Salad's BOH training is built around short, role-specific video modules, so every team member works from the same standard.
→ See a Just Salad BOH training example
→ Watch the full Office Hours session with Alex Chavez
Training built into operations, not just assigned
The training program doesn't live in an LMS that gets opened once a quarter. It's embedded in how Just Salad manages performance across the network:
- New hires complete role-specific certification before touching the kitchen — digital training first, hands-on coaching during the slower shift period
- Managers and Area Team Leaders re-certify through the same courses as the prep team, from COO down — making clear that standards apply to everyone
- Ongoing accountability runs through a weekly topic-of-the-week cadence: one prep item or procedure gets focused attention across all stores, with managers confirming correct execution in every location
- When standards slip, the response is course reassignment, not reprimand — reissuing the relevant training and following up with a one-on-one conversation
The result is an 80% assignment completion rate sustained across the organization for four years — and a platform that functions as the operating system for consistency across every store.
"From hiring to recertification, it's how we present training to our teams — from their first day, team members understand that Opus will be part of their daily work. Opus is part of our culture.”
Alex Chavez, Senior Director of Operations Admin, Just Salad
.png)
Four Years of Growth: What the System Made Possible
New store opening time cut from 7 days to 3
Before Opus, it took Just Salad up to seven days to get a new store team ready. That dropped to five, then to three — and the goal is two: one day of Opus training, one day hands-on, then open the doors.
Early in the expansion, the corporate training team ran every opening themselves. Alex personally attended 62 of them. That model couldn't scale. Two structural shifts changed it:
- Role-specific training paths. Every team member now follows a curriculum built for their position — cashiers, toppers, and prep team each train only on what's relevant to their role.
- Ownership shifted to Area Team Leaders. ATLs now run store openings directly through a structured playbook built inside Opus. Every store follows the same sequence. The L&D team no longer needs to be in the room.
"Our training team no longer has to be in every store running opening training. Now our Area Team Leaders run the process themselves using the structure built into Opus."
Alex Chavez, Senior Director of Operations Admin, Just Salad
Built a store leadership pipeline that filled 100 roles, saving $500K in recruiting costs
93% of General Manager promotions in the past year came from within — a figure Just Salad cited publicly in early 2026. Alex Chavez put the full picture in context: close to 110 management-level roles have been created and filled by team members who came up through the Opus training program.
Based on SHRM's average cost-per-hire of $4,700, that's an estimated $500K+ in avoided recruiting costs — before accounting for ramp time, or what gets lost when a new external hire has to learn the brand from scratch.
Internally promoted leaders arrive already certified in Opus, fluent in Just Salad's standards, and carrying the operating culture with them from day one. That institutional knowledge compounds as the brand scales.
Continuously improved operational performance
Each week, leadership selects a priority operational focus and pushes short, targeted training to all stores through Opus. One week it might be allergen standards. The next, a specific prep technique. Every store trains on the same priority at the same time.
The impact shows up in the numbers:
- Food waste costs dropped 10% across the board after team members completed a dedicated 13-minute sustainability training focused on prep standards and waste reduction
- Drive-through service times dropped from ~3:50 to under 3 minutes after training teams on a single guest engagement technique: greet the guest, ask sweet or spicy, make a direct recommendation. One question — faster decisions, shorter lines.
At 115 locations, that weekly cadence isn't just protecting standards — it's compounding them.
Looking Ahead
Just Salad has spent four years proving that growth and consistency don't have to trade off. The system that trained 50 locations now runs 115. With 40 new openings planned this year and three more drive-throughs on deck, Just Salad isn't rebuilding for the next phase of growth. They're already in it.
Culture, Consistency, Connection. The 3 C's still run every store. The only thing that's changed is the scale at which they hold.
