How Just Salad Builds Consistent Back-of-House Teams

Just Salad is a fast casual restaurant brand known for customizable, ingredient-forward salads across multiple locations. With a prep team responsible for executing every item from scratch—greens, proteins, cheeses, oven items, and bread—consistency in the back of house is non-negotiable. Alex Chavez, VP of Training and Labor Management, built a structured BOH training program that ensures every prep team member is certified before they step foot in the kitchen.

"When it comes to investing in our people—part of our culture is supporting growth. Supporting our teams and helping them grow for a better life."— Alex Chavez, Senior Director of Operations Admin at Just Salad

What Just Salad knew they needed to get right

BOH consistency starts with a clear-eyed view of what makes kitchen training hard. Before building the program, Just Salad identified the specific challenges any BOH training system needs to solve for.

What the program had to account for

• Every prep item has its own procedure—execution variability shows up directly in product quality across locations
• Team members learn best by doing, not watching. Digital training had to build the why before hands-on practice began
• Training needed to feel like part of the culture, not a compliance checkbox—otherwise buy-in wouldn't hold
• Cell phone policies and the pace of the floor meant reference materials had to be accessible at the moment of need, not locked away in a system

The training program: certification before the kitchen

Just Salad's full BOH certification takes approximately four hours and is completed entirely in Opus before a new team member steps foot in the kitchen. The curriculum is organized by prep category—oven items, greens, proteins, cheeses, and bread—with team members certified section by section.

What they covered

Every prep item, hot or cold, has its own dedicated course. The program covers:

• Finished product visual—what it should look like coming out of prep
• Tools needed
• Ingredients and recipe
• Food safety guidelines: storage times, hot holding requirements, what to watch for

How they trained

How they structured the training sequence

Digital training comes first. Hands-on training comes second—and at a deliberate time of day.

New prep team members complete all four hours of Opus certification before they touch anything in the kitchen. Once certified, hands-on training is scheduled during the dinner rush—the slower part of the day—when a Kitchen Training Operator or manager can work with them one-on-one.

"That is the time frame where our prep team comes in and starts learning the hands-on procedure—because it's slower and we can dedicate that time to them,” says Alex.

Training happens within scheduled shifts, during downtime. No added labor cost.

How Just Salad knows training is working

Restaurant Team Leads (RTLs) visit every store twice a week to observe the full prep procedure live—from greens through proteins. When something is off, the response is course reassignment, not reprimand. Leaders reissue the relevant course and follow up with hands-on coaching.

Leadership participates in the same recertification process as the prep team. From the COO to RTLs, everyone is certified through the same courses. "The biggest way we got buy-in was our team seeing that from our COO down, they know the procedure. They do the procedure in store."

That visible commitment is also what sustains the culture Alex describes:

“Opus is part of our culture. From hiring to recertification, Opus is shown to our teams as our training culture. This leads them to have the mindset that Opus will be part of their daily work—and it speaks to our rate of promotion from within. When promoted, they are certified through Opus, and that mindset is carried throughout their management career.” — Alex Chavez, Senior Director of Operations Admin, Just Salad

The results

• Industry leading product consistency, as noted by CEO Nick Kenner in this NRN article in 2026
• Average manager tenure rate of 3.5 years
• 80+% completion rate, with 18% course re-assigned by managers

Three principles that made BOH training stick

✅ Complete digital certification before hands-on practice. The sequence matters. Team members who understand the why before they touch the equipment learn faster and make fewer mistakes on the floor.

✅ Keep courses short and video-first. Two to three minutes per item. One course per procedure. Long videos and slide-heavy courses lose prep teams before they reach the important parts.

✅ Make it culture, not compliance. When leadership participates in the same recertification process as the prep team, training stops being something that's done to team members—and becomes something they own.

To learn more Just Salad best practices, read the full Office Hours recap here.

See it for yourself

Read more: To see one of the recipe course outlines, scan this QR code below.

Explore more training examples: View the full collection at opus.so/training-examples

Ready to build a BOH training program that drives consistency across every location? Let's talk →