With a goal of serving the world’s freshest salad, Clayton Farms Salads opens in Ames

Restaurant Indoor Farming | Ronna Faaborg |

A drive-through salad and smoothie restaurant opened in Ames Friday, and it just might have the world’s freshest salads.

The restaurant is an offshoot of Clayton Farms, an Ames-based indoor farm that delivers freshly harvested produce directly to subscribers.

Clayton Farms Salads is growing its greens onsite inside the restaurant in a similar hydroponic, soil-free process used at the indoor farm. That quick, easy access to salad greens and microgreens makes the salads and smoothies amazingly fresh.

“We’re going after the Guinness Book of World Records for the freshest salads served in the world,” said Chief Farmer Clayton Mooney, co-founder of the restaurant and the farm. “We think we can get from harvest to a bowl in 30 seconds.”

He expects officials from Guinness to come to Ames in a couple months.

Each day, cooks will harvest the amount of greens that they expect to use that day, then wash and prep them for use in the menu items, which will be made fresh.

New salad and smoothie recipes are being developed

Salads on the Clayton Farms Salads menu have a base of tender butterhead lettuce and crunchy romaine, which is the newest lettuce offered by the indoor farm this year.

“Beyond that, we’ll have microgreens that go into each salad and our smoothies,” Mooney said. “Microgreens range from our bok choy to our pea shoots to our micro radish.”

Clayton Farms recently started growing sunflower micro greens at the indoor farm, and Mooney expects those to be incorporated into the salads in the near future.

“Behind the scenes, we are working on multiple other smoothies and salads,” he said. “It’s driven by our subscribers right now as we’re getting feedback from them, and that’s helping us develop the menu.”

Mooney’s favorite salad on the menu is the Southwest Salad, which features butterhead lettuce, Clayton Farms radish microgreens, bell peppers, black beans, red onion, sweet corn, cherry tomato, butternut squash, avocado, pepitas, cilantro, lime and chili limon dressing.

For the salad dressings, Clayton Farms Salads is partnering with Salad Girl organic dressings, which is headquartered in Minnesota not far from the indoor farm in Edina, where Clayton Farms expanded last year.

“Salad Girl is a perfect match for us, not only for the flavor profile for us but for the partnership in believing in an organic approach, so it’s a natural combination,” Mooney said.

Co-founder Clayton Mooney expects to sell out of lettuce frequently

“We do expect to sell out frequently,” he said. “We do want all the base of our ingredients grown onsite, so we’re just trying to make sure we don’t dip into a future week’s supply.”

The restaurant will be able to grow the ingredients for 1,200 salads per week onsite.

Customers can find Clayton Farms Salads on its myriad social media presences to find out if salads might be sold out before they make the trip there. Those notes will be pinned so they’re easy to find, Mooney said.

Online ordering at claytonfarms.com/salads is available for delivery and pickup, with a shelf for to-go orders just inside the doors to the restaurant.

The restaurant is open limited hours to start, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

After the first month, Mooney expects the restaurant will be open full-time hours, which will be until 8 p.m.

The menu is starting off with four salads and three smoothies. Salads include Mooney’s Southwest favorite as well as a garden salad, Caesar and Crunchy Asian salad. You can also build your own to order.

Smoothies include a Tropical Green Smoothie, with broccoli microgreens, kale, pineapple, mango and coconut milk. The Sweet Matcha Smoothie features bok choy microgreens, banana, matcha green tea powder, cinnamon, dates and unsweetened vanilla almond milk. Mooney’s favorite smoothie, the Berry Blast combines pea microgreens, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries and pineapple juice.

“I love that pea shoots are included in the berry smoothie,” he said.

All menu items are customizable based on customers’ tastes and food allergies.

From getting the keys to serving the salads: Renovations took just six weeks

The produce at the restaurant grows in five-tier racks, where various trays of plants are at different stages in the growing process. That way, there’s something ready to harvest every day.

The setup is similar to the indoor farms, but in those locations higher ceilings accommodate six-tier racks.Clayton Farms Salads is located in the former Fazoli’s restaurant, 2435 Grand Ave., and even the turnaround of the building was fast.

“We’ve gone from getting the keys, to demo, to equipment installed, to up and running and serving the very first salads in just six weeks,” Mooney said. “We like to move fast. It’s all possible thanks to an amazing team.”

Its fast growth is similar to what Clayton Farms itself has experienced. Mooney and co-founder Danen Pool started Nebullam in 2017, which changed its name to Clayton Farms in 2022. Their initial goal was to sell indoor farming equipment and the software that runs it — like a John Deere version of indoor farming. The produce they harvested from the prototypes was marketed to restaurants and local grocers.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, they had to pivot. That’s when they came up with the direct-to-consumer model.

“When we started to realize we could own the supply chain, we started to go direct to consumers,” Mooney said. “And we’re able to provide healthy, local, reliable food year-round to individuals’ doorsteps.”

Interest increased in central Iowa, and they decided to start the indoor farm in Edina, which opened in August.With the intention of expanding the indoor farms elsewhere in the country, Mooney said getting a site up and running can take just two months.

The idea for a salad-and-smoothie drive-through came as Mooney and Pool realized there was a segment of the community who don’t have time to take their raw ingredients and make meals at home.

“They’re looking for a fast option that’s also healthy. That basically doesn’t exist today,” Mooney said. “With us being a vertically integrated company and owning the supply chain, we decided we can just bring that to retail.”

By the end of the year, Mooney predicts Clayton Farms will launch indoor farms in eastern Iowa, western Iowa and a second location in Minnesota.

“I think we’ll have drive-throughs in all of those locations as well,” he said. “It’s go time.”

Ronna Faaborg covers business and the arts for the Ames Tribune. Reach her at rlawless@gannett.com.

Original Article: https://www.amestrib.com/story/news/local/2023/04/03/clayton-farms-expands-to-offer-drive-thru-salads-smoothies/70003662007/

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