The Rise And Fall Of The Restaurant Salad Bar

It's only human nature to be attracted to anything shiny and new, and in 1960s America, that was the salad bar. The concept of the salad bar — prepping ingredients for an easy self-serve salad station — wasn't groundbreaking in the late '60s, but Norman Brinker made it the new normal when introducing them to his chain of Texan Steak & Ale restaurants.

When self-serving stations and all-you-can-eat buffets started being woven into the restaurant industry most prominently during the 1980s, Americans couldn't get enough. It was the next big exciting trend in dining, and with the new wave of diet culture, salads were the way to go. Today, salad bars seem to encompass everything we avoid. The idea of sharing troughs of food with dozens of strangers and picking up germ-covered ladles isn't the most appealing, but at the time, it was American freedom. Being able to grab your own glistening tomatoes, cubed cheese, and uniform strips of chicken was the dream. Usually charging by weight or container size, salad bars felt like a cheat code to affordable dining, when in reality, the restaurant cost was dirt cheap, so profits were still high. 

We still occasionally see restaurants doting the self-serve station, but rarely do we get the tongs in our hands. While lacking the same dose of nostalgia, grocery store salad bars are likely the closest many of us will come to the fast-casual dining experience of days past.

Norman Brinker is often associated with the first American salad bar appearance, but he was only the first to commercialize it. Even before it was a coveted steakhouse amenity, the salad bar concept was trending in Sweden, just under the term "smörgåsbord." Europeans enjoyed platters of meats, cheeses, tinned fish, pickles, and whatever else was on hand, sort of like a deconstructed salad.

Brinker wasn't the only genius who considered the market for healthy, affordable food in the 1960s and '70s. Before Brinker helped spread the salad bar fad in America, Wisconsin had the same idea. Freund's Sky Club Supper Club introduced its take on the salad bar as early as 1950, often taking credit over the Steak & Ale restaurateur. Ohio's Rax Roast Beef was another chain that introduced a salad bar around the same time, along with Chuck's Steakhouse of Hawaii in 1971. With diners becoming more and more health conscious, once thriving steakhouses and comfort food menus were seeing a dip in clientele. Meanwhile, folks were simply eating out less in the '70s, hoping to control their diets and save money.

Once the '80s rolled in, salad bars were everywhere. They were almost a given at fast-casual restaurants, with chains like Ruby Tuesday and Sweet Tomatoes solidifying the trend. Big names in fast food like Wendy's even picked up on the hype, hoping to entice customers to dine in with their so-called "SuperBar" in 1987. 

The popular concept carried on throughout the '80s and '90s, but then it started to see a shift. The idea of salad bars seemed to gradually veer away from a fun outing to a meal of means, often associated with quick business lunches and busy people on the go. More folks were weighing their salads for takeout and fewer were tucking into booths for a big family dinner. Wendy's ditched its salad bar in the late '90s, and from there, they slowly started to disappear. 

A lot of factors played into the demise of restaurant salad bars, starting with food safety. The early 2000s experienced waves of E. coli, salmonella, and influenza, instilling fear in diners. Businesses caught on and started taking away the autonomy of salad bars by having chefs prepare them behind the line. Chains like Sweetgreen, Just Salad, and Chopt are all built around that structure and still thriving today. The clear partition between the customer and chef is there to keep up with food safety regulations, but it gives the illusion of picking and choosing your own salad ingredients.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, that was pretty much the end of self-service food bars; not just salad bars but hot bars, soup stations, and anything exposing food was shut down promptly with no word of its return. With folks dining out less and less, the benefits of the salad bar became obsolete. You can Uber Eats yourself a customized salad, but if you can't pick out the best looking cherry tomatoes and greenest avocado, where's the fun in that? You can still find the occasional salad bar, but they're few and far between. Some Ruby Tuesday locations still feature the beloved "Garden Bar," and Fogo de Chão's Market Table is an upscale salad bar.