Here's why some companies say now is an ideal time for salad promos

Thirty-one years ago the Association for Dressings and Sauces launched National Salad Month, which runs in May, to bring added attention to the category.

It's a time of year when grocers are encouraging consumers to eat more salads because, while salads are popular, there’s room to grow.

Datassential's 2022 American Meal Keynote shows that 18% of Americans had salad when they last ate out, and even more, 23%, ate salad for dinner at home. Salad tends to be more popular with older consumers — 20% of Baby Boomers ate salad last time they ate at a restaurant, though just 13% of Generation Z did so, according to the report.

The basics of salad remains lettuce and other greens, and sales are increasing for the most popular types. For the 52 weeks ending March 26, 2023, the largest growth in salad sales (conventional and organic) came from the “fresh salads — garden” category, whose sales were up 22.9%, followed by fresh lettuce (up 11.6%), according to Circana OmniMarket Integrated Fresh, a Chicago-based market research firm.

Mother Raw launched a #CitySaladShowdown promotion May 1 for National Salad Month. The Toronto-based manufacturer’s dressing and dip products are in 8,000 stores throughout North America.

"May is a key kickoff to the seasonal peaks in salad consumption during the hotter months, so it is a perfect time for Mother Raw to be engaging consumers," CEO Kristi Knowles said.

The company is working with six influencers in six North American cities in the event.

Participants include an award-winning Chicago restaurateur, a cookbook author, podcast hosts and personalities, and amateur home chefs who create content recipes for social media. Each participant is tasked with creating a salad that represents the flavor and spirit of one of the cities, which include Miami, Toronto and Atlanta.

The influencers, who all have a robust following, will ask fans for input on what they should include in their salads. At month’s end, a chef and TV host will select the winning salad.

Mother Raw will make a donation to the winning city, as voted by the public, to a local charity selected by the representing chef.

"These influencers have more than a million followers, so we hope this has a broad reach," Knowles said. "We are on a mission to encourage people to eat more plants, but one of the issues is that people perceive salads as boring, and we want to prove they're anything but. We want these salads to be yummy and fun and ‘unboring.’"

At the same time, she said she's asked the influencers to "keep it real. We don't want any foam, any smoke. It has to be something consumers can make at home."

Tastings and giveways

Boskovich Family Farms and its Fresh Prep brand has two salad brands that are sold at retail: Green Fork, which was launched this spring with 11 SKUs, is the more fun and playful brand, and Fair Earth Farms is an organic line that comes in fully compostable bags.

For National Salad Month the company will run demos in store as much as possible.

"Being a new brand, with really culinary-forward recipes, we want to get them in the consumers' mouths as much as possible so they can taste the deliciousness and then make the purchase," said Deep Silver, senior marketing director.

For the demos, Boskovich hands out small cups of salad and features QR codes on the display tables to encourage shoppers to follow the brand on social media.

"Social is where our content is growing," Silver said. "A website doesn't get touched as often." However, the company features its social feed on its website too.

The brand also offers giveaways around Earth Day and National Salad Month.

"We want to give consumers an incentive to get into the category," she added.

The giveaways are through paid social media. Boskovich promotes them to its target audience — which includes people who don't yet follow the brand but are potential shoppers due to their interests and demographics — and invites them to share its content. Every time consumers do share, they receive another entry into the giveaway contest.

Boskovich also uses shelf-talkers where possible in stores.

Timing is everything

New Seasons Market grocery stores use May to really promote fresh salad ingredients that are in-season. In the Pacific Northwest, "that means things like arugula, asparagus, chard, collard greens, fava beans, scallions, kale, new potatoes, radicchio, radishes and spinach," said Chris Harris, category manager for produce and floral.

The company, which has around 20 stores in Portland, Ore., Vancouver, Wash., and San Jose, Calif., leans into "how fresh foods complement each other," Harris explained.

"In Oregon, halibut season opens on May 1, and our stores will be bursting with fresh fish. What better protein to add to your fresh salad?" Harris said.

Spring is the ideal time for National Salad Month, according to Mother Raw's Knowles.

"May is a great time to get people thinking about getting back into that summer routine,” she said.

Mother Raw's products are all sold directly from refrigerated areas of the produce department so both can accentuate and pick up on other healthy eating cues.

Capitalizing on social media

Mother Raw will focus its social media activity on #CitySaladShowdown in May.

"The goal is to gain awareness of our brand, which includes encouraging more plant consumption and making it fun and accessible," Knowles said.

She also hopes to bring salad excitement to more demographics.

"We chose the cities to represent diverse populations, colors, sizes, sexualities,” Knowles said. “The salad culture tends to be very white and privileged and a certain-size body and a certain age. That's not what we're about. We want to reach this message to everybody."

Fresh Prep/Boskovich Family Farms has separate social media platforms for Green Fork and Fair Earth Farms, and the company gets a lot of traction from Instagram reels, especially for the Green Fork brand, Silver said.

"It's all about creating new ways to use a salad kit. You can put it into a bowl and use it as it comes but it's nice to have ideas to help you elevate that salad kit such as adding to a wrap, or you can stir fry it, or create tacos with it,” she said.

Fair Earth Farms' customers also like reels but tend to seek them more for education than recipe ideas, Silver said, because the brand draws a slightly older consumer.

With salad consumers skewing older, focusing on social media could be a good strategy for winning over all customers during National Salad Month.