A CHAT WITH Sharon Mays

THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAST FOOD

With a tenacious spirit, Sharon Mays works to give fast food a place at the table.

BY MADELYN GEYER

Despite the popularity and longevity, no one will ever see a fast food place as a Michelin-star restaurant. But what if fast food didn’t mean bag-soaking burgers and fries? What if it could be truly healthy offerings and wonderful service? Sharon Mays, the founder of Baby Greens, isn’t here to give you the history of fast food. She’s here to rewrite its future. The drive-through salad restaurant is redefining the mindset toward fast food, one salad at a time.

Beginning as a pre-med major in college who hadn’t tried Taco Bell until she was 20, Mays was an unexpected candidate for a wildly successful and revolutionary career in the restaurant industry. Her path is beautiful and winding, fraught with victories, challenges and a stranger who unknowingly changed everything. CREATING BABY GREENS I took a job working at the IRS. Due to an anthrax scare post-9/11, security made it very difficult to leave the building to get food.

The big moment came on my dinner break. My dinner break was the marker the day was almost over, and a random man always took his break at the same time. I didn’t know him, but I would just sit there and watch him eat the same two meals every day: burger and fries, club sandwich and fries. I would watch him eat and know that when it was over, I had two and a half hours left of work.

One day, he comes in with a salad from Wendy’s. That meant on his own, he went through the security checkpoints to get in and out of the building and traveled all the way to a Wendy’s—while also using most of his break—to get a salad. That was the moment I literally got up out of that cafeteria and ran to my desk. This was my sign to move forward with my idea. I just remember going back to my desk and thinking, “Okay, we’ve got to get out of here right now and do this.” I left and opened up in 2004.

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2009? [That year] actually started out as an amazing year for Baby Greens. I had three locations and all of the things were coming together. But there just wasn't enough of me to go around.

Once I realized that I couldn't get there, I decided that, as risky of a move as it was, I was going to close a well-performing business in order to save it. It was terrifying and heartbreaking, but when you're the boss, your job is to do what's best for the company. I got it all buttoned up and closed, but in my mind, I always knew I wanted to reopen Baby Greens.

AFTER REOPENING, WHAT DID YOU LEARN? I learned what I wanted my company to be about, and also how to plan differently. I learned how to set myself up to say, “I might not have these things today, but I'm going to at least put myself on a path that when the opportunity comes up for these things to come together, I’m ready.”

HOW DOES YOUR BACKGROUND IN MARKETING PLAY A ROLE IN HOW YOU RUN YOUR BUSINESS? I really sat down and discovered the reasons why people don’t eat better food. 1. Healthy food is too expensive. 2. It’s difficult to get to. 3. It doesn't typically taste great. 4. The ingredients are baffling. 5. People are afraid they’re not going to feel full at the end of it. When I came up with the idea for Baby Greens, five pillars were a part of what went into creating that brand: to be affordable, to be easy, to taste amazing, to have ingredients that most people have at least heard or seen before and to be really filling.