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To find fresh styles and flavors for new Taylor Farms chopped salad kits, Vice President of Product & Innovation Charis Neves explores every aisle of the grocery store and all types of restaurant menus—from fine dining to fast food. Whether spinning off classic dressings, picking up on trends in appetizers or adapting popular street foods, the results are uniformly intriguing and delicious.
Next stop, Dubai chocolate? Maybe….
“We haven’t pulled that one off—yet,” Neves said. “Chocolate, pistachio and phyllo dough are very in right now, but we could do something with a twist. Maybe a mole dressing and a little bit of crumbled pistachios on it, might be fun.”
If you think that is just Neves being whimsical, remember that the Maple Bourbon Bacon salad kit was developed from her noticing that trend in products like ice cream, potato chips, and candy bars.
Take the new Jalapeño Popper Chopped Salad kit, for example. Neves and her team noticed the appetizer rendering on TikTok and in Jalapeño Popper-based menu items like a burger from Wendy’s and a pizza from Casey’s, a Midwestern chain.
“You read the comments,” she said, “and you look at what people are talking about. And then you look at the white space within salads and nobody was doing a jalapeno popper. We said, ‘Well, nobody’s doing it. We can do it.’”
Neves said that, when they are designing a salad, the dressing always comes first and then the veggies and produce are matched to it.
“The dressing is the star,” she said, “and then the vegetables are the enhancement to the star—the accoutrements. The vegetables are incredibly important, but you’ve got to have the right dressing. It’s got to taste good and balance out really well.”
There were five iterations on the dressing alone, based on a heavy buttermilk ranch, as well as a search for the right kind of cheese—smoked white cheddar provided the right notes after other cheeses fell flat. The crunch came from trial and error; crispy onions beat out croutons.
And the salad delivers. There’s an approachable pop of spicy heat right at the beginning that finishes with a smooth sour creaminess in the finish. The smokiness of the cheese contrasts nicely with the cool crispiness of the romaine and kale greens.
“We really worked hard,” Neves said. “But I think one of the coolest things that we get to do all day is just try to figure out what hasn’t been done, and then do a really good job at making something people want to come back and buy.”
And, return customers is the ultimate test, of course, particularly when you are trying to sell the product nationwide when regional tastes can be an obstacle. That was the case for one dressing that Neves described as “garlic to the max.”
“It was so wonderful,” she said. “I thought it was amazing. But it’s a learning curve. I think, for the rest of the country, it was a little overpowering. What we like in California may be much different than the rest of the country.”
The kinds of greens used can also have different regional appeal, Neves said. The Midwest doesn’t typically enjoy more bitter greens like kale and collards, while the East Coast is so fond of escarole that Taylor Farms can sell it by the bag there—an option not always available in the West. But everybody likes romaine.
“Romaine is really crunchy,” she said, “but it also has a watery texture. So, it can dilute some of the flavors of the dressing in a good way. So, if you have a really intense dressing and you pair it with the romaine, it makes it more balanced.”
Romaine figures in the new Taco Ranch Mini Chopped Salad Kit, which also has bits of carrot and red cabbage for color. It uses a healthier version of a Frito-like corn chip, made with canola oil, and a dressing that Neves describes as unlike any they have yet produced.
“We kind of paint a vision for these before we start,” she said. “And we nailed this one pretty close right from the beginning. It’s a creamy ranch that’s a little ubiquitous. You could eat it every day.”
But for the fastest-growing salad in the Taylor Farms line, it’s back to kale—in the form of the Sweet Kale Chopped Kit, it’s second only to their Caesar Salad kit.
“It’s on all retailer shelves,” Neves said. “It’s one of our most distributed salads. And because it’s so good, we made it in a small portable format as a new Mini Sweet Kale Chopped Kit, and in a grab-and-go bowl with chicken, too.”
Calling it a “kale salad” underplays the variety of ingredients in this salad. The Mini Kit also contains broccoli stalk, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. Pepitas, cranberries, and a sweet and creamy poppyseed dressing kick things up a notch and serve to balance the bitterness of the produce. It’s a fun way to get a remarkable amount of pure nutrition.
When she is not shepherding new taste sensations through the test kitchen, Neves is also the chair of the Taylor Farms Scholarship Committee.
Over the course of this year, the company has awarded more than $650,000 in new and renewed scholarships, and, since its inception in 2008, Taylor Farms has provided 319 students with more than $4.7 million in scholarships, all to children of full-time team members.
“We’re honored to participate in these academic milestones for these students,” Neves said. “We care deeply about bettering the future of our employees and helping their children earn degrees, along with valuable experience and education.”
Neves said it is a very emotional experience to be part of something that is potentially life-changing for these students.
“We hold a banquet for the parents and their children,” she said, “and the joy on their faces is just like nothing I’ve seen before. They’re so proud, and they realize they’re working so hard throughout the day for their children’s future. And it’s really rewarding to see that.”
Taylor Farms plays a key role in BenitoLink’s popular skill-building year-round internship program.
Recommendations for future Eat, Drink, Savor articles can be emailed to roberteliason@benitolink.com.
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