As Salad and Go serves its final customers, coffee company Dutch Bros has filed a bid to take over the leftover real estate of the once-popular drive-thru chain.
Salad and Go, a business that evolved from a small Phoenix concept serving healthier fast-food options that now has about 70 locations in Arizona and Nevada, is wrapping up its final day of business after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Aug. 4.
That real estate might not go unused for long.
According to Salad and Go’s court filings in the Southern District of Texas Bankruptcy Court, an entity connected to Dutch Bros submitted a purchase agreement for $105 million to assume the leases and contracts of Salad and Go.
In a statement, Salad and Go said it ultimately wasn’t able to overcome pressure on consumer demand, growth challenges and rising costs. Salad and Go said the Cyclospora outbreak weakened confidence in the industry, which compounded its challenges.
“This is a painful day for everyone who built, worked for and loved Salad and Go,” said Mike Tattersfield, Salad and Go’s CEO, in a statement.
Private equity firm Volt Investment Holdings purchased Salad and Go in 2021 and moved the company’s headquarters from Arizona to Texas. Salad and Go embarked on expanding in Texas and Oklahoma in recent years but pulled back in early 2026 to focus again on Arizona.
Salad and Go’s stores range from about 800 to 1,500 square feet.
Tight retail market
Dutch Bros Coffee, which recently relocated its headquarters from Grants Pass, Oregon, to Phoenix, takes a similar approach to quickly serving customers using walk-up windows and drive-thru orders.
Since completing its corporate move to Phoenix, Darrell Deshaw, a vice president at Western Retail Advisors, has seen Dutch Bros push for new locations across the city.
“They kill it here and they want to own it,” Deshaw said in an interview with CoStar News. “I started to see them expand and put their stores closer together.”
Deshaw added that Dutch Bros, by potentially absorbing Salad and Go’s footprint, can “protect its territory” from other coffee users. Dutch Bros didn't immediately respond to a request to comment to CoStar News.
Deshaw said single tenant drive-thru properties do not last long on the market. That, coupled with Phoenix’s retail vacancy at historically low levels and rent growth that well outpaces the national average, means a vacant storefront will have a negligible impact.
“While the closure is noteworthy due to the number of locations and their pace of expansion in recent years, the impact on space markets is likely to be pretty minimal,” said Connor Devereux, senior director of market analytics for CoStar.