In 2009, a father and son duo wanted to bring a new, healthy yet tasty approach to fast food in Singapore.

The company has since raised a total of $12.5M. Oh, and they have over 70 outlets across Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Philippines, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, and more.

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👨‍👩‍👧‍👦  Meet the family of founders

Adrien Desbaillets grew up in Singapore. And in 2009, he  and his father Daniel felt a growing need for healthier food options in Singapore.

People started to care about what they were eating and where it was from—and they wanted it to be convenient too.

Having grown up in a vegetarian/vegan household themselves, they decided to create a healthy fast food chain.

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1️⃣  The first-ever SaladStop! store

They studied the salad bar concept in the West and wanted to bring it to Asia.

A vision to scale from day 1. With Daniel’s retirement savings on the line, they signed off on rent for three outlets before launching their first store.

• Why? It was cheaper and because they knew they needed to scale fast to succeed.

It was a huge bet. Their first SaladStop outlet launched in November 2009, and they quickly started opening new branches and improving along the way.

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😱 The hardest part?

In 12 months, they had 5 stores. But this was the toughest part of it all. Managing multiple stores at a time, and making sure their processes and quality were exactly the same at each store.

Once, all the store managers brought their dressings to HQ but they tasted and looked different. Even with the same recipes!

In those first few months, they focused on  fine-tuning their processes, designing and customizing their stores for optimal efficiency, testing their products, developing relationships with suppliers, and understanding the market even deeper.

But they made it through. After four months, their first outlet broke even.

And once they hit 7 outlets in 2011, they were generating a monthly revenue of $300k SGD ($220k).

Soon after, Daniel’s daughter Katherine and son-in-law Frantz Braha were brought on as the Chief Brand Officer and Chief Growth Officer.

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💚 People loved it

SaladStop had a wide selection of fresh, carefully-selected ingredients and homemade dressings anyone could use to customize their salads or wraps. It had a wider selection than all, if not most salad bars in the country and was fairly priced too.

Plus, being in the CBD, it was convenient for people.

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💨 Fast forward to 2016

They raised $5M SGD ($3.6M) from investors, their first round of external funding. At the time, they already expanded to 15 outlets in Singapore and 8 in the Philippines.

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🍚 Beyond salad

In 2019, they launched Heybo, a new brand that focused on warm grain and rice bowls. Soon after, they launched a sushi roll and poke bowl brand called Wooshi.

Why launch more brands? SaladStop can work well in certain areas, especially major cities. But if the company wants to go deep into local markets, they need to create different brands.

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👋🏼 Here and now

From a family-run business, they’ve grown a whole lot to become a global company over the past 15 years.

They most recently raised $8.7M in their second round of funding in 2022 from investors like Temasek, DSG, Vulcan Ventures, K3 Ventures, and East Ventures.

They’ve also gone beyond their 7+ markets in Asia and have expanded to Europe, with their first market being Spain.