We Ranked 3 Major Salad Chains & Here's The Leafy Winner

Whether packing from home, ordering in, or going out to grab, salads are a workday lunch staple. While a few years back you might have been more inclined to nosh on one as a side option with your soup or sandwich, they've now become the main lunchtime attraction. Chain restaurants dedicated solely to shelling out the leafy greens have sprouted up in major cities across the country. And each of us seems to have one company we swear by as better than the rest.

But what makes a particular salad more spectacular than the next? Specific flavor preferences aside, salads really are all just bowls filled with varied mixtures of lettuce, toppings, and dressing. So when broken down in this way, the determining factor for a truly kick-ass salad has the be the ratio between those three components (in addition to the quality of the ingredients, freshness, and flavor levels). And let's not forget price! In order to put this theory to the test, we decided to taste three of the most popular salad chains — Sweetgreen, Chop't, and Just Salad — in one of the most classic of salad flavor options: Caesar. Read on to see how each salad stacks up in terms of price, dressing, lettuce, toppings, and overall ratios — and mainly to see which bowl of leafy greens came out on top.