This healthy-eating chain is thriving with a multi-revenue stream model.

Based in Wilmington, N.C., Clean Eatz is a healthy-eating concept with 110 locations across the country. It boasts multiple revenue streams resulting in systemwide sales of more than $100 million in 2023. It has a sister company that brings in another $30 million a year by distributing, and in some cases producing, packaged healthy snacks and meals.

In short, Clean Eatz represents a small but growing empire, one that blossomed in just 11 years, led by a husband-and-wife team with limited foodservice experience. “This was always the vision, but we weren’t really expecting the growth the way it happened,” says Don Varady, the chain’s CEO, who co-founded the concept with his wife, Evonne.

Clean Eatz offers a subscription-based meal plan program that is a key piece of the chain’s success.

At a Glance

• Chain headquarters: Wilmington, N.C.
• Year founded: 2013
• Co-founders: Don Varady, CEO; Evonne Varady, co-founder
• Signature menu items: Build Your Own Bowl with choice of five bases, eight proteins and dozens of veggies, cheeses and sauces; preordered meals; grab-and-go meals
• Number of units: 110
• Unit size: 2,200 sq. ft.
• FOH: 1,000 sq. ft.
• BOH: 1,200 sq. ft.
• Seats per unit: 20-30
• Average unit volume sales: $1.1 million
• Check average: $60-$70
• Real estate: In-line, endcap and “anything available”
• Equipment package cost: roughly $140,000

The Vision

The Clean Eatz vision isn’t built around a gimmicky diet or a healthy niche like juice or smoothies. Many of the menu categories are what you’d find at other fast-casual operations. The chain stands apart by focusing on healthy ingredients and sensible servings.

“We take comfort food and put a healthy spin on it to make it as nutritious as we can, then we focus on portion control. Our dine-in menu has wraps, burgers, bowls. We have smoothies. It’s a full dine-in cafe,” says Varady.

After cooking, cafe orders are assembled using a sandwich table. A pair of tabletop steam wells hold cooked proteins that are warmed up on the flattop.

The healthy spin, for example, includes swapping beef patties for bison, black bean, salmon or turkey patties in the Clean Eatz Burger. Instead of standard fries, the chain serves sweet potato waffle fries, while its chicken pesto wrap includes ingredients like spinach, turkey bacon and kale pesto. While this approach to dine-in is alone enough to build a brand on, each Clean Eatz store has multiple additional revenue streams.

The top earner at Clean Eatz, in fact, is its meal plan program. This is not a subscription-based program, Varady says. Every Tuesday, each restaurant sends a menu listing individually packaged, premade meals that will be available the following week to customers on the chain’s email list. Clean Eatz uses the same menu nationwide. Guests can place orders from Tuesday through Saturday, then pick up their food on Sunday or Monday.

Grab-and-go meals represent the chain’s second biggest revenue stream. Like the meal plan offerings, these are premade, individually packaged meals. They aren’t leftovers from the meal plan, though; these meals are completely separate, Varady says. “The way it got started is that there’s a benefit for us and the franchisees to use up food,” he explains. “That limits food waste and improves food costs. We see we’ve got two cases of chicken or an extra case of beef, an extra case of rice and this vegetable. What kind of meal can we put together?”

That’s still the basic model of the grab-and-go offering, says Varady. Now, though, the chain has a database of more than 500 recipes store managers can choose from when trying to use up extra stock.

Each store also has a marketplace section, where guests can buy packaged snacks like dessert bars as well as frozen offerings like empanadas and high-protein cauliflower crust pizza.

The stores receive most of these items via shipments from Clean Eatz’s sister company Clean Eatz Kitchen. This firm operates four food production and distribution facilities, one in Salt Lake City, one in St. Louis, Mo., and two in Wilmington, Del. Clean Eatz Kitchen ships prepackaged foods to Clean Eatz restaurants nationwide, as well as premade individual meals to spots around the world.

Two-Unit Hot Line

Even with all these revenue streams, Clean Eatz maintains an extremely simple kitchen. The kitchen includes two primary pieces of cooking equipment. First is the flattop grill, which sits on refrigerated drawers holding cold proteins. The chain uses this for its burger patties, the proteins in its bowls and more.

The chain’s hot line consists of burners, a flattop and an oven.A 180-degree turn away sits a countertop steam well unit used to keep proteins warm. “It’s short-order line cooking,” says Varady. “They’ll get a ticket. If it’s a bowl, they’ll pull a portion of the protein, throw it on the flattop grill and steam that with water. They’ll then scoop it up and put it in the bowl and add sauce to it.”

The second hot side unit is a rapid-cook oven that combines multiple heating technologies. This piece handles jobs like baking sweet potato fries from frozen and heating boneless wings.

The fast-cooking oven is a recent addition to the kitchen, Varady notes. It replaced a standard convection oven and offers equal or better food quality, he says. The cafe assembly line sits on the opposite side of the hot equipment. A sandwich table that holds raw veggies and proprietary sauces serves as the center of the action here. A refrigerated space below holds backup ingredients.

Next to the sandwich table is a panini press that’s used for flatbreads like the BBQ Chicken and Turkey Burnt End Cuban. After the panini press comes the steam well with warm proteins. This marks the end of the cafe’s production area. The menu and operations are simple enough that just three to four people can run the cafe side, Varady says.

More staffers, though, are necessary for the chain’s premade meal production, which covers both meal plans and grab-and-go offerings. This work is handled throughout the week, with the bulk of Thursday through Saturday focused on meal plan orders and the rest of the week on grab-and-go.

Since Clean Eatz receives most proteins precooked, there’s little to no cooking. Staff assemble meals, which then get placed in a walk-in, ready for guests to heat and eat. That means the back-of-the-house work for those segments focuses on prep and assembly. Prep for meal plans usually begins Thursday night, with staff pulling out frozen ingredients to defrost. After this, the bulk of prep work is cutting produce for meals.

The assembly team then simply operates an assembly line on worktables in the center of the kitchen. Different team members add different ingredients to each meal before it gets sent to cold storage. At most Clean Eatz locations, this consists of a walk-in cooler and freezer.

The chain’s grab-and-go meals account for Clean Eatz’s second-largest revenue stream.

Not Just Bodybuilders

With all this success, it may be surprising to learn that Clean Eatz is actually the Varadys’ second attempt at a healthy-eating concept. They previously started a near-identical restaurant in their hometown of St. Louis. That restaurant was named Lo-Cal (as in low calorie) Cafe. It was, Varady admits, not the strongest brand. “Everybody thought its name was Local Cafe.”

That operation didn’t make it. Don and Evonne, wanting to be closer to the beach, eventually moved to Wilmington. In 2012, they decided to give their concept another shot and opened the first Clean Eatz restaurant.

The space, says Varady, was meant to appeal to fitness fanatics like him and his wife. “When we started the brand, I was bodybuilding and she was doing figure competitions. We were really into fitness,” he says. “We wanted this fitness cafe where everyone from the gym could come to eat and hang out.”

The space quickly attracted the gym crowd, as Varady expected. But it soon brought in a broader customer base of people wanting convenient, healthy, delicious meals. Senior citizens came in. Moms with kids. Businesspeople on lunch break.

Varady credits this early success partly to the market. Since Wilmington is a beach town, many people eat with their beach body in mind. This led to some unusual scenes, Varady recalls. Clean Eatz’s original design was very bodybuilding oriented. There were bodybuilding pictures on the wall and cutouts from fitness magazines built into the tabletops.

“It was weird having an elderly lady with her friends having a meal with half-naked men and women on the tabletop. But they loved it,” Varady says.

In 2015, Clean Eatz began franchising, and the first franchise location opened in Myrtle Beach
the next year. At that point, Varady knew it was time to change the look to something less aggressive and more approachable.

Strategic Flow

The chain’s more accessible design is bright and colorful, with signature colors of orange, green, red, gray and black. Stores feature a sealed concrete floor and an open ceiling, with a soffit above the order area. Chairs are black metal. Tables are hardwood, while other millwork elements, like the half wall separating the queue from the dining area, are plywood with a pine-style laminate.

There are also a few signature design elements. These include a mural-style timeline of Clean Eatz’s history and the phrase, “It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle,” above the grab-and-go freezers.

The design of the new restaurant isn’t just about the look. Varady laid out the space to ensure guests would see everything Clean Eatz has to offer. “When I designed the prototype, I really focused on customer journey and flow,” he says. “When they walk through the door, the first thing they see is the grab-and-go freezer. From there, it flows in a circle pattern, and they see each revenue stream before they hit the cash register. Grab-and-go, retail, smoothies, open air for snacks. That all stops at the cash register, where the menu boards are.”

Onesies and Twosies

With so many revenue streams and a kitchen in good shape, Clean Eatz is in a position to grow. Historically, the chain has performed well in most places, including city centers. Its sweet spots, though, are suburbs filled with time-pressed parents who want something healthy for themselves and their kids. Real estate in these areas also tends to have ample parking, which is important for guests picking up large meal plan orders.

Picking the right partners for these markets, though, is not so simple. While many franchisors want someone with foodservice experience, that can actually be a negative for Clean Eatz.

Operators with a foodservice background, says Varady, sometimes tend to move away from the chain’s recipes and best practices. That drives up food costs and complicates what happens in the kitchen. “Sometimes, people with food backgrounds find the food piece to be way too simple for them,” he says. As long as they commit to the concept, though, franchisees with foodservice experience can thrive with the company.

While kitchen operations are simple, the overall operation of each restaurant, with so many revenue streams, is more complex than most. This complexity plays a big part in who Clean Eatz chooses as franchisees. In short, small deals are in; big deals are out.

“There are so many cogs that it takes an owner-operator to be there and be involved,” says Varady. “This isn’t a model we sell to a multimillionaire to go and pump out 20 of these things. They would not be successful.”

The chain is so committed to this approach that its typical deal is for three units or fewer. The company hasn’t sold a deal larger than that in a long time, Varady says.

Practically speaking, this approach doesn’t limit the pool of potential partners for the company, though. The reason the chain is succeeding is the same reason it has grown so fast: There will always be people who, literally and figuratively, want to invest in health.

“I think the brand and what it stands for, what our mission is and the culture behind it, is naturally attractive to anybody,” says Varady. “We’ve got kids who are 22 that are owners all the way up to franchisees in their 60s. It’s a model anyone can own and operate, which I think is good.”