Every food trend eventually runs its course, or just recedes to become part of the culinary landscape. That’s arguably what has happened to build-your-own-salad or grain bowls, the once-hot office lunches that are now often and perhaps unfairly derided as “slop bowls.” That shift in taste leaves companies like Chipotle Mexican Grill, Sweetgreen, and Cava, which built large businesses on the popularity of bowl-based food, scrambling to reinvent their offerings.
So-called bowl fatigue and high menu prices have led to often softer business at companies forming the vanguard of this food movement. This week, Sweetgreen, where business has been slow, said it was introducing wraps in select U.S. markets, touting the food trend you might remember from the 1990s as a “handheld format designed to deliver the portability and satisfaction guests crave.”
