Erica Spector Wishnow came up with Greenlane during long car rides in Covid, when she spent hours driving her children and faced the same frustration at nearly every drive-thru window.
Her kids wanted burgers and fries, and she wanted something filling that aligned with her vegetarian diet and left her satisfied.
“I wasn’t just going to eat apples and granola bars in my car for hours on end,” Wishnow said.
When she looked for alternatives, she said her best option was ordering a salad from Chick-fil-A or Wendy’s.
That recurring experience shaped the foundation of Greenlane, a drive-thru-only concept built around salads, wraps and protein boxes designed for repeat visits rather than occasional stops.
Greenlane will open its fifth Tampa Bay location in Wesley Chapel early next month. Wishnow said the company plans to add two to three stores a year across the region before entering another Florida city, with Tampa Bay serving as the brand’s primary proving ground.
Designed for how Tampa Bay moves
Wishnow launched Greenlane in 2023 with a specific customer in mind: professionals navigating commutes, meetings, errands and family schedules who want a meal that fits into a fast-paced day without feeling like a compromise.
As Tampa Bay has added young professionals and expanded outward geographically, she said the opportunity has grown with it.
“We’re trying to fill that hole in the market, and to give people alternatives,” Wishnow said.
Since opening its first location, Greenlane has stayed consistent in its core positioning of fast, fresh and affordable.
Wishnow said the evolution has come from refining the menu based on what customers actually order and identifying the neighborhoods where those customers live and work.
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“I think what has shifted for us the most is getting to know our consumer and really understanding what they’re looking for in terms of their flavors and their profile,” she said.
Each Greenlane site occupies roughly half an acre or less, with a building footprint of about 1,600 square feet.
The stores operate exclusively as drive-thru locations, a format Wishnow said allows the company to control labor costs and maintain operational efficiency.
“Being a drive-thru only allows us to keep our labor low,” she said.
The discipline behind “affordable luxury”
Wishnow calls the concept “affordable luxury,” a description that defines the brand’s central tension.
“To eat healthy is a luxury,” she said.
For Greenlane, that means delivering food that feels fresh and substantial while maintaining price points that encourage frequent visits.
Wishnow said the company monitors packaging, ingredient sourcing and competitor pricing closely because small cost shifts affect margins quickly in a growing system.
“The business is of pennies,” she said. “You gotta hold the penny captive.”
The menu focuses on familiar salads built to satisfy, with portion sizes that leave customers full enough to treat the meal as a true substitute for traditional fast food.
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“Large, filling salads so that you walk away and you feel as satisfied as if you had a burger and fries,” Wishnow said.
Wishnow said Greenlane aims to serve “the salad you know,” with familiar flavors designed for the widest customer base rather than niche ingredients or heavy customization.
She said the goal is to deliver the best version of staple salads, including Caesar and chopped salads, at pricing that keeps the meal in rotation.
Repeat traffic, she said, depends on delivering that experience consistently within a weekday budget.
A broader customer than expected
When Greenlane launched, Wishnow anticipated a predominantly female customer base aged 25 to 40. Early sales data adjusted that assumption.
“We are truly a 50/50 split,” she said. “Our DNA weighs just as heavily towards the male population.”
Wishnow said she has seen more men prioritize healthier routines, which expanded Greenlane’s addressable market and strengthened her confidence in the region’s demand profile.
“Tampa is one of the fastest growing cities in the country,” she said. “It’s got a very healthy, young demographic.”
She views Florida as a launch market where new restaurant concepts can prove themselves quickly.
“If you can make it in Tampa and in Florida, we know that we’ll have a strong concept to take it to the rest of the country,” she said.
Real estate sets the pace of growth
Wishnow said real estate remains the company’s most significant constraint.
Greenlane’s compact footprint allows it to consider a wide range of sites, yet the requirement for a drive-thru narrows available inventory and increases competition for suitable parcels.
“Finding locations where there are carve-outs for us is still challenging because we do require a drive-thru,” she said. “You can’t make a mistake there.”
The company evaluates potential sites using traffic counts, comparable sales and other data, though Wishnow acknowledged that a young brand still operates with limited historical information.
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“When you’re growing a new brand, it’s really hard, especially when you only have four stores’ worth of data,” she said. “You do have to take some risk.”
For now, that risk remains concentrated in Tampa Bay. Wishnow said Greenlane intends to deepen its presence across the region before expanding elsewhere in Florida.
“We just want to go deeper into the market and to continue to push our brand awareness,” she said.
Building awareness between openings
Between store launches, Greenlane builds visibility through partnerships.
Wishnow cited collaborations with Pop Up Bagels and Storm, a Tampa-based energy drink brand, as well as a Super Bowl partnership with Weight Watchers that introduced a Greenlane salad concept tied to the event and offered a build-at-home version outside Tampa Bay.
“Weight Watchers has been the preeminent brand on health and wellness,” she said. “What better way for us to grow than to partner with somebody who has the same ethos as us?”
Greenlane is building for a Tampa Bay customer who wants convenience and still cares what they eat. The Wesley Chapel opening will show how big that customer base has become.
Wishnow said the long-term goal is to build a fast, fresh and affordable option that can “feed America healthy food,” starting with the kind of repeat, everyday customer the company sees in Tampa Bay.
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