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Matthew Corrin is our Lunchtime Revolutionary
by Malcolm Jolley
It’s about ten minutes to one o’clock in the afternoon and I am hungry, but I have little time. I want a quick meal, but the scene in the window of the Harvey’s on Bloor, east of Yonge, is not inviting. It’s pretty trans-fatty gross, actually. A store front or two further along, I arrive at Lettuce Eatery. Salad sounds good: fresh, light. Then I see the line. It’s long, but it’s moving and full of rather attractive people dressed rather well. Fair enough, I join it and before I can get through a few paragraphs of the magazine article I fished out of my briefcase I’m ordering a “Chef Designed Protein Salad” and begin to be whisked towards the cash, where I’ll get a bottle of water. It’s only then that I see my host from the last time I was in the store. Matthew Corrin, the owner and creator and lunchtime revolutionary, is stuffing take out bags with salad containers, drinks orders and napkins. He says hello, but his hands never stop working the line. Here’s a man who cares about his customers. Or maybe he’s just to busy to care about anything but taking care of his customers.
Matthew Corrin is changing what it means to go down to lunch from your office. From his three existing locations (in a food court in the TD Centre, on Bloor just East of Yonge, at Richmond and Spadina and a new one openning in Exchange Tower shortly) he’s serving big salads for about $8 a pop to hungry office workers, who’d rather indulge in a few strips of apple wood smoked bacon on a spinach salad than a super-sized cardboard box of fries. Not that it’s a secret, Corrin has been featured in just about every local newspaper and magazine. This makes sense. People who work for newspapers and magazines are often captive of the food courts near their offices. The minute they saw Lettuce Eatery’s oasis of green in a desert of grease, they’d recognise Corrin’s concept as brilliant.
My own salad for lunch epiphany came earlier in the year when I went to meet a friend for lunch downtown. He worked in one of the TD Centre towers, and before we set out for a proper sit-down meal (as opposed too a quick office lunch), he showed me the crowd lined up at the Lettuce Eatery in the basement of his building and explained that he ate there about four times a week. “This place is great,” he explained, “it’s the only lunch I can eat down here where I feel like I’ve actually done something good for me.”
From that first exposure I knew I had to meet the man behind all of this. A quick Google and perusal of the Lettuce Eatery website led me to a ton of press on Corrin and quick summary of his story: the twenty-something brought the salad lunch concept to Toronto a little over a year ago, after a stint in New York City working for Oscar de la Renta. He’d returned to Canada (he’s Winnipeg) and missed the fresh quick lunch he and his fashion industry pals enjoyed in Manhattan. And so the empire was born.
When I met him at his Bloor Street store a few weeks later, he bought me lunch. We walked up to the ordering counter and I was struck by the enormity of choice on the menu and mesmerised by the assortment of various toppings: 70 of them. I wimped out and let him order for me, and got a spinach, blue cheese number with a honey-dijon dressing and croutons of some garlicky herbal flavour. Everything was fresh and good. Corrin added bread to his order, but you could go completely Atkins with the menu, or any other diet regime – it’s the biggest salad bar in the world, really.
When we sit down I ask him about logistics. It’s not like you can take a tray of lettuce out of the freezer and pop it into the deep fryer. He concedes that they’re always wrestling with ordering and figuring out how much of what ingredient they’ll need at the various locations. The day starts with a fresh load of produce. Still, because of the volume, he can keep costs down and I note that the $8 or so plastic bowl in front of me is about what you’d pay for a full meal at a golden arched fast food place. Corrin says sure, but doesn’t feel like he’s really competing with those guys. The food pretty much sells itself.
I ask him about his demographics. Does he worry that he attracts mostly women. Not at all, he claims his customer base almost an even split and explains, “The men tend follow the women are.” True enough, I concede.
The store is sleek and minimal, mostly hard white surfaces. Corrin designs them himself, a throw back to his fashion days, I guess. But what a relief from the dreariness of the typical food court or fast food mega-chain. You could even linger here, if you weren’t in a rush, which we are. Corrin must go and oversee the building of his next location. He sees me off. I’m full and satisfied, but not sluggish and not craving my usual postprandial double shot of espresso. I have joined the lunch hour revolution!
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Find out more, including locations and menus at www.lettuceeatery.com
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