15 feet to fresh at Clayton Farms Salads

A quick service restaurant in Ames is revolutionizing what it means to use sustainable ingredients.

Located at 2435 Grand Avenue by North Grand Mall, Clayton Farms Salads grows its own ingredients 15 feet away from its kitchen. They pick their ingredients in the morning and have them in their food by the afternoon.

Clayton Farms Salads specializes in salads, wraps and smoothies. Their hours are 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays and 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekends. You can order online or drive-thru.

In 2014, Clayton Mooney moved to Ames from Ireland where he was previously pursuing a career in poker. He started his first company, Kinosol, and built solar food dehydrators for farmers in developing regions.

“That took me all over the world,” Mooney said.

He primarily partnered with farmers in Eastern Africa, including Uganda and Tanzania.  

“I kept coming back to the question of, ‘what does it mean to get better food for more people and access to food year round?’” Mooney said.

Mooney posed that question on a blog to a couple of dozen readers and connected with a friend from community college, Danen Pool. Pool’s answer to his question was indoor farming.

Pool’s background was in plant biology and mechanical engineering, and today, he is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Clayton Farm Salads.

Indoor farming typically takes about seven years to turn a profit, so Mooney and Pool set out to build their own technology. This included the hydroponic growing equipment and the software that runs it.

This project started in 2017 when they focused on technology for two years. From 2020 to 2023, they offered a home delivery subscription.

Monday will mark two years since opening the restaurant Clayton Farms Salads.

According to Mooney, the biggest advantage to growing on-site is “assured supply.” They grow the produce base of all main menu items – wraps, salads and smoothies – on-site year around.

“Instead of 1,500 miles, especially at this time of year when most lettuce is coming from California or Arizona, it’s 15 feet,” Mooney said

Mooney also emphasized the importance of sustainability in the design of their equipment.

“We save a lot of water, we reduce fertilizer needs by 30%, we reduce packaging, we reduce energy by partnering with more efficient lighting companies, all this has allowed us to have assured supply,” Mooney said. 

Instead of the home delivery service, consumers coming to the restaurant has made serving the community more attainable. It took two years to reach 10,000 deliveries with the home delivery service but under two years to serve 100,000 people with the Clayton Farms Salads brand.

Clayton Farms works to reduce waste by lining up production to demand using data. Most restaurants have about 30% food waste, especially with salad ingredients. Clayton Farms’ food waste is only about 3%.

“We harvest every week, so 52 weeks a year,” Mooney said, “An average harvest allows us to support about 1,000 salads and wraps and smoothies each week.”

For Iowa State students, you can find Mooney on campus sharing his entrepreneurial story with aspiring students. 

“I’ll be 38 this year and I’ve been self-employed all but a couple years of my life,” Mooney said. “A lot of people want to hear about the background of going from growing up on a small family farm to playing poker… to what we’re doing today and how our mission is really focused on better food for more people,” Mooney said. 

He also answers students’ serious questions about entrepreneurship and tries to be as practical as possible.

They have an office located in the ISU research park and learning farm called Salad University, which is an urban farm learning environment. Or you may find them catering for an Iowa State related event, whether that’s hosting a speaker, speaking to a class, serving a student organization event or more. 

Today, Clayton Farms has 15 team members. Half are Iowa State Alumni or current students, and they are spread throughout the management side and farm side.

Clayton Farm’s commitment to its customers has been evident from the beginning as it used feedback from its past home delivery subscribers to shape its beginning menu. Now, their loyalty club, which consists of about 3,000 members, votes on everything that comes and goes from their menu. 

Due to the feedback of loyalty club members, paninis were added to the menu. 

“If they had left that up to us, we would never have thought about bringing paninis,” Mooney said. “We need to be listening to their feedback to help shape what we offer.”

Their most popular salad is the southwest salad and the berry blast smoothie, although the tropical orange smoothie is a close second.

The future for Mooney and Pool looks bright. With two bids in for new locations to expand to, Iowa can expect a second location to open this year.

“We absolutely want to have thousands of locations of the Clayton Farm salad brand,” Mooney said. “And the way we accomplish that is moving towards franchising.” 

They are looking for other individuals who are as passionate about their community as they are about Ames.

For more information, visit their website here.