Leslie Silverglide, who majored in Geography and Environmental Engineering, has spent nearly two decades building MIXT around a once-contrarian idea: that a salad could be a full, craveable meal. When she and her husband, David, opened the first location in San Francisco in the mid-2000s, the concept met skepticism—salads were seen as sides, not centerpieces. MIXT reframed that equation, layering proteins, grains, and bold flavors into composed meals designed to satisfy, not supplement.
It’s about balancing health with pleasure. “When people tell us that they crave our food,” she says, “that makes our day.”
Right from the start, Silverglide’s engineering background gave her a systems-oriented lens. On opening day, she watched chefs zigzag across the line to assemble orders, grabbing ingredients from all directions. That night, she mapped the station and reorganized it so a salad could be built in a single, efficient flow.
“As an engineer, you learn to dissect a problem into smaller pieces,” she says. “It’s a test-and-learn mentality.”
Today, that same mindset shapes how she runs the business. The question isn’t just how to grow, but how to grow well. MIXT operates in California and Texas, with national expansion guided as much by discipline as ambition.
In a retail environment where competitors tend to expand their territory at any cost, she is focused on long-term viability—choosing locations that will make sense not just this year, but decades from now. “The hardest thing is knowing when to walk away,” she says.
That long view extends beyond real estate. MIXT is a certified B Corp (a for-profit company that has been independently verified to meet high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency), and Silverglide approaches sustainability as an operational system, scrutinizing everything from sourcing and packaging to building materials and energy use.
“As an engineer, you learn to dissect a problem into smaller pieces. It’s a test-and-learn mentality.”
— Leslie Silverglide
The company’s biggest test came during the pandemic, when MIXT had to shift almost overnight from a thriving business to a surviving one. “The only thing I could do was be vulnerable and act quickly,” she says. “I looked at my team and said, ‘Let’s get to work and get to the other side.’”
More than 90% of the company’s leaders have been promoted from within. That philosophy emerged early, when Silverglide realized that building a company meant being responsible for people’s livelihoods. Today, that ethos shows up in a culture that prizes teaching, internal mobility, and shared ownership of the mission.
“We have team members who started as dishwashers and are now general managers,” she says. “A former salad chef is running our IT department. The growth stories are what I am most proud of.”
Looking ahead, Silverglide is always entrepreneurial and increasingly interested in how to better support an aging population as they transition to different ways of living. And at MIXT, she continues to test and refine—new menu items, new partnerships, new markets. Yet the mission remains consistent: create something people return to, not just because it’s good for them, but because they love it.
— HEATHER LOWE
Illustration by Joel Kimmel