How to Build Your Own Salad That Holds Up All Week
A salad you make on Sunday is rarely one you want to eat on Thursday. The greens wilt under the dressing, the croutons go soft and the same combination gets old by the third day. That's the problem we set out to fix when we opened the Maven salad bar in February 2026. Every part of the salad is made in our SeaTac kitchen and packed in its own container, so you can build your own salad at home a few minutes before you eat it, and put it together a different way on Tuesday than you did on Monday.
How the Maven salad bar works
The salad bar menu changes every week along with the rest of the menu, and it's set up so the pieces mix and match. There are ready-to-eat salads to start from, roasted and marinated proteins, beans and grains, crunchy toppings and dressings made from scratch, all labeled for diet and allergens so you can filter the week down to what works for you. Order a few pieces on their own or add them to lunch and dinner for the week, and they arrive on your regular delivery day with no subscription and no minimum order.
How to build your own salad, step by step
This is the order we'd build your own salad in if we were packing lunch for ourselves.
- Start with a base. Pick one of the week's salads or a bed of greens. Tender mixed greens are best in the first couple of days, so save sturdier greens like kale and radicchio for later in the week.
- Add a protein. Recent salad bar weeks have included shawarma chicken, Korean BBQ chicken, grilled marinated flank steak and curried lentil and quinoa patties, and any one of them turns a side salad into a lunch that holds you until dinner.
- Add something with weight. Cumin roasted sweet potatoes, seasoned chickpeas or lemon herb white beans make the salad feel like a meal rather than a snack.
- Dress it right before you eat. Our dressings have run from green goddess and a creamy yogurt dressing to sweet ginger miso and a lemon gorgonzola vinaigrette, and every one of them goes on at the table, not when you pack the container.
- Finish with crunch. Toppings go on last, for the reason in the next section.
The best salad toppings go on last
The best salad toppings are the ones that still crunch when you take a bite. That's why ours come in their own containers instead of already scattered over the greens. Parmesan croutons baked from focaccia, toasted seed mixes, candied spiced hazelnuts and pistachio dukkah have all turned up on the salad bar, and each one is at its best added in the last minute. Anything with nuts says so on its label, and some toppings come with the nuts packed on the side, so you can leave them off.
Salad topping ideas that work together
When you're staring at a fridge full of separate containers, it helps to have a few combinations to start from. These are pairings from past salad bar weeks that we keep coming back to in the kitchen.
- Shawarma chicken with cumin sumac chickpeas, pickled red onions and the creamy yogurt dressing
- Korean BBQ chicken with edamame, shredded carrots and sweet ginger miso
- Flank steak with roasted sweet potatoes, diced cucumber and lemon gorgonzola vinaigrette
- Curried lentil and quinoa patties over greens with green goddess and a spoonful of pistachio dukkah
How long does salad last in the fridge?
Undressed greens usually keep three to five days in the fridge, with sturdy greens at the longer end and tender mixed greens best in the first day or two. Dressing is what shortens that clock, so keep it separate until you eat. Cooked proteins and beans keep about three to four days, and sealed dressings and crunchy toppings last the longest of anything on the salad bar. Our Ingredients page lists how long each Maven item keeps, and that's the number to go by over any general rule.
Meal prep salads without the Sunday chopping
Most meal prep salads get assembled all at once on Sunday, and by Wednesday the whole container has gone soft. Keeping each part separate fixes that, and it also means one salad bar order can turn into a different lunch every day of the week, a shawarma bowl on Monday and something with sweet ginger miso on Thursday. The dressings earn their keep off the salad, too, as dips for raw vegetables or sauces for noodles and grain bowls, and the seed and nut toppings are good on fish and roasted vegetables.
Start with this week's salad bar
The salad bar goes up with the rest of the menu every Monday morning, and orders close Sunday night at midnight. If you'd rather skip the chopping altogether, fresh salad delivery from Maven covers Seattle and 24 other cities around the region, and you can see how ordering works before your first order. Build your own salad from this week's menu and we'll take it from there.
This week's menu is up now. Order by Sunday night at midnight.
