As someone who started the new year with the goal to lose weight, I’m always looking for new ways to lower my calorie intake. That’s why I was excited when Greenz asked me to sample their new Wellness Program they launched this year. I realized back in 2003 when I ran my first marathon that managing your diet was the most important aspect to losing weight. In fact, I was running 20 miles a week at one point, but my less than stellar food choices had prevented me from losing even more weight than I did.

New Wellness Menu Guides

In addition to 400 calorie meal options, Greenz also created three Menu Guides to meet a variety of diet needs. These include a Gluten-Free, Point-Based, and Heart Healthy guide with a wide variety of choices to aid the customer. If only every restaurant made it dead simple to meet our weight loss goals and diet restrictions.

I personally opted for the 400 calorie Seafood option with Salmon. Dictating the portion size and calorie count is an easy way to ensure you don’t overeat. At the last minute, I added bacon to the salad as I figured that would help with flavor. However, I was surprised at how flavorful the salad actually was. I didn’t need the extra calories of the bacon at all. The mediterranean salad closely resembled a Greek salad in flavor and still featured olives and feta cheese.

The soup was a light broth with good flavor and I was surprised at how fresh the fruit cup was with grapes, strawberries and cantaloupe. My daughter even liked the soup which was a win. Overall it was a good choice. Of course with my sheer lack of control, I also finished the remainder of my daughter’s turkey club sandwich ruining the prospect of sticking to my target calorie count for the day.

Greenz an Early Adopter of Foursquare

Greenz has become an early adopter of Foursquare to promote special offers for their current mayors. Their current special is a great deal too. Current mayors receive 50% of their entire ticket every time they visit. This is a great viral campaign for several reasons. First, Joe Flowers, the current mayor has a built-in incentive to return to this location. Second, anytime someone checks in on Foursquare their social networks are pinged. All their followers on Twitter and Facebook see this update, if so configured. Lastly, as an early adopter, they get to test out what works and what doesn’t in terms of driving consumer behavior. With the new Bravo announcement, Foursquare just became mainstream.

Conclusion

I applaud Greenz for introducing healthy meals and aiding the customer in making smart food choices. Additionally, they feature a build your own salad menu for ordering online that shows you the nutritional information in real time as you add or subtract items. Be careful as it’s pretty easy to go over your target calorie count. With free Wi-Fi this is also an ideal place for a working lunch as well. My only suggestion would be to print the access code on the receipt so customers don’t have to ask for it.

To see more pictures of the Greenz Addison location and my meal see my Flickr here.

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