Sweet Caribou Opens Airport Location

“We wanted to be available for those people coming in late,” Strong says of the longer hours.

Macarons have been a cornerstone of Sweet Caribou’s business. Strong says he sends staff to Paris once a year for additional training, to keep skills honed and be on the lookout for new ideas.

“Things kind of took off a little unexpectedly,” says Strong of those early farmer’s market days.

The business is about more than macarons, however. Grab-and-go salads that blend sweet with savory, like the Big Lake Blueberry that mixes greens with chicken, macadamia nuts, and goat cheese and tops it with strawberries and blueberries, are popular, and so are the sandwiches, which pack a punch of flavor into ciabatta rolls or sliced wheat bread.

The airport location is currently being operated on a first-come, first-served basis—when the salads and sandwiches run out, they’re out until the next restock. Strong says it might take a little time to get the feel of how the airport traffic differs from the main location on 36th Avenue, but he’s confident his crew will figure out the rhythm quickly.

The jump from one location to two required a significant step up in staffing. Strong says he partnered with another vendor at the airport to work out how to run the location. Scaling up has meant adding at least ten new employees to staff the airport location and nearly that many additional employees for Sweet Caribou, from delivery drivers to people making the extra food being delivered to the airport each morning.

With the jump in staffing, there’s an airport upcharge: instead of the $16 standard for salads and sandwiches at Sweet Caribou’s main location, the airport fare rings up at $17.75, a reflection of the higher cost of doing business there, Strong says. But, like at the Midtown location, all food items come with a free water. At the airport, where a bottle of water generally starts at $3, it evens out, Strong says.

Strong says the airport location will be open 363 days a year.