Mrs. Winston's Green Grocer Closes Ocean Park Blvd Location, Remains Open on Colorado in the Watergardens

Done in by free lunches for the employees of a large social media company, a salad bar extraordinaire has closed its doors. Not to worry, though, as the restaurant will continue serving customers at its 2450 Colorado Avenue location.

Mrs. Winston's Green Grocer opened its location on Ocean Park Blvd in 2009. Owner Eddy Winston named it in honor of his mom, Mrs. Winston. It closed permanently this month. Snapchat's parent company Snap Inc. is now the largest tenant in this part of the Santa Monica airport office park, and they feed their employees free lunches every day. The number of customers fell off dramatically for this reason.

Mrs. Winston's features all types of self selected salad bar openings. My favorite is the Kung Pao Tofu salad. There is also a self made sandwich section, where one can pick from all sorts of bread, meat, and of course all sorts of lettuce, tomato, peppers, onions of all types. Not to mention hummus, tofu salads, tuna salads, pickles, olives, and more.

The former Carrows restaurant West of Mrs. Winston's former location is now an in-house kitchen entirely for Snap Inc. Carrows now has just one restaurant in California. The former Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf which shared the building on 29th Street and Ocean Park Blvd with Mrs. Winston's, has been closed now for 2 years.

Evan Spiegel is the co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc. Spiegel was the youngest billionaire in the world in 2015. As of March 2023, he had a personal net worth of $2.7 billion according to Forbes. Spiegel is a surfer, and his social media company employs hundreds of people. They were previously located in former retail space on Venice Beach, purportedly so Spiegel could surf at lunch. That location became controversial, as retail tenants near Venice beach were displaced by the tech giant.