I am a co-founder and the CEO of Boloco. I am also a member of the Dartmouth Class of 1991 and the Tuck Class of 1997. Boloco was, in fact, my Tuck E-Ship project over 10 years ago. Any readers who read Wednesday's Opinion piece in The Dartmouth by Veronica de Zayas ("Boloco is Unhealthy for You," May 30) can imagine that our Boston and Hanover-based teams have had a lot to talk about these past few days.
For the record, I too am continually amazed at the high calorie and fat content found in our favorite foods at our favorite restaurants. Related to Veronica's findings at Boloco, we did confirm that each ounce of Chinese Chicken dressing is approximately 190 calories and 20g of fat. Astounding. The good news is that you, our educated and self-controlled customers, control the number of ounces you put on your salad.
The bigger issue, and the reason for this letter, is to address the language used to describe Boloco and the many good people who work here. The words "dark and deceitful" were especially hurtful since in fact we've posted our nutritional information on-line since 1999 when virtually nobody else was doing so. Even today, you'd be hard pressed to get many of the Upper Valley restaurants, let alone restaurants across the country, to voluntarily divulge (or even know themselves) the information we have chosen to share... we do it (at significant expense) because we have always believed that customers have a right to know what they are feeding their bodies, in some cases for better and in some cases for worse.
We care a lot about the food that we serve. We also care a lot about the people that we serve. We have never purported to be "healthy", but we have always purported to provide "healthy options". Unlike many of our local and national competitors, we offer portion size options (that's a big part of the obesity battle frankly) and a strong and ever evolving list of nutritional options - think brown rice, whole wheat tortilla, organic tofu, and soon-to-be introduced hormone-free and anti-biotic free chicken, steak, and braised pork.
We do sincerely thank de Zayas for speaking up... as many of you know, we consider feedback carefully, respond as promptly and thoughtfully as we know how, and make changes as necessary. In this case, I only wish a little more research had been conducted on Boloco both as people and on the details of the food we serve before publicly insinuating that Boloco is the next evil empire (we have a ways to go until we can claim that honor) based on one "revelation" that most of us were already all too aware of.
Finally, in the spirit of showing our appreciation for those of you who have read this far, anyone who prints this op-ed out and presents it at any of our restaurants in Hanover or Boston on June 4th or 5th gets a Burrito of their choice on us... excluded from this offer, of course, is the Chinese Chicken Salad.
