EAST LONGMEADOW – A new restaurant catering to quick-serve fresh salads and sandwiches called “Green/Wich” is set to open at 14 Maple St. sometime in the next three to four weeks.

“One of the fastest segments of the restaurant business, at least the quick serve restaurant business, is high end salads,” Harry Cromwell, owner of Green/Wich, told Reminder Publications.

He added chain restaurants such as “Sweet Green” and “Chopt,” which operate in major metropolitan markets such as Boston, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia, have seen success. Green/Wich is one of the first ideas to move the restaurant concept to a suburban location.

The majority of customers for this type of niche restaurant are women, Cromwell explained. He hopes to broaden the customer base by including menu items that would attract men as well.

“I think we’re going to have the salads in that restaurant that it’s going to attract a good number of women,” he added. “I just want to make sure that we have enough of a base that it helps ensure the success of the restaurant.”

Cromwell said this is the first Green/Wich location and if successful he may seek to establish a franchise.  

“If it does well then our thought is that this will be a major growth vehicle for us,” he added.

Cromwell, who has owned restaurants for 45 years, including Burger King locations in Western Massachusetts and Kentucky Fried Chicken fast food restaurants in the Boston area, said he originally planned to open his new business in May.

The restaurant would also offer beer and wine.

“I’ve never had one take me this long to open and it’s because of the change in government in town – the procedure that you had to go through to get the beer and wine license, which I was unfamiliar with, because my other locations are fast food. I was just not aware that it would be as lengthy a process,” he explained.

He added the renovations taking place at the site of the former Boston Market, where Green/Wich would be located, also took longer than expected.

“In most cases you would consider them to be easily accomplished, however in this case we had to take out a load bearing beam and that requires special engineering, not only for the beam that we put in there, but also for the basement structure that would allow for support while we’re putting in the major beam,” Cromwell explained. “We had two engineering reports that we had to get and that set us back a few weeks.”

The restaurant is approximately 2,800 square feet and would include a relatively simple menu of several types of high-end salad beds consisting of greens such as arugula, baby kale, spinach, romaine lettuce, which could be combined with a variety of salads offered at the restaurant, he stated.

Cromwell said he plans to replicate some of the best sandwiches in the business at Green/Wich.

“I’ve visited various delicatessens in New York and we will be using the same products that they use, which is high-end and we’re going to play around with the sizes of the sandwiches,” he added. “We’ll probably end up offering two different sizes. I think that for anyone who’s been to Katz’s Deli in New York, will be offering a sandwich of that size.”

When asked what attracted him to the East Longmeadow location, Cromwell responded, “It’s a bull’s-eye site and it has extremely high visibility, [and an] excellent traffic count. It’s really centered extremely well in town. It offers a number of what we call in the real estate business, pieces of the pie. It has traffic; it has retail; it has commercial; it has industrial, and it has residential. It ticks off every one of those boxes.”

He said he thought about locating the restaurant elsewhere, but ultimately determined the East Longmeadow site would be the best.

“I just kept coming back to the site because it has all those favorable building blocks,” he added.

The former Boston Market closed its doors in November 2014.

When asked whether he had any concerns due to Boston Market closing at the site, Cromwell stated, “Two things on that – No. 1 when you open a restaurant, any business, there’s always some trepidation. You never really know until you get those doors open and you go through a few months’ sales. That aside, I think it’s going to do well. I’ve just had too many favorable comments on it that if we handle the business well it will continue to grow.”

Green/Wich may offer catering and call-in orders a few months after opening, he noted.

The business would be hiring within the next two weeks, Cromwell said. There would be at least three salaried managing staff and approximately 20 employees to start working at the restaurant.

“We’ll see where our business opportunities lie,” he added. “For instance, if we do get into catering we’ll probably dedicate people to do that so it doesn’t disrupt the normal business.”