By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2025-03-31 22:25:41 | Updated at 2025-04-02 10:21:42
1 day ago
A corporate exec at a top salad chain says he’s being “screwed” out of at least $1.2 million for performing “too well,” a new lawsuit claims.
Former Just Salad CFO Stefan Boyd was hired back in 2019 to reconfigure the roughage restaurant, with much of his salary deferred into an equity payout plan.
But now that his plans for raising capital went far better than anticipated — Just Salad blew past its expected valuation and reached a “jaw-dropping” $1 billion last fall — the company is fighting to deny paying him his owed earnings totaling around $1.2 million “due to a pure technicality,” the suit says.
Boyd is suing for his owed pay, plus more than $5 million in damages.
“Just Salad has adopted an absurd position,” the lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, states. “Boyd should be deprived of the intended reward for his work … because the value he created was too great; he did his job too well; the foundation he built was too strong; the Company grew too much and raised too much money (all while parting with too little of its equity).”
When Boyd joined the company it was with a “mandate for growth” to “secure a substantial capital raise,” the suit explains.
Much of his pay, according to his lawsuit, went into a company Equity Appreciation Unit plan, guaranteeing future payouts for deferred pay.
During the pandemic, Boyd took a 30% pay cut in exchange for even more shares in the plan. And he was given a massive increase in share units, equivalent to more than $1 million, in lieu of a cash raise in 2022.
Those shares were to be paid out following a new valuation, which Boyd expected to be “substantial” seeing the company had doubled its workforce in 2022.
But by March 2023, Boyd said his relationship with Just Salad founder Nick Kenner had “strained,” according to the lawsuit, and he left the company.
The two sides penned a separation agreement which would guarantee that Boyd’s deferred pay wouldn’t be “subject to company discretion,” the suit says.
At this point, Kenner allegedly told Boyd he had “earned a right to payment upon the planned capital raise.”
So when Boyd learned last September that Just Salad completed their capital raise by selling only 20% for $200 million — meaning a “staggering valuation of nearly $1 billion” — he “felt immense pride and validation,” his complaint says.
While others in the EAU plan got their payouts, Boyd got a letter telling him he was only owed $150,000 — not the $1.2 million stipulated in his deal — since the company only had to sell 20% for its capital raise instead of the anticipated 30% laid out in his separation agreement as a “trigger” for his distribution.
Kenner told Boyd the company actually owes him nothing — not even the $150,000 outlined in the letter — but admitted that “depriving Boyd of the substantial payment ‘doesn’t feel good from a spirit of intent,’” according to court filings.
Just Salad couldn’t “justify” the payout, Kenner allegedly said.
Instead, the suit claims, Kenner told Boyd that he should be satisfied with his hard work alone.
“You should wear it on your sleeve professionally for the rest of your life,” the complaint claims Kenner said. “It is what it is.”
Just Salad did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
