CO-FOUNDER
BREADLESS, DETROIT
EMPLOYEES: 25
REVENUE: NA
COLLEGE: HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL
Marc Howland had no trouble mustering the energy to letter in football, basketball, and track at Brown University.
And he had no trouble advancing his education there into positions with Goldman Sachs and The Carlisle Group, where he helped put together high-profile deals to finance projects like Levi’s Stadium in San Francisco and the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
But he did have trouble with one thing: staying awake after lunch.
“I was working 80 to 100 hours a week, struggling to find food that didn’t leave me with my head on my desk at 2 p.m.,” Howland says. “I was tired of sandwiches that made me feel tired and sluggish, and I didn’t always want a salad. I ended up venting to my wife, ‘Why doesn’t someone solve this problem?’”
His wife, LaTresha “LC” Howland, saw a solution at hand, as the two of them had grown fond of using leafy greens as a substitute for bread in making sandwiches. They tried out the concept early on by selling the sandwiches at gyms in Detroit, and catering events at the University of Michigan, where LC was working on her master’s degree.
“Meanwhile, we were going to Eastern Market and getting to the grocery store before it would even open, so we could go to the produce section and be the first to get the freshest leafy greens so we could go to the gym and sell these sandwiches,” Howland says.
The early venture turned out to be a beta test for the real operation Howland envisioned — a brick-and-mortar, casual fast-food concept that would feature breadless sandwiches as its menu staple. Naturally, the new business came to be known as Breadless.
“This is something that has changed my life,” Howland says. “I eat the product every single day and we’ve always had a vision to scale this to a nationwide brand. The vision was always to grow and become a household name across the country.”
But first Howland wanted to make sure he knew what he was doing, which is why he applied for a $10-an-hour job at Jimmy John’s in Ann Arbor during the summer while LC was finishing her master’s degree at U-M. That gave him the knowledge he needed about restaurant operations — knowledge that would be critical in opening up Breadless’s two metro Detroit locations, in Detroit’s Rivertown and in Rochester Hills.
The Howlands teamed up with Chef Ryan Eli Salter to make the partnership complete, and opened for business in 2022.
Since then, they’ve earned a permanent spot on the concourse along the left field line at Comerica Park, as well as the opportunity to operate at Ford Field during events there.
Howland expects the move into national franchising to be Breadless’s next phase.
“We’re a people-first business,” he says. “We want to attract and find the best people (to be) operators who will partner with us to grow. We’ve had inbound interest from more than 100 parties.”
— Dan Calabrese
