BY ELLIOT ACOSTA
Michelle Woodward spent the first 24 years of her life being flung into the air for elite championship cheerleading squads. Her dedication to the sport earned her a spot as a flyer on the renowned University of Louisville squad, which resulted in championships at the collegiate, national and world levels. When her time as a Cardinal ended, Woodward stepped away from the sport that had defined her, leaving a void for her energy, risk-taking and drive.
The daughter of a small business owner, Woodward was born with an entrepreneurial spirit and was constantly conjuring business ideas. While her preliminary plans of owning a cheer gym or a custom T-shirt company never took off, a Louisville salad restaurant tipped Woodward off on the idea of a fresh and healthy fast-casual eatery. Having been a high-level athlete who had to settle for eating most of her meals from fast food establishments for many years, Woodward was intrigued. She convinced the owner to bring her on board to help run its operations. However, Woodward quickly realized the restaurant lacked true structure and used subpar products.
“The [quality of the] restaurant’s ingredients wasn’t great,” she says. “He got steak that he would boil in a bag, and everything that he could get canned was canned, and the dressings weren’t homemade. But they had a line out the door. So I saw that, and it kind of triggered [a thought that] I could do this better. If the owner of that restaurant can do it, I can do it.”
This was the moment when Woodward started to devote her talent and passion into creating Diced, her Triangle-based healthy restaurant that has grown to four locations between Cary and Raleigh, with a fifth opening in Holly Springs this spring.
Finding the Triangle
After being introduced to the Triangle region through a cheer event at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Woodward was immediately enamored with the area.
“I cheered a game at UNC. I was driving down Franklin Street, saw all the stonework and the trees. I just thought it was an awesome place. So I always loved North Carolina,” Woodward says, describing her first visit to the area.
Due to her interest in the Triangle, Woodward and her father, who wanted to partner with her in launching Diced, began to look for a space in the area. The timing was fortunate in that they were looking to buy at the same time another local business was looking to sell in what Woodward thought was a perfect location—off Kildaire Farm Road in Cary.
“I knew the Triangle was very medical-heavy, all these doctors that want to be healthy. There’s a hospital [near the original Diced location], a wealthy demographic. It all works out together,” says Woodward. She opened that location in 2015, and it is still going strong.
Learning the Ropes
Despite being a novice to the restaurant industry and not much of a home cook, Woodward took to building recipes immediately. “I didn’t cook [any meals at home],” she says. “I actually think what gave me good insight [to develop recipes] was the fact that I went out to eat every meal, every day. So I would see how restaurants did things, and what they could do better.”
One way Woodward decided Diced could differentiate itself was through the quality of their ingredients. For Woodward, serving items like grass-fed beef and salad dressings made with 100% olive oil is as much of a personal decision as it is a business decision.
“I think that living in Raleigh and only wanting to be a local company, I want to be able to go somewhere and say, ‘I started Diced’—and feel proud to say that instead of saying, ‘It’s OK.’ I used to have all my food sales guys say, ‘You can get cheaper and lower-quality ingredients and make way more,’ but I would rather lose money than serve that. It’s about my reputation and being able to sleep at night,” she says.
Finding the Right Business Partner
While Woodward was learning how to operate a restaurant on the fly, she leaned heavily on the advice of Brandon Christy, her food supplier representative at the time, for advice. “Anytime something was happening [at the restaurant], he would be my first call. He was like a mentor,” says Woodward.
When Diced started to hit a post-pandemic lull around 2021, Woodward offered Christy part ownership to be an operational partner. “Brandon has been a really vital part [of our success],” she says. “When he came on, Diced was at kind of a standstill. When he joined, we were really able to get back on our feet and continue to grow.”
Downtown Raleigh and Beyond
In October of 2024, Diced moved into downtown Raleigh. Before Diced started serving their freshly made salads from 121 Fayetteville Street, the location housed a gourmet hot dog restaurant named Tasty 8’s, of which Christy was the general manager. Woodward took the connection to the space as a sign that Diced belonged there.
Diced’s expansion in the Triangle doesn’t stop in downtown Raleigh. After the Holly Springs location opens in the spring, Diced will have five locations. Woodward hopes eventually to open 10 locations throughout the Triangle.
Menus, hours and more information on Diced can be found at dicedsalads.com.
