Rohnert Park mom behind The Salad Lab has gone viral on TikTok for recreating celebrities’ favorite salads

Darlene Schrijver is a big deal where the worlds of food and social media collide, but you’d never guess it.

Rohnert Park’s mother-of-two has amassed a huge following on TikTok as The Salad Lab, amassing 2.6 million followers since she started making videos in the early days of the pandemic.

At 50, she doesn’t fit the typical profile of a TikTok influencer, the social media platform that seems to be Gen Z-dominated. But in the spring of 2020, when almost everyone else was sharing dance videos and baking projects on the video-sharing app, Schrijver carved her own niche.

“There were tons of bread videos,” Schrijver said. “Everyone baked sourdough bread. I didn’t have to bake a sourdough bread every day. I was like, ‘Where are the salads?’”

Aside from offering something different, part of the appeal of her videos, which she shoots about herself with her iPhone in her kitchen, is that they’re short, simple, and delivered with a cheeky energy that’s not over the top.

However, The Salad Lab’s roots go back to the boredom of COVID-19.

The Tubbs fire is also part of the story, as is her daughter Athena, who was a national and international weightlifting champion while a student at Maria Carrillo High School in Santa Rosa. Athena is now about to graduate from UC Santa Cruz.

Athena was in college and would ask her mom about the recipes she made as part of her nutrition program while competing. That was a problem though.

“I just kept them in a folder and a prescription box and they were all gone from the fires,” said Schrijver, who lost her home on Mark West Springs Road during the 2017 firestorm.

“So I kept procrastinating, and my girlfriend was like, ‘Why don’t you put her on TikTok? Her daughter is on TikTok all the time anyway’,” Schrijver recalled.

Her earliest videos, posted while wearing pajamas, are no longer available. None of her videos ever showed her face — just a giant salad bowl and her hands.

She got her start on TikTok when she challenged herself to post 30 salads in 30 days. Her still small but growing legion of followers kept requesting a Kardashian salad, which the celebrity sisters on the TV show Keeping Up with the Kardashians frequently ordered from their local organic restaurant.

Schrijver decided to try it. It went viral.

“It’s a very simple salad; it’s a decent salad,” she said. “You put everything Kardashian in a title — or for the most part, any kind of celebrity — and it goes viral. I didn’t know that at the time, but I learned it very quickly.”

Schrijver, who says she loves salads, had no intention of becoming an influencer. She worked in financial services before deciding to become a housewife.

After the fires, she took a job at Santa Rosa Airport with American Airlines, inspired by her mother’s career at United Airlines. She is now caring for her mother, who she recently had to move into an Alzheimer’s care facility.

Between working at the airport, keeping up with her daughter’s competition schedule and training for a triathlon, Schrijver’s life has been quite busy.

However, all of this laid the groundwork for her newfound fame when The Salad Lab took off.

Schrijver said social media has its downside, something she knew from her daughter’s teenage years.

Her Salad Lab Instagram account was hacked and she had to start from scratch. There are also copycat accounts on TikTok and of course the comments from what she said are a small percentage of people who are “not happy”.

“You must have really thick skin. When you work for an airline in customer service and people yell and yell at you, you get a thick skin. When you have a mother with Alzheimer’s calling names at you, you really get a thick skin. And yes, it still bothers me. I won’t lie.”

But there are also definite benefits to her social media followers, she said.

After the Kardashian salad went viral, Schrijver continued to occasionally make celebrity-inspired salads, such as finding ideas from celebrity “What I Eat in a Day” videos.

Her most viral video is for a Kylie Jenner salad with nearly 13 million views to date.

The popularity of these videos was enough to invite them to Hulu’s red carpet premiere of “The Kardashians” last year.

Another celebrity hit came when she learned Elle Fanning had a secret TikTok account. When Schrivjer checked, she was surprised to find the Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated actress following her.

“I text her a direct message and I’m like, ‘I’d love to make your favorite salad,’ and she came right back and said, ‘Oh my god, a restaurant is going bust (and) I’d love it if you made that Cobb- Lettuce, but don’t put tomatoes on it.’ This is one of my most viewed articles.”

But her biggest fan-girl moment came when Jennifer Aniston reviewed Schrijver’s rendition of the “Friends” salad in an Allure magazine video.

“That was probably my ‘Oh my God!’ Wait a minute,” said Schrijver.

The Salad Lab has become a full-time occupation.

Each video she produces takes about four hours to prepare, film and edit, she said, and that doesn’t include the time she spends researching, shopping or responding to comments.

The 2.6 million followers, while nice, haven’t exactly turned into fortunes, but they do pay some bills. Schrijver said she makes a few hundred dollars a month from TikTok, Amazon and a partnership with a salad bowl company.

She occasionally maintains paid sponsorships, but her drink recommendations at the end of each video, which often feature Sonoma County wines, are unpaid. She just wants to support the local industry.

With the increased fan base, Schrijver is working to adjust to a more public persona.

She held a salad demonstration at Ileoni in Petaluma in February, and only letting a Press Democrat photographer take pictures caused a case of nerves. But she’s open to seeing where The Salad Lab’s success takes her.

Though Schrijver is wary of sharing too much information, she admitted she has a big project in the works.

“That will probably get me further,” she said. “I still kind of ride the wave of the journey. I’m not sure where to go. I had no idea I would do that at this point in my life, but that’s okay.”

You can reach staff member Jennifer Graue at 707-521-5262 or [email protected] On Twitter @JenInOz.