Latest news with #Sweetgreen
Entrepreneur
2 days ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
A Sweetgreen Co-Founder Talks About Where the Brand Is Going
Sweetgreen co-founder Nicolas Jammet dives into how the brand got started, what setbacks it faced and how it's using automation in its 250-plus locations. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Most college seniors are thinking about final exams, graduation parties or maybe landing their first job. Nicolas Jammet was about to open a restaurant. Not just any restaurant — Sweetgreen, the mega-popular, fast-casual chain with more than 250 locations, a public stock listing and — for a brief but unforgettable stretch — its own music festival featuring Kendrick Lamar and The Weeknd. Jammet co-founded Sweetgreen in 2007 with friends Jonathan Neman and Nathaniel Ru. Today, Jammet is the company's chief concept officer, Neman is CEO and Ru is chief brand officer. Related: Fans Are Tattooing This Pizza Brand's Logo on Their Skin for a Year of Free Slices Two days before opening their first location in Washington, D.C.'s Georgetown neighborhood, Jammet's apartment was broken into. The only laptop they had was gone. Inside were every recipe, training document and operational detail the team had built. "There was no backup," Jammet says. "We stayed up for 48 hours straight, trying to piece it all back together." They opened anyway and made it work. Then winter hit. Georgetown emptied out, foot traffic disappeared and their 560-square-foot salad shop teetered on the edge. "We almost didn't make it out alive," he recalls. But they adjusted. They tweaked the menu, leaned into warm dishes and started figuring out what actually worked. It wasn't pretty, but it was enough to keep going. The second location was a step forward, but it brought its own challenges. It backed up to one of D.C.'s best farmers' markets — great for ingredients, but not so great for business. The location was on the wrong side of the street — the Starbucks across the road was packed, but Sweetgreen sat empty. So they improvised: They got a speaker from Guitar Center, and Ru performed a sidewalk DJ set while they handed out samples. It worked — people looked up, traffic trickled in and then, gradually, things started to click. They threw a block party. Then a bigger one. That block party turned into the Sweetlife Festival. The first one was small — just a few hundred people in a parking lot, a Lululemon tent and local energy. A few years later, it was thousands at Merriweather Post Pavilion, watching Lana Del Rey, The Strokes and yes, Kendrick Lamar and The Weeknd. Avicii brought Taylor Swift. SZA performed too. What started as a way to move salads turned into something bigger: a brand with cultural gravity, a point of view and a habit of doing things the hard way, on purpose. That same impulse to rethink the expected now drives the company's approach to something far less glamorous than a music lineup: operations. Related: This Chef Lost His Restaurant the Week Michelin Called. Now He's Made a Comeback By Perfecting One Recipe. A game-changing accident From the early days, Jammet and his team understood that convenience would be just as important as quality. Sweetgreen was among the first to build a native ordering app, offer mobile pickup and eliminate the counter altogether. The self-serve pickup shelf, now standard at countless fast-casual chains, was originally a last-minute fix in a short-staffed Boston store. "It was a happy accident," Jammet says. "Customers didn't want to wait. They wanted to walk in, grab their food and go." That instinct to reduce friction without sacrificing experience now defines the brand's next phase: automation. Sweetgreen's Infinite Kitchen uses robotics to assemble up to 500 bowls per hour with precise portioning and temperature control. Proteins, grains, greens and dressings are all added by machine. But the company hasn't gone full sci-fi: Guests are still greeted by a host, and ingredients are still prepped and finished by hand. The idea is efficiency without coldness. It's not just about speed. The technology also gives the brand room to scale without compromising consistency, something that's notoriously hard to maintain across 250+ locations. Sweetgreen's latest flex? French fries. It calls them Ripple Fries, which are fresh-cut, air-fried in avocado oil and served with garlic aioli or pickle ketchup. The rollout wasn't quiet — they handed out thousands of samples at the Hollywood Farmers Market, posted ingredient comparisons next to fast-food giants and let the internet do the rest. Jammet calls them craveable. They're also strategic. Fries aren't just a crowd-pleaser; they're a signal: Sweetgreen isn't just optimizing salad. It's coming for fast-food's sacred staples and rewriting them ingredient by ingredient. Which is fitting, considering the original recipes had to be rewritten from scratch on zero sleep after that laptop was stolen. Now, the files are backed up, and Sweetgreen is doing what it's always done best: seeing where food is going, and quietly getting there first. Related: How a Spot on 'The Montel Williams Show' Sparked a Restaurant Power Brand for This Miami Chef About Restaurant Influencers Restaurant Influencers is brought to you by Toast, the powerful restaurant point-of-sale and management system that helps restaurants improve operations, increase sales and create a better guest experience. Toast — Powering Successful Restaurants. Learn more about Toast. Restaurant Influencer is also supported by NEXT INSURANCE. See why 600,000+ U.S. businesses trust NEXT for insurance.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
After 40 years in the Wauwatosa Village, The Little Read Book store will close in July
The Little Read Book, an independent bookstore that's been in the Wauwatosa Village for four decades, will close July 18. Co-owners Linda and Fred Burg decided it's time to close the beloved shop after 40 years, the Village of Wauwatosa announced in a news release June 2. The two are ready to "not have responsibilities" and spend time with their eight grandchildren, they said in the release. All inventory at the bookstore at 7603 W. State St. will be on sale beginning June 15 until the bookstore closes. Linda Burg first opened the shop in July 1985 south of the train tracks on Harwood Avenue in what was most recently Firefly Tosa's kitchen. The bookstore relocated to its current location in 1989. In recent years, Fred Burg began helping with the store after he retired from social work. Linda Burg has sold books to three generations of customers in families who continued to frequent the shop through the years, according to the release. The shop closed during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, "but we sold books out the side door, and people would come with their masks on," Linda Burg said. "The most I can wish for any independent bookstore is to have a customer base as loyal as ours has been," she said. Burg never wanted to open another location of The Little Read Book, despite multiple opportunities to do so. "My kid couldn't have jumped on his bike and come have a sandwich with me anywhere else,' Burg said in the release. 'We're just a local mom and pop store. We never wanted to be anything else.' The bookstore hours may vary, but it is typically open 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Call the bookstore at 414-774 2665 to check on hours. It's not yet clear what the State Street building will become after the bookstore closes. National salad chain restaurant Sweetgreen had previously eyed the longtime bookstore's lot for a new location. Bridget Fogarty covers Brookfield, Wauwatosa and Elm Grove for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She can be contacted at bfogarty@ This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The Little Read Book store in the Tosa Village will close in July
New York Post
6 days ago
- Business
- New York Post
NYC fast-casual lunch spots offer refuge from the 'sad salad'
These take the 'mid' out of Midtown. With NYC workers flocking back to the office in record numbers, working stiffs are seeking quick and tasty lunch options without paying through the nose. More often than not, they end up with the ubiquitous 'sad' salad, an expensive amalgam of cold rabbit foods crunched catatonically at one's desk while one scrolls social media. Hawked at such hotspots like Sweetgreen and Chopt, these soulless roughage bowls have inundated Midtown, offering little sustenance for the ever-growing throngs of desk jockeys in NYC, where post-pandemic visits to office buildings in April were just 5.5% below 2019 levels — a national record, according to the platform. 12 A mixed bowl with purple rice, soy eggs, kimchi, steak and more at SOPO, the hot new fast-casual Korean concept in Midtown. Stefano Giovannini '[It's] hard to find food that actually tastes good [and] that's not just rushed,' Sade Quianes, who works for a streaming company in the city, told The Post. The '$20 salad' was notably lampooned on TikTok by singer 'Awkward' Marina Sneider, who crooned in her viral ditty, 'it isn't even good and you're not even wealthy, but you need all your coworkers to think you're super healthy.' Thankfully, there is a growing fraternity of Midtown fast-casual restaurants that provide convenience without sacrificing flavor — and they're increasingly eating 'sad' salads for lunch. As a service to hangry workers, here are five of the best, because Gotham deserves a better class of midday meal. Seoul food at SOPO SOPO achieves the difficult task of condensing Korean staples like beef bulgogi and crispy scallion dumplings into one convenient takeout dish. Opened with the intent of bringing 'Michelin-quality Korean food to Midtown,' SOPO (whose name means 'Parcel' in Korean) is helmed by co-founder Tae Kim and Chef Dennis Hong, an alum of Michelin-starred Le Bernadin. 'We wanted to do a well-executed version that's very delicious, but it's also hassle-free,' Kim told The Post. He was inspired in part by his years working at a Tribeca bank where he'd have to scrounge up edible eats off Seamless on a $25 stipend. 12 'You can come here and get authentic Korean food and still very affordable,' gushed SOPO customer Sade Quianes. Stefano Giovannini 12 'I want a variation in the texture and flavor of the different things rather than having a lot of the same,' said SOPO co-founder Tae Kim while describing how he planned to distinguish himself from the typical fast-casual spot. Stefano Giovannini To order, customers select their bases ranging from salad to Korean purple rice (a mix of black and white rice), proteins such as steak or chicken, garnishes like crispy seaweed and sides including kimchi and soy-dipped eggs. These can be topped with a palette of sauces ranging from a Korean chili paste to one with perilla leaves, tarragon and coconut yogurt. Total price for a Seoul Steak Signature Plate: $16.48 'You can come here and get authentic Korean food and still very affordable,' gushed Quianes while toting a dish of dumplings and rice, which is cooked on-site in olive oil and giant sheets of Korean kelp for maximum umami. 12 SOPO co-founder Tae Kim said the goal was to allow customers to build their own bowls but ensure that every possible 'permutation' makes sense culinarily. Stefano Giovannini One difference is that SOPO doesn't 'mix' anything together to avoid discordant flavor combos. 'It's intended that everything is had separately as its own gourmet dish, because I feel like that's the only way that every permutation really works,' said Kim. Those who want their lunch in wrap form can opt for the kimbap, Korean 'sushi rolls' featuring chicken, beef, tofu and more fillings ($13.49) that are hand-rolled in front of customers and swaddled in foil to go — essentially SOPO's answer to Chipotle. SOPO, 463 7th Ave. between 35th and 36th Streets The Toast Of Mid-town 12 A sprawling Spicy Crab toast at Toastique. Stefano Giovannini 12 Toastique at 445 5th Ave near Bryant Park. Stefano Giovannini Healthful toast and juice bars have become almost cliche in NYC, but this newly-opened Washington D.C.-based transplant elevates the well-trodden concept with responsibly-sourced and unqiue accouterments. Some of the Gourmet Toasts, which are served atop bloodcurdlingly-crunchy bread as big as a battle cruiser, include Spicy Crab ($17) with lump crab, melted Swiss and Fontina cheese, tomatoes and more — like a jumbo crostini. Other toppings include avocado mash — the millennial catnip — prosciutto and even peanut butter and berry jam that's made in-house sans preservatives. Those looking for something lighter can opt for their fruit and granola bowls and wash it down with their all-natural smoothies or cold-pressed juices. Toastique, 445 5th Ave. near East 39th Street Dim sum and substance 12 Roast pork and duck over rice at Dim Sum Sam. Stefano Giovannini With its tiny breakfast baskets of chicken feet and lotus-wrapped sticky rice, dim sum might not seem like office-friendly fare. Thankfully, Dim Sum Sam makes the traditional Cantonese sit-down brunch to go and at any time of day — like China's version of Denny's all-day breakfast but high quality. They boast four locations across town in Fidi, Chinatown, the Flatiron district and a newly-opened branch in Times Square. Unlike many fast-casual options, Dim Sum Sam also notably hand-crafts each piece of dim sum fresh by hand. 12 Dim Sum Sam customers Miranda (left) and Andrea posing with a roast pork and duck rice bowl. Stefano Giovannini Along with bamboo basket standbys like chicken feet, shrimp dumplings and Portuguese egg tarts, the dim sum depot also hawks portable bowls. These include BBQ roast pork over rice ($11.95), shrimp and pork wonton soup ($8.95) and even a speedball of roast duck and pork over rice ($13.95). 'If you can't find your Chinese aunt or mom in the morning, I know where they are,' quipped frugal foodie @ in a video review of Dim Sum Sam. Dim Sum Sam, 240 W 40th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues Midtown Eastern 12 A Chicken Shawarma bowl at NAYA, which condenses vibrant and diverse Lebanese cuisine into convenient to-go bowls. Stefano Giovannini This Lebanese juggernaut offers the same choose-your-own-adventure format as its 'sad' salad counterparts, but with vibrant toppings like beef shawarma and lamb kebab over vermicelli rice that's adorned with yogurt, hummus and paired with pita (for around $13.99) — they're not selling glorified airplane food here. Founder Hady Kfoury told The Post that NAYA distinguishes itself via quality components like tahini and pickles sourced from Lebanon and hummus that's soaked for 24 hours, boiled all day, blast chilled and whacked with tahini and lemon. 12 The line at NAYA near Bryant Park. Stefano Giovannini He also said that the chain makes food that's hard for the average cook to recreate. 'During the pandemic, everybody baked bread at home, everybody created salads,' Kfoury said. 'You're not able to replicate NAYA at home because of the ingredients.' Kfoury said he hopes to have 45 branches by the end of this year with the latest one opening near Rockefeller Center on June 11 if all goes well. NAYA, 9 W 42nd Street near Fifth Avenue Treasure of the Sierra Madras 12 A dosa without filling at Madras Dosa, a South Indian chain that originated in Boston. Stefano Giovannini 12 Customers Raj Srinivas Krishna Srinivas at Madras Dosa. Stefano Giovannini Also ideal for casual fry-day is this Boston transplant, which recently opened a new branch in Times Square and specializes in dosas, a parchment-thin South Indian savory rice and lentil crepe. They have around 30 customizable options, ranging from savory options like spicy potatoes ($16.33), Lays' Indian-flavored chips and lamb to unorthodox sweet versions such as strawberry jam and Nutella. Other notable lunchable fare includes chaats, fried dough topped with various herbs and chutneys, best washed down with a tangy, creamy mango lassi. Madras Dosa, 30 Rockefeller Center, Concourse Level
Business Wire
28-05-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Sweetgreen to Participate in Upcoming Investor Conferences
LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sweetgreen, Inc. (NYSE: SG) today announced that the company will present at the following investor conferences: TD Cowen 9th Annual Future of the Consumer Conference on Tuesday, June 3, 2025. The fireside chat will be held that day at 8:45am ET. William Blair 45th Annual Growth Stock Conference on Wednesday, June 4, 2025. The fireside chat will be held that day at 10:40am CT. Live webcasts and replays of the fireside chats will be available at on the Events + Presentations page. About Sweetgreen: Sweetgreen (NYSE: SG) is on a mission to build healthier communities by connecting people to real food. Sweetgreen sources the best quality ingredients from farmers and suppliers they trust to cook food from scratch that is both delicious and nourishing. Sweetgreen plants roots in each community by building a transparent supply chain, investing in local farmers and growers, and enhancing the total experience with innovative technology. Since opening its first 560-square-foot location in 2007, Sweetgreen has scaled to over 250 locations across the United States, and its vision is to lead the next generation of restaurants and lifestyle brands built on quality, community and innovation. To learn more about Sweetgreen, its menu, and its loyalty program, visit Follow @Sweetgreen on Instagram, Facebook and X.
Forbes
20-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
4 AI Tools Rescuing Restaurants and Individuals From Inflation
Family, father and kids with selfie in restaurant with smile, care and bonding with food for web ... More blog. Dad, mom and milkshake with African children for profile picture post on social media in diner From fast-casual chains to your fridge at home, artificial intelligence is stepping in where supply chains, labor markets, and budgets are buckling. If you've felt the pinch while ordering takeout or reading your grocery receipt, you're not alone. With inflation lingering, labor costs rising, and potential tariffs threatening imports — 15% of the U.S. food supply is imported, including 32% of fresh vegetables, 55% of fresh fruit, and 94% of seafood — the cost of putting food on the table is surging. Dining out, once a weeknight convenience, now feels like a splurge. Even meal prepping is no longer cheap But behind the scenes, a new kind of intelligence is helping the industry—and consumers—hold the line. It's not another subscription box or budgeting hack. It's AI. From commercial kitchens optimizing waste and labor to smart apps turning your fridge into a precision tool, artificial intelligence is quietly becoming one of the most effective tools in the fight against food inflation. Here are four ways AI is helping restaurants stay open, households spend less, and everyone eat smarter without sacrificing quality—or sanity. When you think about your rising food bills, the complexity behind the scenes of your favorite eateries or the cafeterias that serve thousands daily might not immediately come to mind. Yet, inefficiencies there directly contribute to the prices you pay. Enter Topanga, an advanced kitchen AI platform co-founded by Adam Bailey, an economist and former head of data at Sweetgreen. Topanga is quietly revolutionizing over 430 commercial kitchens and diverse foodservice operations—from bustling fast-casual restaurant chains and large-scale hotel dining halls to critical hospital cafeterias and university meal services. Its core mission is to leverage AI to slash operational costs, particularly food costs, enabling these businesses to thrive without inevitably passing every rising expense onto consumers. 'In this challenging era of margin risk, Topanga's AI gives kitchens within all types of foodservice environments the intelligence and tools to operate far more efficiently and sustainably,' Bailey explains. 'We believe that true sustainability in the food industry is intrinsically linked to smart cost savings. It's AI identifying and eliminating financial drains, especially around food, which is the most direct way to keep menu prices affordable and these essential food businesses alive and serving their communities.' Here's a look at how Topanga's AI-driven approach makes a tangible difference in reducing food-related costs, directly benefiting both the foodservice operators and, ultimately, your wallet: By embedding AI deep into the operational fabric of the foodservice industry, Topanga helps these businesses significantly reduce their primary expense drivers, especially food costs. This not only strengthens the viability of restaurants and other foodservice providers in a tough economic climate but also acts as a crucial buffer against rising prices for consumers. The intelligence Topanga provides is a key strategy in making the entire food ecosystem more resilient and affordable. Moving into your own kitchen, AI-powered meal planning apps like Mealmind are designed to take the stress and guesswork out of grocery shopping and cooking, directly impacting your food budget. You tell Mealmind your dietary preferences, goals (like weight loss or muscle gain), and even your budget, and its AI gets to work. The result? Less food waste, fewer last-minute expensive takeout orders because you have a plan, and a noticeable reduction in your grocery bill. It's like having a personal nutritionist and budget advisor rolled into one. Did you know that a significant portion of food waste occurs in our own homes? Forgotten leftovers, produce wilting in the crisper drawer – it all adds up. Nosh is a food management app that uses AI to help you keep track of what you have, use it before it expires, and ultimately save money. These apps turn your pantry and fridge into a well-organized, cost-effective system, ensuring the food you spend your hard-earned money on actually gets eaten. While its parent company also develops sophisticated AI platforms for retailers, the Too Good To Go consumer app offers a brilliant, simple way to save money while fighting food waste on a local level. The concept is straightforward: restaurants, cafes, bakeries, and grocery stores often have perfectly good surplus food at the end of the day that would otherwise be discarded. This model is a win-win: businesses recoup some cost on food that would be lost, and consumers get a great deal. It's a direct, tangible way AI-facilitated connections are helping people eat well for less. As food costs continue to challenge household budgets, AI is proving to be more than just a buzzword. It's delivering practical, effective solutions that can lead to real savings. Whether by supporting restaurants like Topanga to manage their expenses or by empowering individuals with tools like Mealmind, Nosh, and Too Good To Go, artificial intelligence is reshaping our relationship with food and finance for the better. By embracing these technologies, consumers can gain more control over their spending, reduce waste, and navigate the rising tide of food prices with greater confidence.
