Latest news with #menuchanges
Entrepreneur
08-08-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Sweetgreen Layoffs: Cutting Support Staff, Ripple Fries
Sweetgreen's CEO announced that big changes are coming to the salad chain on an earnings call this week. Sweetgreen, the popular eatery known for its $16 salads, is streamlining its staff and its menu after reporting disappointing earnings this week. According to Restaurant Business, Sweetgreen has made job cuts equating to 10% of open and existing positions on its California-based support team. Sweetgreen employed over 6,400 workers as of the end of last year. Meanwhile, the chain will also discontinue its $4.95 Ripple Fries, marketed as a healthier alternative to French fries, a mere five months after introducing the option. Related: AT&T and Sweetgreen Are Following Amazon's Lead With Stricter Return-to-Office Mandates — Though Amazon's Plan Has Hit a Snag Sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman said on a Thursday earnings call with analysts that while consumers "loved" the air-fried ripple fries and had a "great reaction" to the product, it was a "distraction" to employees and added extra cooking complexity to their day. Sweetgreen has already tested removing the fries from its menu in certain stores, and seen "huge improvements in customer satisfaction" as employees focus on the salad chain's core products, Neman said on the call. Sweetgreen will discontinue the item next week, he added. Sweetgreen made these changes to its staff and menu after posting disappointing quarterly earnings. On Thursday, Sweetgreen announced its second-quarter results, noting that same-store sales fell by 7.6%. The chain reported a net loss of $23.2 million, up from $14.5 million in the same period last year. Total revenue increased by just 0.5% year-over-year to $185.6 million. What is Sweetgreen's turnaround plan? Though Sweetgreen may have reported poor financial results this week, the salad chain has a turnaround plan in place that includes offering larger sizes of proteins, improving the taste of its chicken and salmon, and offering discounts on salads ($13 instead of $15) for members. Mitch Reback, Sweetgreen's chief financial officer, said on the earnings call that the company was also bringing back seasonal options and chef collaborations, as well as presenting new offerings at "more moderate price points." "While we're not yet where we want to be, we're confident that these actions position Sweetgreen to emerge stronger, more focused, and better aligned with what our guests and investors expect from us," Reback said on the call. Related: These College Friends Wanted to Sell Better Food. Now, Their Company Is Publicly Traded. According to Reback, the changes have already taken effect and have helped sales in the current quarter. Sweetgreen's stock was down over 70% year-to-date at the time of writing. The company's market value was a little over $1 billion. Join top CEOs, founders and operators at the Level Up conference to unlock strategies for scaling your business, boosting revenue and building sustainable success.
Gizmodo
08-08-2025
- Business
- Gizmodo
Add the Tesla Diner to the List of Elon Musk Projects That Fail to Deliver on Promises
You are not going to believe this, because there is absolutely zero precedent for it happening; it appears Elon Musk has overpromised on something. It has only been two weeks since the Tesla Diner, a charging station and restaurant with a retro-futuristic aesthetic, and it is already significantly narrowing down its menu offerings, according to a report from Eater. In classic diner fashion, the restaurant offered a robust menu when it first opened, but it is down to just five sandwiches, two sides, two types of pie, shakes, and drinks. Gone are the market salad, club sandwich, hash brown bites, biscuits and gravy, and chocolate chip cookies—along with the veggie patty option for burgers. Breakfast items have gone from being available all day long to only during the morning hours. Even the Shirley Temple and Creamsicle fountain drinks have been removed. Perhaps most devastating to Musk is the removal of the 'Epic Bacon,' a $12 side that offers four strips of maple-glazed bacon (that turned out to be significantly less epic in person). You can still get the regular kind, per Eater, but only as an add-on topping for sandwiches, not as a standalone side. Musk apparently insisted that every dish on the menu be 'epic,' a meaningless benchmark that offers zero guidance. Based on the cutback, it seems like not many cleared the bar. To be fair to the people who work at the diner, who are decidedly not Elon Musk and mostly just people trying to make a living and probably shouldn't be subject to the schadenfreude, the situation probably sucks. The diner's chef, Eric Greenspan, told Eater that the cutbacks were the result of 'unprecedented demand' that required the menu to be scaled back. And there has been lots of attention on the place. 404 Media reported that the diner has been chaotic and subject to heavy traffic. A reporter from Autoweek said he had to wait in line for two hours to place an order. No one is having a good time except for Musk, who just gets to tweet about the thing without having to actually be involved in the hell that is running a restaurant. The strangest part about how popular the place seemingly is, though, is the fact that no one really seems to enjoy the food, but continues to be drawn to the experience. Motortrend said, 'the food is only okay.' The New York Times called it 'mid.' In perhaps the most damning indictment of the whole thing, InsideEVs wrote, 'I'm not sure the quality of food even matters much' while arguing that the diner is something we 'need.' That checks out with an anecdote from the Times, which quoted a patron who had already been three times as saying, 'We don't order anything except for the burgers now. Everything else is just so bad.' They also plan to come back again. I guess we're all just moths to a deeply unimpressive flame.
