What started with three college friends looking for a healthy lunch in D.C. grew into @sweetgreen, a fast-growing restaurant business focused on salads and grain bowls. From a tiny 500-square-foot storefront to more than 220 locations nationwide, the Sweetgreen journey includes booking The Strokes for a “salad festival,” adopting cutting-edge technology, and proving that fast food can include locally-sourced, farm-fresh ingredients. Watch co-founders Jonathan Neman, Nathaniel Ru, and Nicolas Jammet share how they have scaled the business in alignment with its core values, to a public company valued at $2.5 billion.
Chapters:
00:00 Visiting a Sweetgreen location
01:06 How the three co-founders met
03:47: The original vision
11:52 Raising their first fundraising round
15:18 Launching the first location
17:28 Why Sweetgreen threw a music festival in the early years
23:50 Developing the company values
32:05 The strategies to get to scale
40:28 How Sweetgreen approaches real estate
45:15 The decision to go public
48:36 How their roles have changed over time
52:45: Developing the Sweetgreen app
56:23 How Sweetgreen approaches automation
01:02:50 When & how to speak out on political/social issues