Jonathan Neman - Co-Founder & CEO of Sweetgreen

How come no one's done this? You know, it was like every day we're like, how come no one's done this? Like, why is there not a healthy fast food place? It was always very attracted to this idea of solving the world's biggest problems through capitalism. And the problem we're trying to solve is around building healthier communities. We have a health crisis in America and so much of it is just directly tied to food. Our mission is building healthier communities by connecting people to real food. And we want to create a global, iconic brand in doing so. That that probably means thousands and thousands of restaurants. But over time, as the world changes, that could mean other ways to connect people to real food. In business, there's companies that get better as they get bigger, and there's companies that get worse. To get it right, you have to get the art and the science right. The science being the automation, the art being the actual experience. You're going to fail a lot. You're going to fail a ton. And it's just that ability to kind of learn from that learn forward and continue building, pick yourself up and keep going. I don't believe it's the end. I believe it's really just another beginning.

What excites you the most as you think about the future of sweetgreen? The automation aspect or just the company overall? Welcome to the Casey Adams Show. I'm your host, Casey Adams, and over the last six and a half years, I've interviewed hundreds of world class entrepreneurs and founders. On today's episode, I sat down with Jonathan Niemann, the co founder and CEO of sweetgreen. If you're watching right now, we are here in a sweetgreen location and. And on today's podcast, we dive into Jonathan's entrepreneurial journey from starting and opening the first store at 22 years old to then taking the company public over 15 years later. This is a story that I know I learned so much from and there's so much to dive into today in terms of how sweetgreen is innovating and how they've gotten to where they are today with over 225 locations. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're not already subscribed, make sure you subscribe, share this episode with a friend and enjoy today's episode with Jonathan Niemann. Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Thanks for having me.

Of course. So, you know, I've been not only a longtime fan of sweetgreen, but I. I've loved the innovation that you guys have built within the company. Before we dive into the story of Sweet Green, your background, I want you to take us back to this small cafe, Greens Cafe, that you stumbled upon in Australia that I know, I've heard served as sort of the origin behind like the name and just how you think about sweetgreen overall. So take us back to that time and what is Greens Cafe for people that may not know.

Sure. So unfortunately Greens Cafe doesn't even exist anymore. But I, you know, it was a huge inspiration for me and in starting Sweetgreen. And so I'll take you back. It was 2006 and I was spending a semester studying abroad in Australia. I was living in Sydney in Bondi beach. And I was really just fell in love with the culture, fell in love with the lifestyle and this idea that you could be healthy but. But also live this healthy, active lifestyle that was just so ingrained in the culture. And I think what was interesting for me is coming from America, you'd go to these cafes where they were the cool hangout places to go, but they were serving healthy food. And that was not something we had here. It was, you know, an all day cafe, great at salads. They did some, you know, salad sandwiches, breakfast coffees. But it was, it was where all the cool kids hung out. And I thought that was so interesting that in the US it was not that way. You know, where what was driving culture was places like McDonald's, it was traditional fast food. It was things that were not good for you. And so, you know, I think just spending time there and living that life kind of came back to the, came back to the US and we're trying to figure out what to do with our lives.

Yeah.

And realize there's real opportunity to reimagine fast food and create a type of fast food company that was not only competed on all the vectors of traditional fast food in terms of taste and convenience and value, but also really brought forward a more healthy option.

No. That's so cool to hear. And I've been to Sydney once, Bondi Beach. Beautiful. So I love to hear that origin story and thought process. So take us back, man. You started sweetgreen right after you graduated college. You and your co founders and I remember hearing that in the early days you guys made a decision to not franchise from the beginning. And knowing how you guys have built up to 225 plus locations all owned and operated by your team solely, what led to that decision early on, because it's, I mean it looks like it's turned out to Be a great decision. But I've heard you talk about this in different interviews where you talk about Chipotle and Starbucks as being two of the big companies that are solely owned and operated. And when I think about another one, I mean, I think sweetgreen, even prior to this interview and just learning more about the business. But what led to that decision early.

On, you know, one thing that I think we did really well very early on in the business is thought a lot about the brand, the mission, the vision and the values that we wanted to drive our decision making. So we spent a lot of time not just what is sweet Green, but what, why do we exist and what are the values that are going to guide some of our decisions. And very early on, one of the, one of the values that we put into place, or I'll talk about two of them. One was this idea of thinking sustainably and that, that idea that value really relates to not just, you know, the obvious things around the environment, but making sustainable decisions. We like to say make decisions that last longer than you will. And the other value that is really core to the business which you talked about innovation was this idea of build for tomorrow. And we looked around at the restaurant industry and we saw the challenge with many restaurants was that over time as, as they got bigger, their business, their quality of their products got worse. At the same time, the world changes very quickly, especially in, you know, in food and retail. And many restaurants that are end up being franchise have very little control over that. You know, those changes, you know, if you want to change something, you have to sell it to a franchisee. So very early on we said we want to build a, you know, multi generational company and I want what can be one day a global iconic brand. And we'd rather go slow and steady than really fast and maybe short lived. Yeah. So those values of thinking sustainably and building for tomorrow led us to, you know, be very, very strict on not going the franchise route. And it was very attractive at times. You know, one of the challenging things about the restaurant business is it's very capital intensive. Restaurants cost a lot of money and it's, you know, it's with, without the capital, without the capital or the profitability, the profitability to drive it, it's very hard to grow. And so when you're in, you know, you have a few restaurants and all of a sudden you get requests for, I'm talking about thousands of franchise requests and the way a franchise works, when.

Would you say that it really started to pick up for you in Terms of these requests. Was it at the beginning?

Yeah, I mean, probably. I mean right away after store one, but really after like probably three or four stores, we were starting to get a ton of franchise requests and like, not just from mom and pop franchisees, but from large franchise like license companies. That's in saying here, we'll buy, we'll buy, you know, hundreds. Yeah. And the way those work is they pay you an upfront fee and then they pay you a royalty. But you do not own the restaurant, you do not run the restaurant. And then you have, you have to support those restaurants, do a lot of like the brand and marketing for them. But ultimately you don't control the end to end experience. And what we believed is, one, you know, that direct connection to your customer is so critical. Two, we know that the restaurant business is going to change. We want our business to change. And we wanted a business that was going to be continuously improving and innovating, you know, building for tomorrow. And in a franchise business, that again, is very hard to do. Think about the automation stuff we're doing today. If we wanted to convince franchisees that we want to put, to install automation, we'd have to convince them to pay for it versus just making those decisions. So it was this idea of having that full control to preserve the quality of experience led us to really keep that. And again, it's those values that we kind of set in place from a very early stage that have continued to guide many of our decisions today.

Then I, I love that it's the epitome of forward thinking and like knowing the end result and what you guys desire, not, you know, jumping on to what's hot or what could make sense now, but could diminish the brand and kind of the vision long term. So speaking on innovation, I remember when I first saw the Influence Infinite Kitchen online. I haven't personally experienced it yet. I was blown away. And I remember hearing you guys acquired a company to help bring that vision to life. Let's talk about that. What led to this idea to not only automate a kitchen, but to bring something to the market that's so innovative. Has that been the goal from the early days or when did this idea even come to your mind?

Yeah. So it goes back again to our values and this idea of building. We go back to something. I tell the team all the time. In business, there's companies that get better as they get bigger and there's companies that get worse. Really? I'm talking about the customer experience. Yeah, unfortunately, in the, in the food Business, there's more, more companies that as they scale, they begin to cut corners and get worse. In our business, we really spend a lot of time thinking about what's, what's important to our customer in terms of our value proposition.

Yeah.

And when you think about what we do in a restaurant, you know, there's a few things. First, we source incredible food. You know, that people really value, the sourcing and the, the type of food, the relationship we have with our farmers and growers, making sure, you know, where we are buying the best produce and, and, and proteins, etc. That's part one. Second is the fact that we make our food in from scratch in our kitchens. The freshness aspect is really, really important because you can taste it.

Yeah.

Then we do two other things. It's assembly, like bringing it, putting it all together. And then there's hospitality service component. As we thought about that kind of chain of activity and what's valuable to the customer, we looked at what the rest of the industry does in order to scale. What they do is they start to make sacrifices on the supply chain and they make sacrifices on the making things in the restaurant. They move things out to a commissary and things kind of start showing up in bags and then they do the assembly and maybe keep the service. We thought that in a much better way to preserve the specialness of what we are while still scaling and improving our unit economics was to protect those important things, protect the supply chain, protect the mate from making things from scratch in restaurants. But the assembly piece was really an opportunity to innovate. And we looked at that job and what those team members were doing, how challenging that could be, that, you know, the speed and the importance of speed and accuracy.

Yeah.

And we thought maybe there's a way to actually automate that, that component of the restaurant so we can double down on all the other components. The supply chain, the making food from scratch and culinary aspect and the, and then the hospitality aspect. So we, you know, I remember first telling people, it must have been six or seven years ago, that I thought that the next platform shift for restaurants was going to be around automation. It was following the digital transformation that we'd seen and digital ordering that we've now all seen come, you know, over the past, like, you know, 10 or 15 years. And I, people really thought I was crazy. People are like, well, that is, that is crazy. Who would want an automated store?

Was there any example that you looked at like, hey, this is a company that's done it right? Or was it sort of this Gray area of like, hey, there's no one to really look at as like, this has been a, a successful way to automate something. I know, you know, there's like the cafe coffee automation machines that I've seen in the wild, but I personally don't know of any. So for you guys, like, did. Was there any to look.

No, no one in food. There are a bunch of people that have been trying for a long time, but I think to get it right, you have to get the, the art and the science right. The science being the automation, the art being the actual experience, the theater, the soulfulness and you know, so we tried for a while to build it ourselves, realized how challenging it really was. It's an incredibly tough engineering challenge. And then we met these four guys from Boston and MIT and they had a very similar vision to us. It was to connect more people to real food. They'd gone to mit, they'd gone to MIT mechanical engineers. And their idea was to do it through automation. And so we actually met them right when they started their business, just to, you know, friendly meeting, learning from each other and kept in touch over the next few years and watched them open two restaurants. And the technology they built was truly incredible. Yeah, it was. It was a perfectly automated, fully integrated system that could operate at just incredible speed and was relatively scalable even. Even when we found them. And so about two and a half years ago, we acquired the company and the team joined us and we began work on what we call the sweetgreen Infinite kitchen. So last year we launched, we piloted two infinite kitchens. One in Chicago, one here in the LA market in Huntington Beach. And so far it's been a tremendous success. We've learned a lot and we're continuing to iterate from it. But this machine can do 500 bowls per hour from a throughput perspective.

Wow.

As we've guided, you know, today they cost between 450 and 550. But over time should. The cost should come down significantly. Yeah, it increases our store level margins by at least 7 percentage points. And then there's all these things, what we call second order benefits. So less issues, customer service issues, because you have perfectly accurate bulls. Yeah, It's a better environment for team members to work in. So our turnover is drastically reduced. Our customers love it because it's just a calmer environment. And they then have that hospital you can order via kiosk or directly from a team member. So still very early days, but have learned a ton, are very excited. And this year we'll open about seven new ones and retrofit the three or four. So we'll have, you know, at least 10, 10 more infinite kitchens out in the wild this year.

That's so exciting to hear, man. And I remember hearing in the. One of the videos, it's like everything starts and ends with someone on your team, right? From the prep to like, you know, the bull itself to, you know, putting the salmon in there, the avocado, the things that the machine doesn't do. And I, I think that just embodies what you talk a lot about, which is hospitality. And one thing I wanted to note is I remember I interviewed Tillman Fertitta, you know, like the restaurant Tour, probably like two, three years ago, 2019 actually. And it was right when he was coming out with his book Shut up and Listen. And in the book he has this rule, like the 95. 5 rule. And it's, you know, and he was referencing restaurants where it's like 95 of restaurants, 95%, the 95% percentile of making a successful restaurant can be like duplicated, but that extra 5% or 1%, he. I remember him telling a story where like whenever he's visiting his restaurants, he'll like, go walk the perimeter and like pick up the trash. And I remember hearing something where, I think he referenced it from a book where. And I'm forgetting the name of the book, but, you know, these guys are doing an interview with someone and they had the best resume that you could have in terms of potentially hiring this individual. But the, you know, the fork and the cutlery was sort of to the side and it wasn't perfect. And they sat there and had the best resume, but they didn't fix that. And it just. That's the 5% that you kind of can't teach. And I'd love you to expand on that in terms of your values on the world of hospitality, because it's not only a recipe to your success, it seems, but something that you prioritize and value significantly.

Yeah, absolutely. So we have a. One of our core values and beliefs is this idea of adding the sweet touch. And this is our hospitality philosophy, which is just doing a little bit above and beyond to delight that customer. We believe that the best marketing you can do is word of mouth marketing. And that's driven by that virality of just creating great experiences. And so we really try, you know, in a, for a fast food environment, we truly really try to go out of our way to just find little moments of connection that we, that we can have with our Guests, whether that be, you know, really empowering our teams to do something special for loyal customers or someone's having, you know, had. Had something gone wrong, taking care of that guest. It's. It's a lot of little things, and then it's a lot of little things that, to your point, most people won't see, but customers can feel. So you talked about this. You know that there's the episode. The story you're referring to is there was an episode in the Bear, and there's a. You know, I think it's a fantastic show talking about the hospitality business. But first of all, there's. There's two. You know, there's two episodes that I just love. One is the one Forks, if anyone has seen it, where, you know, he goes to eleven Madison park and massage is there, and he learns that it's the little things that. That add up to the big things. It's how you do the anything is how you do everything. And so it's this idea of, you know, even the forks can't have a smudge on that, because those little things are what gives that overall impression of, you know, the world and the lifestyle that you're stepping into. In the following episode, you know, he's interviewing someone, and as you said, like, you know, the. The fork is sitting perpendicular and, you know, the wrong way and set The. The. The interviewee sat there the whole time and didn't move it. And it's that you, you know, you bring this up because just right now, before we started, I was talking to the team about this exact thing because I noticed that her display was just so beautifully organized in this restaurant.

Okay.

And I called, oh, that's incredible. And I'm like, this, you know, this is.

It's.

I. You just see that there's care put into it. And most people may not notice, but you can feel it.

Wow.

Feel when there's that care of the way things are taken care of. And so. And that is incredible. It's that pride, that pride of ownership that customers can really feel. And so we're not always perfect in how we execute on it, but we really aim for that sweet touch in every little thing we do. And now whatever we were just talking about was this concept that, I guess an OCD that I have called Noling. Are you familiar with the concept of.

No, no.

Is this idea of things being in perpendicular in pair, like, almost like organized perfectly neatly.

Okay. I was going to say, like, you're.

You know, like everything, like, in parallel, straight lines and display and it was like perfectly like lined up those things like good design that you don't notice, but you just again, it just, it's nice on the eyes, it's nice on your brain and it just feels good. So whether it's from a design perspective, human connection and hospitality perspective, all those little details, it's that's, that's like the X factor in, I think what makes a brand and a brand and a hospitality experience.

Yeah, no, that's so powerful. Even like to hear you walking in and still complimenting that and noticing that, I mean it speaks volumes just to pivot a little bit, you know, this show, I've had so many great entrepreneurs on this show and of course there's the business elements to talk about. But I want to lean into your personal entrepreneurial journey.

Right.

Because you know, I feel that even with myself right when I started my journey of being an entrepreneur At 16, 17 years old, you always see, you know, you hear the origin stories and then you see, oh my God, you see acquisitions and IPOs and like that's sort of like the super bowl of a company. And I want to take us back to, you know, when you're opening this first store, like what was the you and your co founders goals or sort of like the North Star. Right, because whether that's taking company public or the brand values, like what were the. Yeah, like what were the goals in the early days because obviously you couldn't predict all in which it would become. But take us back to those times of thinking about starting sweetgreen because I always talk about this idea of like the white space in life, whether that's the gap year after you're graduating high school or after college or you know, if you sell a company, like what's the next thing you start and like really figuring out that white space of opportunity or even if you move across the country and it's like you're, you're figuring out, you know, oh, what's my daily routine and with the people I associate with and what do I do and where do I go? It's, there's special like decision making ability in that time of newness. So for you guys, when you were considering thinking about starting Sweet Green, like what were some of the entrepreneurial desires and ambitions in those early days?

Yeah, so lots unpack I think, you know, just first what you said about this, the entrepreneurial journey I think is very much overlooked. And I think the media celebrates. Sit the wrong way. You know, you celebrate to your point, started the company, sold the company and there's so much in the middle. Yeah. You know, a friend of ours wrote a book, Scott Belsky wrote a book called the Messy Middle. I think he describes it really well where there's, you know, when you, when you zoom out, it looks like this, but when you zoom in, it's really like this. Yeah, it's really, really like this. And I think the, you know, as an entrepreneur and as a leader, your job is resilience is, is something that I really value. I think is a critical trait of entrepreneurs because you're going to fail a lot, you're going to fail a ton. And it's just that ability to kind of learn from that, learn for it and continue building, pick yourself up and keep going and just, just getting a little 1% better every day and, and leveraging that power of compounding. You know, what people don't realize is Sweet Green is we're, we're over 17 years old. Some people think it's like an overnight success. We've been at it 17, 17 years.

You were 22 when you started Sweet Green.

Yeah, I was 20. So it was, yeah, it's a long time.

And just to interject real quick, I think in this world of fast paced, you know what people see on entrepreneurship, you see people starting businesses and they're, you know, whether that's like E commerce or just like all the opportunities are out there. You kind of see this like jaded version of entrepreneurship where, you know, if you listen to people like yourself, the time aspect is so important and something not to overlook.

Get rich time in game, get rich quick does not. It's just listen, there's. You can win the lottery. Yeah, you can. But most people, even if they, they made it quickly, probably put in many years before that to get them to the point to, to be ready to do that. You know, I think the story everyone's watching today and the incredible journey of, of Jensen Huang and Nvidia.

Yep.

Unbelievable. I mean, you know, he's been at it for what, almost 40 years. Yeah. And now all of a sudden it's, you know, one of the most valuable companies in the world. But for many years he was just chugging along.

Yeah.

But to your question about, you know, when we started sweetgreen, I, you know, we first, I always, the three of us were always very entrepreneurial minded. I think for me, people ask, was it food or what drove you to it? And I loved food. It was more this idea of starting something from scratch and being an entrepreneur. And it was always very attractive to this idea of solving the world's biggest problems through capitalism. I think capitalism is the best vehicle we have for solving really, really challenging problems in the world. And the problem we're trying to solve is around building healthier communities. We have a health crisis in America and, you know, beyond. But the health crisis we have in America is really bad. And so much of it is just directly tied to food. You know, it's estimated that about, you know, $2 trillion of externalities every year because of the food system, that we have seen the obesity rates, seen all the comorbidities, and all the different sorts of, you know, really preventable disease that are happening directly from food. But so a lot of times I say, you know, sweetgreen is a healthcare company. You know, mast is massively beaut as, like, a lifestyle, you know, restaurant brand. And so when we started, it was very, you know, exciting for us to try to solve a, you know, a big problem, but not in a nonprofit, you know, not in a nonprofit way, but through. Through creating a business. When we just began, it was really just, let's just open one. When we first started, we're like, okay, we don't know what we're going to do after school. There's a location down the street. Like, wouldn't it be super cool? And just a pause.

You said you had no idea what you wanted to do after school. Like, would, you know, for some people, they go to school and they're like, they have this idea of, like a career path mapped out. Was that, like, was that a big question mark for you? Or did you know you're going to start a business?

I knew I wanted to start a business one day. I knew for sure that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I didn't know what that would be or when that would be, if it would be right after school or I would spend, you know, tie. I probably actually, I thought I would go work for, you know, five or 10 years and learn and then. And then jump in. And then this idea just. It was just kind of came up and it was, you know, we started talking about it and we're just like, this is like, how come no one's done this? You know, it was like every day we're like, how come no one's done this? This is like, why is there not a healthy fast food place? And so when we first started, it was, let's, let's just open one. But as soon as we began really, the work in earnest and started writing the business plan and understanding the industry, learning about the opportunity, realized it wasn't this problem in our own life. Like, it started off like, let's just solve this problem for us in our own lives and our friends at Georgetown. And then it was, oh, wow, this is. This is a problem everywhere. And so as we started, you know, as we started writing the business plan and building the first restaurant, the vision kind of expanded. And it started. It said, well, there could probably be at least 100 of these. You know, and then as we kept going, we're like, oh, there maybe there could be 500 of these. And then you keep going. You're like. And, you know, today we think there could be 5,000. 5,000 sweet greens in the US so as we, you know, continue to grow, I think the vision's expanded in terms of what we can be. We've tried not to be. We have a master plan. We have, like, a very clear strategy, but that guides you. At the end of the day, it's. You kind of gotta have a larger vision and mission of what we're trying to solve for long term, which for us, our mission is building healthier communities by connecting people to real food. And we want to create a global, iconic brand in doing so. That probably means thousands and thousands of restaurants, but over time, as the world changes, that could mean other ways to connect people to real food. And so I'll just say that it's been a. It hasn't been a smooth line. There's been a lot of ups and downs. Been a very messy but fun journey. And I think so much of the success is just we refuse to give up, Just keep going.

Yeah, I love that I have this for context for you. When I was 16, sophomore, going into sophomore year of high school, I got injured playing football, and I ended up in a neck brace for six months. And I say that to reference a story now where just a couple years ago, like, long after neck brace injury and stuff, I had this artist take this neck brace that I used to wear, and my whole thesis on what I've learned from all the guests is exactly what you've just said, which is keep going and never quit. And we had this plaque and the neck brace and turn into this whole trophy. And I think it's just that simple, right? Like, keep going, never quit. If you just do those two things. Not to say success is inevitable, but your likelihood of it is much more likely, in a sense. Speaking of connecting people through food, through different experiences, I remember hearing that you guys used to host music festivals for, like, seven years. Talk to me. About that because I think it's such a unique thing. When I heard it, I'm like, huh, what does that mean? Sweet Green.

No, in the D.C. area.

No, I didn't, I'm 23 for context. I don't know when you guys hosted these exactly, but I wanted to dive into this here.

Yeah. So that was a really fun chapter of Sweet Green history. So we, in 2009 we opened our second restaurant. And the first restaurant was near campus, was tiny 500 square foot restaurant. Actually did pretty well right out the gates. The second restaurant we opened, it's in Dupont Circle in D.C. okay. We're on the wrong side of the street. We're actually the, the restaurant, the back door, the parking lot is connected to the farmer's market. And so we opened, we open in, we open our members. April 1, 2009. Grew up in California. I think April Springs was hot, nice out. It's like freezing cold and rainy and it's like a cold April. And the business is really, really slow and so really didn't know, you know, we were 22 year old kids that really didn't know much, much about marketing. Didn't really know how to build the business. And so we realized that so much of it was just trial. We just had to get people to try the product and learn about the brand. And for us it was always, you know, we've always had this idea in the brand of, this idea of tension. And so things that shouldn't go together, that do that creates this tension that is really interesting from a brand perspective. And for us it was creating a brand and a restaurant company that was healthy but also culturally relevant and cool. Yeah. And so it wasn't just a restaurant company, it was a lifestyle company with it. And so we, we decided that the way we were going to try to attract customers is we were going to go, we went to, we went to the Guitar center, we bought a dj, a giant speaker which we actually still have in our office and a folding table and we literally put it outside the restaurant.

Wow.

We started playing music and sampling food. Wow. And kind of worked. You know, people was like, okay, what's going on there? It seems like there's some like, there's a vibe, there's some energy. And so, you know, every, every Sunday farmers market time, we'd play music, you know, customers would come see it. And then we're like, okay, well why don't we do a block party? So we started hosting a few block parties in that parking lot. So there's, it would Be the farmer's market Sunday mornings. And then like the afternoon it would turn into a sweet green block party. So in a few local bands and DJs and kind of like local partners.

Yeah.

And. And it was, you know, it was very cool thing. And then we're like, okay, let's. Let's make it a real festival. So we started looking for venues, realized that, you know, the infrastructure for a festival is just. It's crazy. Like you have to build so much bathroom. All of that sucks. We were just like, let's do we. The block party was maybe a thousand people. Oh, wow.

Yeah, that's a big turnout party.

The next year we're like, let's do a festival. And we're like, let's do 3,000 people. And we went looking for places to. To build, you know, to. To. To build. And we realized that there's a economies of scale issue with. With festivals because there's all this fixed cost infrastructure and fixed cost talent.

Yeah.

But then you can only sell 3,000 tickets. So it's almost like you do the math and you're like, you're better off doing a festival for 20,000 people than 3,000 people because your fixed costs are effectively the same.

Yep.

So we met a guy in D.C. his name was Seth Hurwitz and he owned the 930 Club and a number of, you know, all the venues there. And he also owns Merryweather Post Pavilion. And so Nice started to get to know him a little bit and he's like, why don't we do it at Merryweather? We thought it was crazy, like 20 plus thousand person, iconic venue. And we went inside and we're like, we did the math. We started thinking about artists and we're like, let's. Let's do it. Like this will be. This will be a move that, that will really change what sweetgreen is. It will really put like a line in the sand that we're not just a restaurant company, that we are more than that. And from an experiential marketing and brand perspective will be such a. Such a cool signal to the world and our customers. So we created what we call the Suite Life Festival. And the first year we got the Strokes to headline, you know, just all these amazing, amazing artists. And it continued on for about seven years. It grew to be eventually two days and 25,000 people. Oh my God.

I know that.

Yeah, it was, it was one of the biggest festivals. It was like the biggest festival in the Mid Atlantic area and that kind of. That D.C. region.

Yeah.

And we had some amazing acts from Kendrick Lamar to Calvin Harris, Lana Del Rey, the Weeknd, Heim. I mean, all. And a lot of these people, like when they were big and some of them when they were, Were really small, which is like, really interesting. Like, I just. Yeah, I've seen like how SZA's been so huge. Right. You know, it's like a huge artist. Remember she, she played at like 1p, like the, you know, like the opening slot because, you know, Kendrick wanted to bring her along and now she's a superstar.

That's so cool.

So it was, it was a super fun way to build the brand.

When was the last year you guys did that?

2017 was the last big one we did. And then we've continued to have music as part of our DNA, both in our restaurants. We very carefully curate our music for different communities, different day parts, and also bring music in into a lot of other things that we do. So we still have a lot of events when we open new stores. Sometimes we'll have a musical act, sometimes we'll just still do like little mini block parties here, here and there. And so music is still for us, such an important part of the DNA of the brand. And you know, for. It's this, it's this universal language. And for me it's like, it's. You hear music and it can like transport you to a place and it creates that feeling. And I think music and food together is such a. Such a powerful thing. And so it was a. It was a great way for us to extend the brand. And I hope, I hope one day we can bring it back.

I was gonna say, do you guys ever plan on bringing it back or.

I think we will. I think we have to re. Reimagine it for, for where we are today. At the time, we were mostly a DC company, so it made sense that one big festival in dc. But I, you know, we've been thinking of ways to, to bring it back and, and, and create a really fun way to connect with our community.

I can't wait to see that come to life one day, come back to fruition. And last thing, on the aspects of all things music, I, I've heard you say that what Spotify did for the playlist sweetgreen wants to do for the menu or the. The. Your digital experience in terms of like, personalization of food. What do you mean by that? Because I think it's something where in a world of AI and innovation and the personalized aspects of even things like health, I started working with a health Coach at this company, Merrick Health, and the ability to do blood panels and understand all your biometrics and then have a customized meal plan or supplement plan. Those are some things that of course are happening and I believe you guys are really leading the way there. So what do you mean by that when you reference the Spotify analogy? Yeah.

So, you know, similar to how, you know, when you open your Spotify, if you're a user, it kind of knows you knows, you know, what you listen to what times of the day, different genres, etc. And you get that Discover Weekly or that for you page or your daylist or whatever, those different, you know, customized playlists for us. You know, if you think about E commerce, for the most part, you know, personalization and machine learning has been. Has been happening for a long time. But typically because of the way the products are built, it's you like this. Try this.

Yeah.

And that's great. It works. It drive. It. It can drive some incremental purchases and just, you know, from a CRM perspective, it's. It's a great thing to do and something that we do do. But because of the way our menu is constructed, which we have 65 unique ingredients that can make over 4 billion combinations for menu items.

Wow.

And we have all these different flavor profiles, all these different nutritional profiles. You can make something that's, you know, can fit really any diet or lifestyle. We can only show you, call it 10 to 15 things on a menu. We don't want to overload you with, you know, hundreds and hundreds of different menu items.

Totally.

But the reality is people's tastes are different, people's nutrition, nutritional needs are different. People have different lifestyles. So whether it be kind of surface level things like you're a vegetarian, like, why are you opening the sweetgreen app and seeing chicken and fish and these things on the menu? Like, yeah, like, there's only a few there. We have a few pure veggie things on there. But why aren't we creating things using. Using AI to actually create a menu item for you? And then it can get much more advanced based off of, you know, someone like you that if you're willing to kind of share that information with us, we could start to design menu items that are truly bent for you. Like, for me, I'm trying to eat a lot of protein. So, like, I'd love to see a menu that had, you know, over 50 grams of protein on every item.

Yeah.

You know, some people like spicy food. Don't like spicy food. You know, cilantro there's all these different actors you can play on. And I think over time, as this personalized self gets further developed, you know, a lot of people are doing the things that you're doing over time, I think it's going to happen much more. There's a lot of rumors about the Apple Watch. You know, the Apple Watch has been rumored to be introducing continue continuous glucose monitoring, where today you have to put a patch with a needle inside of your arm to track it. But being able to understand for you personally how different food impacts your metabolic health is a very cool thing.

Yeah.

And if Apple's able to do that, imagine being able to share that data.

With, I was going to say, because that's a huge advantage and just the ability to have that data and having customers willing to share that create so much opportunity within that like personalization aspect.

Exactly right. So that's where we kind of see it going over time. It's still very early days on that. I don't think we're, you know, and I don't think we're going to be unique in doing it, to be honest. I think a lot of people can play in that space. I think, you know, the data will not be, you know, we're not going to be the ones collecting that data. We're going to let people have their own, you know. Yeah, there's other companies that are going to do that. It's more. How are we the platform to be able to plug that food in based off of whatever your nutritional needs are?

Totally. No, that's. Speaking of that, what does health and fitness look like in your world as someone that is an entrepreneur? You know, I, I got into running heavily two years ago, did my first marathon. Diego here is a bodybuilder and he's gotten me really dialed in the last like six to eight months here. But how has that changed throughout your journey as an entrepreneur in terms of prioritizing the gym, working out, just fitness and health overall? And what does that look like today and how has that shifted throughout your journey of, of growing?

Speaker 1 yeah, it's so important for me, not just physically, but mentally. So I think just taking care of yourself, so you know, you're, as a leader, you're spending a lot of, a lot of your day putting out problems. I'm a leader and I'm, I'm a dad. I have two kids. Yeah, and so you spent a lot of the day, you know, putting out fires and serve, you know, believe in, you know, serving your team. And so I think Taking care of yourself, both from a physical and mental perspective is really important so you can show up. And so my, you know, health, my fitness routine is very important to me. I meditate every single day. I do transcendental meditation. It's just been such an important thing for me and my, my clarity and, you know, working on stress and just my overall happiness and awareness. So something that I'm pretty religious about.

Is my, is what's your, like, meditation routine or like certain apps?

No, I just do, I do something called TM transcendental meditation. It's practice. I do 20 minutes every morning. I try to do it in the afternoon if, if I can squeeze it in, but I'm religious about my morning. Like, I just like, will not ever. I'll do it at least once a day. I will never, like, will not miss a day.

Wow.

It's just like, that's, that's like my rule. Even if I like, I will figure out a way to squeeze it in. Yeah. It's forced me to wake up earlier and earlier now that I have kids and I work out, but I do that 20 minutes. I use a mantra, I sit there and I, you know, I just kind of be present. I, then I, I, I try to do something active every single day. Whether, you know, I, I, I work out in the gym four, four days a week. I do pilates, I hike a lot, I surf a lot.

Love it.

So, yeah, surfing is my favorite activity from a fitness perspective. I don't get to do as much of it as I'd like, but that's, that's my happiest place.

Did you grow up serving here in.

I actually started surfing when I was in Australia when I was like 28ish years old.

Like great whites. That's like shark territory out there, I've been told.

All right, but, so, so that I think is super important in staying, staying grounded. And you know, now on weekends I have a three and a half year old and one year old. I take them hiking. I have the back, I have the pack, I put them on and we'll, oh, that's great. We'll go climb some mountains together. And I just, so. Power of nature.

Yeah.

As a recharge, I really just believe in the power of, the power of nature to kind of feed your soul.

Yeah, no, that's, that's so empowering to hear. And I think it's important. Right? It's like you live and breathe the brand in which you're, you're, you know, bringing to the world today. I want to talk about a day specifically because I think as an entrepreneurial show, everyone dreams of, you know, taking a company public, whether that's for, you know, what it means for the company, the team, yourself, like, whatever it may be. It's just like this glorified thing that I know we talked about, you know, like, not to put it on such a pedestal, but it's important moment and it's a, it's a company. Like, it changes the company and how you view it. So on the day you guys went public, bring us back to that day. How are you feeling? What did it mean to you and the team? And just bring, bring us back to all the emotions that you were feeling that day.

You know, it was a, it was a very emotional day. I think it's just, you know, first of all, in terms of going public, I don't believe it's the end. I believe it's really just another beginning. And if you think about what an IPO does is it's, it's a financing. It's a moment to put capital on the balance sheet, to continue to scale the mission. So that's really how we viewed it and why we went public is as a capital intensive business that wants to build a massive, massive company.

Yeah.

We needed capital to continue to grow. And so it's very important for, you know, for us it was a celebration and an emotional experience to feel, yeah. Like, okay, how far we've come, but also not treated as like, okay, like, we did it, we made it. Yeah.

You're not checking out.

It's like, okay. No, this is actually the beginning of the race, not the end of the race.

Yeah.

That day specifically was. It was a really emotional day. We woke up really early and I went with my two partners down to the stock exchange. And it's just like a very cool thing to see the banners and everything on the historic, iconic building. Absolutely. You know, build, you know, rewrite the future of food with us and this big, sweet green banners. And then you walk through these like halls of like, you know, kind of like the mecca of capitalism.

Yeah.

And it was amazing. We had all of our families there, a lot of our friends, and we invited a lot of our early supporters from along the way. So whether it be early investors, board members, you know, advisors, we invited, you know, many of the people, you know, most of our team was there, both our support center team. So like our what we got our corporate team.

Yeah.

But also many people from our field. We invited our longest tenured team members.

Wow.

That Were part of it. As part of it. We also gave every single employee a stock grant. That's where it was really, you know, for us, we have a value back, like an owner. So we wanted to actually make every single person an owner and do it. And. And so it was, you know, very emotional and, like, exciting. I go again before there's like, a ceremony and you get up and you kind of give a talk and you're surrounded by family, and then. And then you do, like, the bell ringing, which is like a very cool thing. And a funny side story is that my son came and he was. I don't know, he was maybe like one and a half or so at the time. And two. And the other day he goes. Because I was going to New York last week, and he goes to me, he's like, daddy, I want to come to New York. Like, what do you want to do in New York? He's like. He's like, well, I want to go on the subway. I want to go to the Museum of Ice Cream. I want to see the Empire, I want to see the Statue of Liberty, and I want to ring the bell.

Wow.

What an ambitious. You're gonna have to. I think he has no idea what that bell is, but he remembers how you do it. Yeah. Remembers coming up there and like, oh, my God. So very cool.

That is so cool.

Cool moment. But I think, you know, I think everyone said it at the time. It's like, you got to enjoy that moment and then savor it, but know that it's just the moment and you know. Yeah.

That.

That happiness or anything, it doesn't last. You gotta. You're back to the same company the next day. Yeah. And. And back to just the. The day to day of building a business.

No, that's. That's so cool to hear, man. And even to, like. I've one of my buddies, I don't know if you know, Peter Tuckman. He. He's known as like, the Einstein of Wall street. And he's worked in the stock exchange on the floor for like, 30 years. And he's given me some tours of the place and just so historic. And the gold ceilings and, like, I can't imagine, like, being there and, you know, taking a company public, it's. Hey, it's exhilarating. I'm sure. So I appreciate you. Appreciate you taking us back to that day and even to, like, post that day. How did your thinking change as CEO of running the business? Like, you know, with. With it being public and you're having, like, you know, shareholders that are, you know, people that can go buy the stock. How did that change in your world? Did it change? If so how? And just talk to us about how you felt even now, right. Like being a publicly traded company and having that just, you know, public representation of a company.

You know, we really tried to make sure that it, it's naturally going to change certain things but you really want to make sure it doesn't. It changes the right things and not the wrong things because you go from a company that is being graded in years to a company that's graded in quarters and that can be really challenging because it can drive the wrong decision making incentives. And so what I always, you know, but I am really pretty vocal about this to the team is I never want to make a decision for the short term. And you really have to kind of that those that value system, that way of thinking, you gotta repeat it and repeat it and repeat it and not do things like there's of course, you know what I like to say is long term focus some short term accountability. Like if we said we're gonna do something, we gotta do it. So it does create a public scoreboard and some accountability and you have to build trust with your shareholders in the market and that's really important. At the same time we never want to do something that is at the detriment of the long term. And I'll just give you like one stupid example. Sometimes we're like, we say like hey, we're gonna open eight stores in a quarter and it's the last days of the quarter. And like let's say we've opened seven and there are teams like well we can squeeze this last store in but it's not going to be a great. Yeah, it's not going to be the right day to open. It'd be better if we opened it next week, which is two days after.

Yeah, that's so funny.

I'm like the thinking we don't, I don't, that's not, who cares? That doesn't change the long term value of the business. Opening a store at the right time for the customers, community and the team. Focus on doing what's right. Not trying to like manage and game these things and numbers for, for the quarter. And I think yes, continuing to reiterate that, building a shareholder base of set and setting expectations in terms of what you're trying to build over the long term, totally you do have to build trust. We made some, you know, certain bets around for example automation that we're going to have to continue to prove until people believe that it's true. But we're very, you know, continue to be focused on the. Just focus on the long term, focused on the mission and playing for. For decades, not quarters.

Yeah, no, that's, I love to hear that too. And just speaking of leadership and having that future based thinking, I'd love to talk about just your typical day to day, like how has it obviously changed over the years but where do you primarily spend your time today and what does an average week look like for you?

Oh man, it's all over the place. It's more, I've kind of like quarterly cycle, like three month cycles. I'll say one of the most important parts of my job is the time I spend in restaurants. Something my team hears me say all the time is all of the answers are in the restaurant, all the answers are in the field. And so about one week out of the month I spend in market with teams. So last week I was in New York, you know, and you spend every day going kind of from restaurant, you know, through you know, four or five restaurants in a day. Meeting with your head coaches is what we call our managers. Doing roundtables with the area leaders, sometimes looking at new real estate, but really like being in the field shoulder to shoulder with your team because you see all of the things that you're working on and whether it be, you know, everything that you're touching from you know, the support center, it all shows up in the restaurant. And so that's a very important part of my job. I do, I, you know, we live in la, we have our headquarters in West Adams. So I spend most of my time there when I'm here. Yeah, you know, combination of, you know, strategy, we're working on culture leading, working directly with each of my one on ones, my, each of my, each of my executive reports and just kind of coaching, guiding, developing and working side by side with them. A lot of problem solving. And so it's hard to say what an average, you know, what a, what a normal week is. It's really, it's really dependent on, on what's going on. And then of course each quarter you have a cycle of board meetings and earnings and a lot of the external pieces and then another. And then the final piece of my job is a lot of, you know, kind of telling the story and so things like this and being a spokesperson for the brand and being out there and continuing to kind of spread the gospel of Sweetgreen in our mission.

Absolutely. I love that and I Love how you guys reference managers, head coaches.

When.

It comes to leadership and how you guys view that. Like, what. What is great leadership to you? And I'd love to hear sort of your thoughts on mentors or, you know, things that have inspired you when it comes to your leadership values and how you view that.

Yeah, for us, you know, great leader is empowering and, you know, not making decisions for you, but helping you get there on. Helping you get there and grow. And so at the head coach, you know, at the head coach level, the way, you know, a great leader is you go to the store when they're not there and, you know, a great leader should actually. It's this idea of like, the lazy CEO should actually not be needed in a way. Yeah, you're like, amazing. You know, you run a great store. Like your assistant, assistant coach and your chief leads should be able to run the show because you've taught them everything and they should be ready to take your job is kind of how we think about it. So that pipeline and bench is a critical piece of it. And it's why we call them head coaches. Is their. Their key job is developing future leaders. One thing that really drives our economic engine is internal promotion. Our best managers, our best head coaches came from within. So we aim for at least 75% of our head coaches to be promoted from within. And then our area leaders, similarly, we want that pipeline to continue to be fueled from people from the outside. And just again last week in New York, talking to, you know, going to visit, you know, some of our best stores and some of our, you know, sources, opportunity, the best stores. Like, you talk to them head coach, and they're like, I joined here four years ago as a dishwasher and now a manager here. And our manager make six figures plus. And it's just an amazing story that they've not. We've created this amazing opportunity for them and their family. Yeah, but they're the best. They're also the. The best leaders in. In, you know, they understand the business, their team loves them. It creates this, like, flywheel of positive emotions because people see that and they're like, I can do that too. Yeah. They see that person who did that and like, oh, I can be the next person to do that. So that's a huge. A huge focus for us, especially as we continue to scale. People say, what's the limiter to growth?

It's.

It's building that people pipeline and that bench, that bench of talent.

That's great. No, I love that philosophy. Throughout the journey Of Sweetgreen, did you have any key mentors or guiding just peers that helped you make critical decisions, whether that's people on the board or just people that you've looked up to that you've been able to meet throughout the years? What does that look like in your life in terms of mentorship and just role models to emulate how you view the business and growth?

Absolutely. I'd say one of the good things about starting a business when you're 22 is at least, you know. You know nothing. And I think we knew. We knew nothing and had a lot of humility and just asking, you know, humility and no shame. Yeah. So asking for favors and asking for help along the way and just assuming we knew nothing. So from a very early days, it was reaching out to the legends in the industry, the heroes that we kind of looked up to, somehow finding a way to get to know them and, you know, building relationships, maybe getting them to invest, maybe getting them to be advisors or join the board. And so, like, we really, you know, throughout the years, had so many people, so many, you know, for us, so many legends in, like, what I'd call the natural food world that were helpful, you know, going back to, like, very early days. When we opened our third restaurant, it was underneath the Honesty Headquarters.

Okay.

And, you know, Seth Goldman invested, became a, you know, helpful advisor. He introduced us to a guy named Gary Hirschberg. Gary was the founder of Stonyfield.

Yeah.

He joined our board, and he was great. He introduces this guy named Walter Raab. Walter Robb was the CEO of Whole Foods. Yeah. Introduces to Danny Meyer. Danny, you know, is another ledge. So, like, all of these people who are like you as a kid, you look up to, you know, you slowly get to meet and build these relationships with and just be a sponge for information. So over the years, we've had so. So many of them that have. I'm so grateful for so many of them. You know, Mike Hislop, who used to be CEO of Corner Bakery, you know, for now. And he, you know, he was on the board and a mentor of ours for a long time, and just all of these different. These different leaders that we've learned from and continue to learn from. I think we've also, you know, the three of us all come from entrepreneurial families, so all of our parents, you know, are immigrants to this country. And we watch them with that immigrant hustle and building their business. So I think we're all lucky to have our parents as mentors and support vehicles for us. So a lot of Credit to my father and my uncles. I've, you know, my uncles are all entrepreneurs as well, so a huge network there that has been helpful.

Absolutely.

And then I think there's a lot that you can do on your own, I think. And I mean. I mean, what you do here is like, the amount of information you can get on a podcast Today or on YouTube is unbelievable. It's like, in your pocket, you have the greatest.

All.

All the information in the world. You go talk. You could get, like, go talk and get information from any. Really anyone, and it's all out there. And then the last. I actually do believe in coaching. I do. I've worked with a coach for a while that, you know, kind of helps keep me honest and help.

That's great.

Pushed me on my goal. So as a company grows, you gotta grow with it and your job changes constantly, and you gotta continuously level up.

Yeah, that's. I love that. Well, before we wrap up here, Jonathan, one last question for you. You know, as you think about the future, I always like to lean into excitement. And for me, that's to end with what excites you the most as you think about the future of Sweet Green? The automation aspect or just the company overall?

I think what excites me the most is taking this. This brand that is still relatively small, we have 227 restaurants today, and bringing it to more communities, especially communities that don't have access to this type of food. And I think that coupled with. As we broaden our menu and, you know, move beyond just salads into things like protein plates.

Big fan over here.

Yeah, it's really just increases the types of people I can eat here. And I. And. And I think we're just at the beginning here from going from like, this, you know, exciting brand in certain major cities to being more of a ubiquitous and iconic company. And so it's really exciting to see. To see that journey.

Love that. Well, Jonathan, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show today. Before we wrap up here, where's the best place for everyone to connect with you, but also just to stay up to date on everything that sweetgreen has going on?

Yeah, we're on all the. All the regular channels. I'm on Twitter at Johnny Nemo, I'm on LinkedIn, and of course @Sweetgreen on. On all the different channels.

Well, I'll be sure to link everything down below and once again, really appreciate your time. And thanks so much for having us here. This location here today. I'm. And for everyone watching, you know, or if you weren't watching and you're listening, make sure you go check out the video because we're here in the Sweet Greens location. But once again, Jonathan, thank you so much for taking the time and for everyone tuning in, thanks so much for watching, and I'll talk to you guys soon.