Sweetgreen is an American fast casual restaurantchain that serves salads. It was founded in August 2007 by Nicolas Jammet, Nathaniel Ru, and Jonathan Neman, three months after they graduated from Georgetown University's undergraduatebusiness school. Sweetgreen's corporate headquarters moved to the Los Angeles area from Washington, D.C., in 2016. As of March 2019, it had 91 stores in operation in eight states across the United States, including California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Texas, and the District of Columbia. The company has over 3,500 employees. In November 2018, it was announced that Sweetgreen had raised in funding. Sweetgreen won the 2020 Webby Award for Food & Drink in the category Apps, Mobile & Voice.
Menu
The seasonal menu is a rotation of three regional, seasonal dishes in each market. Sweetgreen's executive chef, Michael Stebner, has been with the company since 2014.
In the summer of 2015 Sweetgreen partnered with Chef Dan Barber to create Blue Hill's "wastED" salad which uses food "scraps that are commonly thrown away. The purpose of the collaboration was to teach consumers about the country's food waste problem and encourage people to use plant parts that are often "wasted."
Jon and Vinny
Upon entering the Los Angeles market in 2015, Sweetgreen teamed up with the dynamic chef duo Jon and Vinny to create the "Za'atar Salad." A portion of the sales went directly to support the local partner for Sweetgreen in schools.
In 2015, in the lead up to the Sweetlife music festival, Sweetgreen collaborated with musician Kendrick Lamar leading up to his second appearance at the sweetlife music festival. The salad, named "Beets Don't Kale My Vibe," was a pun playing off one of Lamar's most well known lyrics. The collaboration received an enormous amount of press and coverage with over 100 articles featuring the salad, and 10% of proceeds from the salad went to FoodCorps to connect kids to real food.
Momofuku
Sweetgreen collaborated with David Chang of Momofuku to create a new salad dressing that was featured in the New York locations during the summer of 2014. The "Hozon Salad" used Momofuku's sunflower hosanna in the dressing on a bowl of kale, sunflower sprouts, kale, roasted chicken, onions, carrots, cucumbers, missed seeds and basil.
Cookbook author and New York Times columnist Mark Bittman worked with Sweetgreen in the Spring of 2014 to create the April VB6 Salad. Bittman created the VB6 diet where you eat only vegan before 6pm in order to lose weight and "restore health."
Funding
Sweetgreen raised its initial $375,000 of startup funding from investors including the three founders' parents, Joe Bastianich, Seth Goldman, and Washington's Latino Economic Development Center. In 2013, it accepted a $22 million investment from Revolution Growth, a venture capital fund founded by Steve Case. In 2014, it received $18.5 million in investment from Revolution Growth. In 2015, it raised an additional $35 million in investment under the lead of T. Rowe Price with contributions from existing investor Revolution Growth. The company has raised over $95 million to date. The startup recently raised a $200 million Series H round led by Fidelity that valued the company at more than $1 billion. This round brings Sweetgreen's total amount of funding to $365 million.
Sweetlife Festival
The Sweetlife Festival took place at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland through 2016. It included performances from artists and chefs, including performances by The 1975, Halsey, Flume, and 1980s favorite Blondie. The festival also featured a handful of local DC-area artists and chefs. 2016 was the seventh year sweetlife has been held at Merriweather Post Pavilion and produced in continued partnership with I.M.P., an independent concert promoter and event production company.
