Health & Wellness
The Rise and Fall of Sweetgreen’s Millennial Energy Lunch
Jan
Final spring, Sweetgreen did one thing surprising, at the least insofar because the menu changes of a fast-casual salad chain may be described that manner: It added fries. In interviews, the corporate’s “chief idea officer,” Nicolas Jammet, paid lip service to “reevaluating and redefining quick meals,” however I think that Sweetgreen was additionally “reevaluating and redefining” find out how to generate profits in a world that appeared poised to maneuver on from shopping for what the corporate was attempting to promote.
Within the first two months of final yr, Sweetgreen’s inventory value had declined greater than 30 %. The corporate had already made vital modifications, dropping seed oils, including “protein plates,” and hiring a bunch of robots in an obvious effort to cater to the early 2020s’ three defining eating traits: the MAHA motion, the protein fixation, and the push to chop prices by eliminating human labor. However not even air-fried potatoes may cease Sweetgreen’s free fall. In August, with operational losses reaching $26.4 million, the chain fired staff, and additionally the fries. Because the yr ended, Nathaniel Ru, who co-founded the corporate in 2007, stepped down from his position. At the moment, a share of Sweetgreen inventory prices lower than $8. In late 2024, it was greater than $43.
That is outstanding as a result of, for a golden decade or so, Sweetgreen was the way forward for lunch. Individuals, particularly ones who had been youngish and labored on computer systems, had been toting inexperienced paper luggage round coastal cities (and later, smaller cities and non-coastal cities) en masse. Silicon Valley was injecting capital right into a restaurant as if it had been a software program start-up.
Sweetgreen’s early success was not a fluke. As a restaurant, it actually did do one thing unimaginable. The corporate put high-quality natural produce in fascinating mixtures, incorporating recent herbs and world elements, and going heavy on crunch and citrus. It sourced from small farms that it listed proudly on chalkboards inside every retailer, interesting squarely to a cohort who knew they actually ought to be buying on the farmers’ market, even when they normally received their groceries from Instacart, guiltily. And Sweetgreen was an early adopter of on-line ordering, permitting its clients to waste much less time ready in line. When a Sweetgreen opened in my metropolis, in 2016, changing a restaurant that had been serving hamburgers for 65 years, I used to be enthusiastic about it the identical manner I used to be excited when fiber web got here to my neighborhood: Lastly, a greater option to stay.
In all this, the chain was achingly of its period, when excessive functioning within the workplace (productiveness) and on the mobile stage (well being) turned irretrievably intertwined. The widespread adoption of smartphones invented new classes of aspiration, new methods to promote issues, new expectations that staff be accessible and productive, together with throughout lunch hour. The wellness influencer—a determine whose job title didn’t exist just some years earlier—instantly began to look like one of many extra highly effective figures in American life. Millennials graduated, grew up, received jobs, and emerged as not only a chronological class however a advertising phase.
Round this time, numerous venture-backed start-ups appeared to promote them new variations of stuff they already used. The stuff was legitimately nicer, however solely a little bit; the actual innovation was in the way it was offered. Largely, this meant minimalist packaging that was purpose-built to look good on a small display screen, and advertising copy that made canny nods to duty but in addition enjoyable, utilizing a company voice that appeared like an actual particular person’s, even when that particular person was type of embarrassing and obsessive about the grind (“you’re going to guac this week. #monday 👊,” learn the caption on an Instagram put up from Sweetgreen in 2015). In brief order, many Individuals swapped out their YMCA stationary-bike courses for SoulCycle; their yellow cabs for rideshares; their generic exercise gear for color-blocked, cellphone-pocketed leggings made out of, like, recycled water bottles.
And these similar Individuals deserted the salad bar—for many years, a miserable fixture of the workday lunch—in favor of Sweetgreen. It was a wholesome, environment friendly meal for wholesome, environment friendly folks (at the least aspirationally), an influence lunch for many who didn’t have assistants or expense accounts however who had been nonetheless decided to really feel in management, presumably formidable. Particularly after 2018—when the corporate started putting in cabinets in workplace lobbies and WeWork cafeterias, from which staff may retrieve a preordered salad with out leaving the constructing—it simply turned a default, an almost frictionless calorie-delivery car for folks whose bosses had been positively being attentive to whether or not their little Slack bubble was inexperienced or not.
Sweetgreen was what you ate whereas listening to, if not the Hamilton soundtrack, then a self-improvement podcast at 1.5 velocity, ripping by way of emails or buying on-line earlier than dutifully composting your fantastically designed, biodegradable bowl. It was the proper gasoline for the grinning strivers of the lengthy 2010s, when a greater world was potential, and in reality one thing you could possibly purchase. When an expensive pal of mine received married, what she needed to eat greater than the rest whereas being poked and prettied within the lodge suite was Sweetgreen. It was probably the most dependable, most scrumptious, least dangerous meal both of us may suppose to choose up at an exceptionally frenetic second. But it surely additionally made sense, spiritually, on a day that usually requires whole command over each one’s look and numerous spreadsheets—a day that could be a public declaration of hope for the longer term, and, in some methods, the primary day of your grownup life.
Sweetgreen offered salad, which you eat, but it surely additionally offered ethical superiority, which you construct an id round. (By 2016, BuzzFeed was posting lists about “21 Truths for Everybody Obsessed With Sweetgreen.”) The corporate capitalized on this to promote not simply lunch however a life-style model. It staged an annual music competition; collaborated with cool trend folks on limited-edition housewares and equipment; offered branded Nalgenes and costly, earth-toned sweatshirts in its capacious webstore; posted its playlists to Spotify. Think about anybody willingly re-creating the sonic atmosphere inside their native McDonald’s at dwelling and you’ll understand how distinctive Sweetgreen is, or was, amongst casual-restaurant chains.
Though McDonald’s and its ilk received massive by serving as broad an viewers as potential, Sweetgreen derived a lot of its cachet from projecting a stage of elitism. This, because it seems, shouldn’t be the key to market dominance. Sweetgreen has all the time been comparatively costly, and it has gotten extra so: In 2014, a kale Caesar with rooster was $8.85; this week, in some areas, it’s greater than $14.75, which is sort of $2 increased than may be defined by inflation alone. Perhaps extra necessary is the impression that it’s costly. At the moment’s customers are extremely price-sensitive, Jonathan Maze, the editor in chief of the commerce publication Restaurant Enterprise, advised me, and “Sweetgreen has had a status as an costly place to eat for what you’re getting.”
There’s additionally the problem that many Individuals don’t like salad fairly sufficient to truly need it often. In a 2024 YouGov ballot, 40 % of respondents stated they ate salad greater than as soon as every week, which could appear to be rather a lot till you do not forget that a few of them had been absolutely mendacity, and also you think about what number of extra folks favor meals that isn’t chopped-up uncooked greens: Final yr, the nation’s high 5 quick-service eating places had been, so as, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, Taco Bell, and Wendy’s. “It’s actually troublesome to persuade numerous those that salad is one thing they’re going to eat on a frequent sufficient foundation to assist a sequence like that,” Maze stated. A few years in the past, he was driving his then-10-year-old son and a pal dwelling from baseball follow, and the pal was excitedly speaking about consuming Chipotle for dinner. The reminiscence has, clearly, caught with him: “Can I realistically think about my son’s 10-year-old pal bragging about going to Sweetgreen?” He can not. I can’t both.
Sweetgreen went public in 2021, and it has not been constantly worthwhile since. No quantity of savvy advertising may make the salad-haters change their minds. However then the individuals who used to love Sweetgreen additionally began abandoning it. Within the third quarter of final yr, the typical Sweetgreen retailer’s gross sales declined nearly 10 %; the drop was most vital in Los Angeles and the Northeast, two of the corporate’s core markets. (I requested Maze the place these clients had been going as an alternative, and he stated possibly Elevating Cane’s, which focuses on rooster fingers.)
A few of this may be defined by costs, however loads of different eating places have raised their costs and never seen gross sales fall off a cliff. I feel Sweetgreen didn’t change a lot because the world round it did. A $15 salad was by no means actually an funding in a single’s well being, but it surely definitely doesn’t really feel like that on this economic system—and in addition to, that second has handed. The optimism of the earlier period has given option to one thing extra nihilistic. The individuals who had been as soon as going to guac this week at the moment are quiet quitting and scarfing tallow. The “energy” in Millennial energy lunch has, largely, been changed by impotence and apathy. WeWork went bankrupt; Hamilton turned cringe; attempting so onerous to do the precise issues on a regular basis began to really feel pointless and naive. Once I advised a pal and fellow former Sweetgreen fanatic about this story, he stated, “What’s the purpose of consuming a salad after we’re all going to die?” He was joking, sort of.
