Why Sweetgreen Wants Your Brand In Its Stores

0:10Hey folks, I'm Ray Latif and you're listening to the number one podcast for the food and beverage industry, Taste Radio. This episode features an interview with Nicholas Jemay, the co-founder of Sweetgreen, who explains how the mission-driven restaurant chain is establishing itself as the standard bearer for healthy, affordable, and convenient food. Get access to limited swag and exclusive content by becoming a Taste Radio VIP. It's easy for you to join that group of very important people, just head to tasteradio.com slash VIP and take one minute to sign up. 16 years ago, Sweetgreen set out to redefine how consumers perceive fast food by offering them crave-worthy meals made with clean and traceable ingredients and sold at an affordable price.

1:03Co-founder Nicholas Jemay has long been at the forefront of Sweetgreen's menu strategy, and in his role as chief concept officer, he is tasked with maintaining the company's high standards for quality and consistency in every bowl, snack, and beverage sold in its restaurants. With nearly 100 locations across the U.S. and plans for 1 ,000 total by 2030, his job is becoming increasingly complex. And yet, his goal is to continuously improve customer experience by way of new flavors, ingredients, and systems that live up to the standard of Sweetgreen's original mission and vision. In the following interview, I spoke with Nicholas about the process by which Sweetgreen curates its offerings and designs new products, how he vets CPG brands before adding them to the menu, how the company utilizes technology to enhance productivity without compromising culture, and lessons for new and emerging entrepreneurs about how to build a sustainable business.

2:09Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now I'm honored to be sitting down with Nicholas Jemay, the co-founder of the one and only Sweetgreen. Nicholas, great to see you. Thanks for having me. It is pretty amazing to be sitting down with you today because we are embarking on a new and amazing collaboration between Sweetgreen and Luke's Lobster. Tell us all about it. That's right. So this month actually marks the 10-year anniversary of us opening our first restaurant in Boston, which actually we're sitting in right now. So Boylston, Back Bay, we opened this 10 years ago. And, you know, we've been growing here ever since.

2:42And we wanted to really celebrate that moment and just becoming part of the New England and Boston community. And couldn't think of a better way to do that than by putting a lobster roll salad on the menu with Luke. Luke is also a longtime friend. We went to school together at Georgetown, and we were classmates in an entrepreneurship class. So we've seen his journey along the way this last 15 years as well. So it's exciting to finally get to collaborate and work on something fun together and just celebrate the Boston and, you know, Northeast community. Absolutely. Talk about the Boston guests.

3:11How are they different or similar or wildly different than other guests at other Sweet Greens around the country? I wouldn't say anything wildly different. I just think there's a lot of pride here, right? And people love where they're from and things that are from Boston. And so for us, it was really exciting to, you know, to see that and work with a brand like Luke's and a product like, you know, Lobster, which is so important and, you know, significant here in the supply chains. And so it was really exciting to bring that to our menu and get to tell that story. I recently spoke with Luke. Not recently.

3:41I just spoke with Luke, just before I spoke with you. And he talks a lot about how the emphasis on better for you, healthy quality is inherent in the Luke's Lobster brand. And it is very much aligned with that of the Sweetgreen mission and brand itself, delivering healthier, more affordable food to more communities. But can we narrow in on those two words, that of healthy and affordable? How would you define healthy, first of all? Yeah, you know, for us, we've been on a mission these last 16 years to just kind of redefine fast food and create food that is clean, nutritious, and traceable with a great supply chain.

4:19But most importantly, delicious, right? None of that matters if the food is not craveable. And so for us, it's been this journey of creating a menu, an offering, and kind of a whole experience that customers can get excited about eating, but also know that they're making a great decision for the farmers we source from, for their own health. I mean, that all is really important, but customers ultimately want to enjoy and crave what they're going to order. So how does taste and, I guess, the better-for-you nature of what you sell align in the mind of your consumers? Yeah, I think we've done an interesting job as we look at our menu and our offering of taking some of these really craveable flavors and these kind of comfort foods out there and translating them into bowls and entrees and plates that take those flavors, but really, you know, introducing ingredients that are super well-sourced, clean, but still hearty.

5:07And our menu has that range of like really light vegetal salads all the way to really hearty chicken and rice plates. And so making sure that range, that optionality is there for any consumer, whether they want a really filling, calorically dense, nutritionally dense food, an offering. Or if someone wants a lighter kind of summer salad, that range is there and people can option to that experience. How about affordable? Yeah, you know, for us, it's been really important to make the food accessible. And, you know, we started 16 years ago and we've grown now to 20 states and in all these different communities.

5:38And quite frankly, opening in some communities, we never thought we could. But having that range on pricing on our menu is also really important. So, you know, you can walk into any sweet green and get a$10 bowl. So you can start with a$10 bowl. And as you then add, you know, lots of proteins and cheeses and as many ingredients as you want, the price will go up. But making sure we have that entry point and that range in our pricing is really important. Also for us, you know, we spend a lot of time and energy and money sourcing the way we do. And so for us, really sharing that story about the quality of our ingredients is so important.

6:07So customers understand what the value they're getting for the price. And if you walk into any sweet green, there is, you know, we share all of the sources of our food on the wall. So there is a chalkboard that lists every ingredient and where it's from. So customers can understand the quality of the supply chain, the quality of the ingredients. Do customers understand the relative benefit of eating, say, a$10 bowl, sweet green bowl, versus, say, a$10 grab-and-go hamburger and fries that you can get from in either direction on Boylston Street here? You know, it's a story that we're constantly trying to tell, and I'm sure we can do, you know, continue telling that story and sharing all the amazing producers and growers and farmers that we work with.

6:45But ultimately, I think what drives customers back is the relationship with the brand, but also just, again, the craveability of the food. I think customers decide where to eat based on what they feel like eating. There may be a day where you say, like, I should eat like this, or I feel like I should make the right decision, but ultimately what drives your decision is desire. And I think making sure that the food tastes good and speaks to them and appeals to their taste buds and appeals to that desire is really what drives ultimately that transaction. That's a big part of your job. In addition to being the co-founder of Sweetgreen, you are the chief concept officer, which is a title I haven't heard too many times before.

7:19Take us through an average day as the chief concept officer. Yeah, you know, I have two co-founders and the three of us started Sweetgreen together 16 years ago. And over the years, our roles have changed. You know, we have all kind of pinched in different parts of the organization. But the parts of the company that I have really mostly focused on for that 16 years is anything around our product. So food, supply chain, sustainability, and then a lot of the physical experiences around some of the design and most recently some of the automation that we've been working on. And so really thinking about how all those things come together around the physical experience in the store.

7:50When you are adding a new item to the menu, what's that process like? Yeah, we have a group of individuals of the team made up of our culinary team, marketing, insights, a bunch of really talented folks on our team that really help us think about our multi-year kind of menu pipeline and culinary strategies. Just really understanding, you know, what our customer wants, you know, what stories we want to tell around food. And then we start to put together a really exciting offering and things that we want to test and then things that, you know, we're ready to launch. So it's really a combination of understanding how we want to continually broaden the offering and really make sure that we are appealing to different customers as we bring Sweetgreen to all these different communities around the country.

8:28And then just really, we spend a lot of time trying to understand our customer and trying to listen to them and see what they, you know, what they want out of Sweetgreen, what they're not getting, what they wish they had more of, or what they love and how do we double down on that. So a lot of it is really with a deep understanding of our customer. And then for us also a deep understanding of our food ethos and, you know, things that we want to introduce to the customer, things that we want to, stories we want to tell them around food. And so for us, it's kind of that combination of listening, but also leading the customer.

8:54Even if you know your customer really well, you can sometimes be surprised by what they think of a particular dish or a particular product. Any big surprises or mistakes that you can look back on and learn from? Yeah, we've had, you know, lots of mistakes over the years. I think that's where we get our greatest lessons. You know, one really interesting moment for us, I would say, is, you know, we just launched our chicken and rice bowl last season. And the reaction was really strong. Our customers loved seeing that heartier end of our range on our menu. It is a plate with no lettuce, so it is hearty wild rice, chicken, these bold, spicy, smoky flavors.

9:31And I think it really appealed to customers and especially appealed to maybe some folks that didn't consider themselves salad eaters or maybe typical sweet green customers. So just to be clear, the typical sweet green customer is looking for the more vegetarian, vegan offering. And what you're serving with that chicken chipotle bowl is very much not that. No, I mean, the majority of our bowls actually have protein in them. So I think we are a great haven for vegetarians and vegans. And you can come here and get such a wide range of customizable options. But the majority of our customers are eating chicken or protein or cheese or all of the above.

10:05So I would say our average customer is eating protein every day. And they're eating meaty protein as well. Talk about your partnership with meaty. Yeah, meaty was one of those brands that we tested in our culinary pipeline. really exciting alternative protein company. You know, we do a wide range of R &D, exploring different brands around all these different categories. That was one category. We had just been tasting things for years and never really saw anything that fit our food ethos that wasn't highly processed. And so for us, when we saw meaty, we got excited about how clean it was just being made from pretty much mushroom root and seeing the macros on it.

10:40So we tested that for a month in our culinary lab in Culver City with some customers and got really incredible feedback on it. So yeah, really big fan of that product. Did you know about the brand before you introduced? I mean, how long ago did you know about the brand and its development before you brought it onto your menus? Yeah, we had been following that brand for quite a bit. We're actually an early investor in the brand also. And like I said, we're pretty close to a lot of the innovation that's happening in food. We get to kind of see and hear about things early on and track them, which is exciting.

11:10And there's a lot of really exciting innovation happening in food right now. So that was one that we were really excited to put in front of customers and test. And yeah, great product. Is the product or is the ingredient branded on your menus as meaty? It was on the menu for a month and it was, yes. How do you vet brands that are on the sweet green menu? You know, you have snacks, you have beverages. Q Chocolate is one of the snacks that you have. I think it's the only snack that you actually have that's branded. in terms of national brands, it's Olipop, Spindrift, ProudSource. You have some regional kombucha brands and HealthAid, Rowdy Mermaid and Mother Kombucha.

11:50How do you vet these brands? How do you decide which belongs where and, you know, why you're choosing, say, a Spindrift over another seltzer? Yeah, you know, I would say historically, we never really had many brands in our restaurants. We're very focused on the Sweetgreen brand, our Sweetgreen products. Your tea, which is right in In our tea in front of us, yeah. And, you know, we've slowly been just exploring the world of this kind of next generation of food brands that I think are creating great products with a similar ethos and a great supply chain and just starting to test them out. So for us, it's just kind of a journey of building this category on our menu, especially around the desserts.

12:26Our first dessert was actually a sweet green branded dessert. We launched our crispy rice treat along with Chef Malcolm Livingston, who was our chef in residence and an incredibly talented chef and partner. and it was really a joy to work with him. He's really a star. And I think he created, you know, what I think is one of the best bites on our menu. So if you haven't had it, you should definitely try it. It's really, really delicious. And again, it is leading with that brand, the Sweetgreen brand on it. And we wanted to kind of have that nostalgic nod to this, you know, very well-known dessert treat, but kind of rethink the ingredients and the sweeteners that go into it.

13:01So really put our nod from a foodie that's a point of view onto it. But there are already better for you, I'm going to just say it, rice crispy greens out there. How do you decide whether you can innovate and create a product in-house versus one that's already out there as its own brand? Yeah, you know, I think that's something that we're on a journey of right now. I think we want to maintain a healthy balance with sweet green branded products where we think it makes sense and then really exploring some other awesome off-the-shelf brands that fit our ethos. So I think this is kind of a new world for us of adding these brands into our restaurants.

13:29So we're kind of, you know, testing and learning as we go. But you're going to keep the bottled sweet green tea? We will keep the bottled sweet green tea. These are incredibly popular. So founders who operate tea brands out there, there's no shot? We're always open to tasting everything. So we're constantly curious about all great products out there. Absolutely. Nick, you mentioned technology and you have a lot of technology embedded in that impacts how Sweetgreen operates on a daily basis. How do you consider and utilize technology to improve the customer experience? Yeah, I would say in our life at Swee Green, we've been really early adopters of trying to think about how to leverage technology to enhance both the customer and team member experience.

14:10You know, whether that was us being really early adopters of having digital ordering and our Swee Green app, which we've had for over a decade now. And is extremely popular. Yeah, it is a, you know, the majority of our business is digital. And so, you know, really leaning in there. And, you know, for us, that was using technology to really think about how to remove friction from the experience for our guests and how to just make it a faster, more convenient experience for them. I would say on the team member side, we're also leveraging technology and in a lot of exciting ways from building different, you know, tools in the kitchen to make their jobs easier around all the prep we're doing to, you know, most recently we did also open our first automated Sweetgreen in Naperville, Illinois.

14:47So that is, I would say, you know, kind of a larger case of us leveraging technology to kind of rethink the whole experience from team member to customer. The Infinite Kitchen is your automated restaurant, or I guess, how would you describe it? Is it Sweetgreen Infinite Kitchen? Yeah, it is a Sweetgreen restaurant that is powered by a Sweetgreen Infinite Kitchen. So that is the machine that sits within, the engine that sits within the restaurant. So how does Infinite Kitchen fit into this idea of culture being the entire ethos of Sweetgreen, which is I know you and your co-founders have talked a lot about the importance of culture.

15:25But when the process is primarily automated, how does that work with that culture of people? You know, we've spent a lot of time thinking about this. And obviously, we were fortunate to partner with and acquire the Spice team, a local Boston, you know, four MIT students that had the same mission as us. And we joined forces about a year and a half ago to kind of, you know, combine our superpowers. And theirs is around this, you know, technology they were building around assembly. And for us, the bigger vision is that how do we really rethink the whole fast food experience and really think about where the pain points are today and where there's opportunity to just create a different type of team member experience that can be more focused on hospitality and the more value-add tasks.

16:09You know, I think for us looking at the last year and a half, we spent a lot of time on the actual technology and automation, clearly. But we spent equally, if not more time on kind of designing the experience around the Infinite Kitchen and really thinking about every touch point. And really trying to build an experience that removes even more friction and is more human. So, you know, we're still doing all the prep in the restaurants that we do. And, you know, that can continue to be optimized over time, obviously. But for us, really thinking about, you know, humans, you know, our team members cooking and prepping every day fresh.

16:43And then really thinking about when you walk into this new format, the experience is pretty different. You know, when you walk into a sweet green at peak lunch, it can be pretty intense, right? Just like any restaurant, right? There's that rush. You're starting to get busy right now. There's a line out the door. You're trying to move fast. And our team members are trying to be fast, friendly, and accurate. And, you know, I have so much gratitude for our team members that bring that to life every day. And they do a brilliant job. But, you know, thinking about this experience that we're building at Naperville and where, you know, when you walk in, we now have team members that can be focused fully on just greeting our guests and talking them through our menu and kind of being this host to be like, you know, especially if you're a new customer, you've never been to a Sweetgreen.

17:19Walking into a Sweetgreen or any restaurant at their rush can be pretty intense. And so, you know, this Naperville experience is pretty different. So you have our team members now that can be redeployed to interacting with guests in a more hospitality-focused way. And then once the Infinite Kitchen produces your bowl, it does land on a finishing station where our team members can finish it with fresh herbs and citrus and some of the ingredients that, you know, come on at the end. And then it's handed to the team member, to the team member hands the bowl to the customer. So it's kind of meant to be an experience that even though it is powered by the infinite kitchen, has more human touch and is more hospitality focused.

17:57Does automation make personalization easier or does that human element create a more personalized opportunity for your customers? You know, I think in our current restaurants today, our team members do a brilliant job of it. I think at peak rush, it can be really tough, right, to be fast, friendly and accurate at the same time. And that's why I get excited about the Naperville Infinite Kitchen restaurant is because I think it creates the opportunity for even more interaction, more personalized touch, higher touch, and more hospitality throughout the day. It might be challenging, I would think, to have an automated dish that's a limited time offering.

18:36You have, or Sweetgreen has aligned with a lot of well-known chefs and founders of brands, including Luke Holden from Luke's, David Chang, Dan Barber, Nancy Silverton. These people are top of mind for me when I'm thinking about some of your limited time offerings. How do you think about partnerships with chefs, with CPG companies, with other restaurants? Yeah, you know, I think we're very focused on continuing to just offer products that we think are exciting, delicious, craveable, and then tell a story around food. And so many of these chef collaborations started very, came from a very organic place of these chefs were either, you know, early partners, investors, or just customers of sweet green.

19:14You know, we'd find them in line sometimes. And we, you know, and we joke that we use a lot of the same farmers and producers. And so we said, let's do something together. And that's how it started originally. And then, you know, we just continued to find chefs and partners that wanted to tell great food stories. You know, our David Chang bowl was actually a celebration of kelp, right? One of the most climate positive ingredients. And he made this incredible bowl that had chicken and kelp and tingly spiced sweet potatoes that was so delicious and craveable, but allowed us to also tell a story around the importance of these really climate positive ingredients.

19:44And so for us, it's an opportunity to just create these delicious, craveable moments, but also tell great food stories. How do you tell that story aside from the food itself? Or do you even try to tell that story beyond what the customer is eating? Telling a great story around food is like, it's like 10 dimensions, right? It's not just, you know, the content you're creating and the, you know, the actual product itself. But for us, we first and foremost are very focused on just creating products that are really exciting and craveable and kind of like speak for themselves. Then I think how we tell the story, whether it's through, you know, great partnerships and content and the different channels of how we tell that story is, you know, going on podcasts, for example.

20:25But for us, really, the focus is on creating really craveable, great products that customers can get excited about. And I think that does most of the job for you. Nick, I've interviewed a couple founders who have cited you as having a big influence on their journeys. Melanie Massarin, Becca Milstein, the founders of Gia and Fishwife, respectively. Do you do a lot of mentoring of other founders? Do you work with a lot of entrepreneurs on how to build their businesses? Yeah, you know, I think I look back to myself as a young entrepreneur and young founder. And I always surrounded myself with founders that had experience in our industry and other industries.

21:09And it's where I learned so many of my lessons and where I was so inspired. And so for me, it was really important to maintain this community of entrepreneurs and creators and founders, even today, 16 years in. And aside from, you know, whatever help or guidance I can give them, I learned from them as well. And so for me, it's just this constant curiosity of understanding, you know, where the boundaries are being pushed today, what is happening in the food world, what's being created, what is next. And, you know, Melanie and Becker are two of my favorite founders in the world. I think they're both incredible, incredible entrepreneurs.

21:40And so, you know, as much as they think maybe, you know, I'm giving them some guidance, I'm learning a ton from them. When you say pushing the boundaries of what's next, how do you identify trends or flavors or ingredients that are that sort of next level of the food industry? Yeah, I think it comes back to just understanding the customer in the market and what people are wanting out there, right? I think whether it's someone like Becca who took, you know, one of the most, you know, standard and old school products and industries and just reinvented it with proper, with a really strong supply chain and great storytelling and great branding.

22:12to Melanie, who's kind of like creating a whole new category in a way or creating a different product or her own take on that category. And she is one of the best storytellers I've ever seen. And so I think a lot of it is just understanding how customer needs are shifting. And I think Melanie, for example, saw that more and more people were looking for alternatives to be able to go out and enjoy a drink without having alcohol in it. And I think the versatility of her product is very often paired or mixed with alcohol, but doesn't have to be. So I think she's created this kind of behavior. She's like, she understood this behavior and this customer need state that was out there and created a really exciting product for that.

22:51And they both have phenomenal branding. Ghia is beautiful in terms of its package design, label design, as is Fishwife. Sweetgreen is also really beautiful in terms of its branding. How do you go about creating a great brand, a great visual aesthetic for your brand? You know, I would say my co-founder Nate leads brand and marketing and grateful to have had him here for the last 16 years. He's really, he's very talented. And I think him and the team along with him have just, you know, constantly thought about what our brand is, what the brand voice is, what it stands for, and then how to translate that, you know, creatively and aesthetically and think about that evolution.

23:29and constantly be thinking about how and when that needs to change and evolve and how we express ourselves in different places regionally with different products and with different channels. I think our brand and business has grown and evolved so much that aesthetically it also needs to evolve. And so I think our team does an incredible job there. You have a lot going on at Sweetgreen. You're constantly growing, constantly introducing new products, expanding your reach to a broader consumer base, it feels like there's a lot to protect. But does that hold you back from wanting to do things that might be a little risky, that might be a little on the edge in terms of, you know, where Sweetgreen goes?

24:13I guess what I'm asking is, do you have to be more cautious about things like how you speak to the consumer or how you introduce new products or using the brand in a certain way and lending the brand name, you know, to certain organizations and groups? You know, I think we've always been fairly protective and conservative there. You know, we've always erred on the side of just protecting our brand, but also having fun with it. So I think we'll just maintain that constant balance. I think even as the world evolves, I think just maintaining the strength of your brand and who you associate with is always important.