In the first two months of last year, Sweetgreen’s stock price had declined more than 30 percent. The company had already made significant changes, dropping seed oils, adding “protein plates,” and hiring a bunch of robots in an apparent effort to cater to the early 2020s’ three defining dining trends: the MAHA movement, the protein fixation, and the push to cut costs by eliminating human labor. But not even air-fried potatoes could stop Sweetgreen’s free fall. In August, with operational losses reaching $26.4 million, the chain fired workers, and also the fries. As the year ended, Nathaniel Ru, who co-founded the company in 2007, stepped down from his role. Today, a share of Sweetgreen stock costs less than $8. In late 2024, it was more than $43.
Sweetgreen’s early success was not a fluke. As a restaurant, it truly did do something incredible. The company put high-quality organic produce in interesting combinations, incorporating fresh herbs and global ingredients, and going heavy on crunch and citrus. It sourced from small farms that it listed proudly on chalkboards inside each store, appealing squarely to a cohort who knew they really should be shopping at the farmers’ market, even if they usually got their groceries from Instacart, guiltily. And Sweetgreen was an early adopter of online ordering, allowing its customers to waste less time waiting in line. When a Sweetgreen opened in my city, in 2016, replacing a restaurant that had been serving hamburgers for 65 years, I was excited about it the same way I was excited when fiber internet came to my neighborhood: Finally, a better way to live.
In all this, the chain was achingly of its era, when high functioning in the office (productivity) and on the cellular level (health) became irretrievably intertwined. The widespread adoption of smartphones invented new categories of aspiration, new ways to sell things, new expectations that workers be available and productive, including during lunch hour. The wellness influencer—a figure whose job title did not exist just a few years earlier—suddenly started to seem like one of the more powerful figures in American life. Millennials graduated, grew up, got jobs, and emerged as not just a chronological category but a marketing segment.
Around this time, a number of venture-backed start-ups appeared to sell them new versions of stuff they already used. The stuff was legitimately nicer, but only a little; the real innovation was in how it was sold. Largely, this meant minimalist packaging that was purpose-built to look good on a small screen, and marketing copy that made canny nods to responsibility but also fun, using a corporate voice that sounded like a real person’s, even if that person was sort of embarrassing and obsessed with the grind (“you’re going to guac this week. #monday 👊,” read the caption on an Instagram post from Sweetgreen in 2015). In short order, many Americans swapped out their YMCA stationary-bike classes for SoulCycle; their yellow cabs for rideshares; their generic workout gear for color-blocked, cellphone-pocketed leggings made out of, like, recycled water bottles.
And these same Americans abandoned the salad bar—for decades, a depressing fixture of the workday lunch—in favor of Sweetgreen. It was a healthy, efficient meal for healthy, efficient people (at least aspirationally), a power lunch for those who didn’t have assistants or expense accounts but who were nonetheless determined to feel in control, possibly formidable. Especially after 2018—when the company began installing shelves in office lobbies and WeWork cafeterias, from which workers could retrieve a preordered salad without leaving the building—it just became a default, a nearly frictionless calorie-delivery vehicle for people whose bosses were definitely paying attention to whether their little Slack bubble was green or not...
Sweetgreen sold salad, which you eat, but it also sold moral superiority, which you build an identity around. (By 2016, BuzzFeed was posting lists about “21 Truths for Everyone Obsessed With Sweetgreen.”) The company capitalized on this to sell not just lunch but a lifestyle brand. It staged an annual music festival; collaborated with cool fashion people on limited-edition housewares and accessories; sold branded Nalgenes and expensive, earth-toned sweatshirts in its capacious webstore; posted its playlists to Spotify. Imagine anyone willingly re-creating the sonic ambience inside their local McDonald’s at home and you will realize how unique Sweetgreen is, or was, among casual-restaurant chains.
Although McDonald’s and its ilk got big by serving as broad an audience as possible, Sweetgreen derived much of its cachet from projecting a level of elitism. This, as it turns out, is not the secret to market dominance. Sweetgreen has always been relatively expensive, and it has gotten more so: In 2014, a kale Caesar with chicken was $8.85; this week, in some locations, it’s more than $14.75, which is almost $2 higher than can be explained by inflation alone. Maybe more important is the impression that it’s expensive. Today’s consumers are highly price-sensitive, Jonathan Maze, the editor in chief of the trade publication Restaurant Business, told me, and “Sweetgreen has had a reputation as an expensive place to eat for what you’re getting.”
There’s also the issue that many Americans don’t like salad quite enough to actually want it regularly. In a 2024 YouGov poll, 40 percent of respondents said they ate salad more than once a week, which might seem like a lot until you remember that some of them were surely lying, and you consider how many more people prefer food that isn’t chopped-up raw vegetables: Last year, the nation’s top five quick-service restaurants were, in order, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, Taco Bell, and Wendy’s. “It’s really difficult to convince a large number of people that salad is something they’re going to eat on a frequent enough basis to support a chain like that,” Maze said. Many years ago, he was driving his then-10-year-old son and a friend home from baseball practice, and the friend was excitedly talking about eating Chipotle for dinner. The memory has, clearly, stuck with him: “Can I realistically imagine my son’s 10-year-old friend bragging about going to Sweetgreen?” He cannot. I can’t either.
Although McDonald’s and its ilk got big by serving as broad an audience as possible, Sweetgreen derived much of its cachet from projecting a level of elitism. This, as it turns out, is not the secret to market dominance. Sweetgreen has always been relatively expensive, and it has gotten more so: In 2014, a kale Caesar with chicken was $8.85; this week, in some locations, it’s more than $14.75, which is almost $2 higher than can be explained by inflation alone. Maybe more important is the impression that it’s expensive. Today’s consumers are highly price-sensitive, Jonathan Maze, the editor in chief of the trade publication Restaurant Business, told me, and “Sweetgreen has had a reputation as an expensive place to eat for what you’re getting.”
There’s also the issue that many Americans don’t like salad quite enough to actually want it regularly. In a 2024 YouGov poll, 40 percent of respondents said they ate salad more than once a week, which might seem like a lot until you remember that some of them were surely lying, and you consider how many more people prefer food that isn’t chopped-up raw vegetables: Last year, the nation’s top five quick-service restaurants were, in order, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, Taco Bell, and Wendy’s. “It’s really difficult to convince a large number of people that salad is something they’re going to eat on a frequent enough basis to support a chain like that,” Maze said. Many years ago, he was driving his then-10-year-old son and a friend home from baseball practice, and the friend was excitedly talking about eating Chipotle for dinner. The memory has, clearly, stuck with him: “Can I realistically imagine my son’s 10-year-old friend bragging about going to Sweetgreen?” He cannot. I can’t either.
by Ellen Cushing, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image: Akshita Chandra/The Atlantic. Source: Dixie D. Vereen/The Washington Post/Getty.
