Why Sweetgreen Is Losing Millions of Dollars Every Month | WSJ The Economics Of
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 พ.ค. 2024
- Sweetgreen’s fast-casual $15 salads have a cult following. But even as the salad chain has sold millions of these bowls to its customers, net profits still remain elusive with so much overhead. The company’s value has dropped about three-quarters since its peak and it’s been operating with significant losses every month.
WSJ explores the headwinds Sweetgreen faces in turning profitable.
0:00 Changing the fast food system
0:48 Expenses
3:04 Cutting back
4:20 Automation and loyalty programs
6:05 What’s next?
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#Sweetgreen #Salad #WSJ
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It's a shame that a salad can be $20 but a burger and fries can be $3-6
It shouldn't be this way. Sweet greens salads are clearly overpriced for what it is.
Where I live I pay $2.66 for a bowl of salad.
@@AndreVictorGoncalves ....where do you live?? and what is in this "salad"?
@@abramjessiah I live in Rio de Janeiro.
The bowl of salad has chick peas, quinoa, tuna, pieces of pumpkin, slices of pineapple and tomatoes, and a leaf of lettuce
@@AndreVictorGoncalvesThat sounds delicious! Unfortunately, I think alot of salad bars in US is usually a little more expensive than other food options.
The U.S government spends $38 billion each year to subsidize the meat and dairy industries, but only 0.04 percent of that (i.e., $17 million) each year to subsidize fruits and vegetables. A $5 Big Mac would cost $13 if the retail price included hidden expenses that meat producers offload onto society.
The CEOs ability to pack corporate buzzwords in every sentence is S tier 😂
He has me dying when he started talking about AI and Machine learning 😂
Omg thought it was just me LOL
I mean I get what youre saying, but CEO's do operate at a high/theoretical/abstract level. So its expected mate....
Fast slick talk will never make me pay $15 for a salad. Learning how to cook and going to a class would be cheaper even. I think this business will fail..
i think you mean S tier.
Companies like this need to be supported as most food chains serve unhealthy chemically treated junk.
I agree! I really enjoy salads so I would love to see more salad bar chains
I agree if they were focused on human hands getting the food 2 more but the more they move to automation the worse things will become
How do you know where they're sourced high pesticides and herbicides have been used to grow the crops?
I would only eat there if they've got there own farms where they source their produce.
Supported by the government? It isn't the taxpayers' fault if the companies don't know what t f they're doing.
A major point they didn't touch on here: sweetgreen salads are genuinely delicious. All the thought that they put into details like food sourcing, tech integration, and funding, they clearly put just as much research into recipe combinations that I can't get enough of. As much as I'll crave a cheeseburger or pizza from a favorite restaurant, I crave numerous versions of sweetgreen's salads just as much (The fish taco, in particular, is next level).
The more salads you eat, the more you will crave. Its all in our mind.
@@jennferley8854 Slight correction: it's in our microbiome,/gut, which influences our mind! crazy! And yes simply put the more you eat unhealthy foods the more the variety of good bacteria will die off, which makes you crave more unhealthy food
Sweet green tastes like junk compared to Chopt tbh
Agreed! Their salads are excellent.
@@mr.g937Chopt portions are also HUGE
Kudos to Sweetgreens for sticking with high quality ingredients. Sadly, that’s a rarity these days. I hope they can find a way to increase profitability in other ways without doing what many restaurants do - source lower end ingredients.
They won't. You can be in the public markets with a desire to scale and maintain the quality and overhead for what they do. There is a reason why public food companies do the centralized approach and work with economies of scale, they do it as it is the only path to profits in a slim margin industry.
start by decreasing salaries of overpaid corporate chair sitters
@@jadenpark7943you're better off streamlining than cutting pay. Especially when everyone says companies don't pay enough.
You could do it too charging that much for a salad
@@HH-le1vi I get your point but he only mentioned decreasing Salaries of top corporate officials and nobody thinks they are underpaid .
I've walked past Sweetgreen in DC for the last two years; now that I've watched this story, I''m going to actually walk "into" one this weekend. I had no idea that their model was so great. I'm willing to pay for good food---especially when the company isn't trying to get over on me.
16$ for a salad?
@@thaicuisineoui Different cities, different standards of living, different salaries, different budgets, different lifestyles, different eating.
You don't think the $8-$10 salad at another salad bowl restaurant is healthy? A healthy salad bowl doesn't need to be $15-$20.
@@ask230they live in DC, $8-10 salads don’t exist.
Go to the one in Georgetown. That’s the first sweetgreen ever. It won’t have some things the bigger locations have, but it’s still good. That’s the one job I miss and it’s been over 5 years since I worked there
This CEO is all over the place. Doesn't mean his company won't succeed. He's just dividing his attention in too many areas. He should focus on scalability and net profit first and not going under rather than automating salad making and his loyalty program
Agreed. Increase food portions. No reason I should spend more at sweet green and be twice as hungry if I would have spent that same money elsewhere.
This. I actually laughed a bit when he spoke about the AI.
Why would they scale more if they're not profitable? Already have 200 stores
Everyone has an opinion about what should and shouldnt be done but the reality is not everyone is a ceo of a billion dollar company
@@keatonf3they said in the video that individual stores are profitable, it’s just the overhead costs that get them. So maybe increasing stores would result in more profit without a symmetric increase in those overhead costs
I worked at Sweet green for about a year and well it wasn't exactly the best experience but I feel like it had more to do with the managers. Either way the food is about as fresh as you can get and it comes at a cost. Most of the time where I was at, we would run out of food to actually make. The AI that tells you how much food to make is impractical especially considering the rushes we had. So yeah you would usually have to cook the meats and veggies based on your own experience. I will say this. The Amount of want for these salads are extremely high. But it seems like they are trying to cut costs by limiting the amount of people working at the store making things extremely stressful when even on thing goes out of plan. The stores are only as good as the people running it. Food is great and healthy that's for sure.
Thanks for this insight. I think the people/workers "make" Sweet Greens the great business that it is. A $15 salad made by a robot will tank the business. It's a balance between scaling down on workers and finding cheaper ways to source high quality foods.
It’s unfortunate that companies are beginning to compromise the authentic customer experience (talking to cashiers and line cooks) just to be more profitable. The employees make restaurants lively and fun. It’s kinda sad they think that’s replaceable.
I've had it once or twice just to see what the hype was and sweet green is my least favorite salad place of all the salad places I've tried in NYC. It's a really small salad and it's not tasty, nor memorable.
talking to cashiers isnt customer experience tbh ordering from a totem is way faster/practical and you also avoid mean cashiers@@iamthenicheee
Unfortunately when companies become publicly traded, it's a bit of a deal with the devil. Yes, you have way more capital, but there will always be pressure from shareholders to increase profitability at all costs. Hopefully Sweetgreen is able to push back against this.
If a fast food company making salads calling itself a tech startup doesn't convince you of the insanity of financial markets, nothing will.
edit: typos
my girl's cat and his litter box output has an evaluation of over $10bil
They "have to" in order to appeal to investors and get funding.
“Capitalism allocates resources efficiently” 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Remember WeWork? A "tech company" that definitely wasn't a real estate company with a bloated engineering department.
Only in USA.
In my southeast asian country, if your products involve giving food to customers
You are automatically categorized as a food manufacturer.
And we have specific law, rules, documents submitted for a food company, regulated by the govt.
You cant choose " tech" company label bec you want it
As a restaurant owner, Salads are a biggest necessary pain, they take alot of work, that outsiders underestimate. The price of vegetables is always volatile. A good rule of thumb for fruits and veggies is when the price goes up the quality goes down.
Really interesting. Thanks for sharing
Wow I had no idea thanks for the info!
it's because when the price goes up there are shortages, usually do to bad weather or disease, which leads to worse produce (worked on farms my entire life)@@melz4766
And a restaurant is expected to have stable offerings instead of rotating seasonally. Who cares if it's February and the tomatoes are flavorless and 3x as expensive? People want tomatoes on their salad year round, not just in July/August
@@harmonicaveronica I would bet there's a market for eating in season. It's a thing that's been very much forgotten with the supermarkets appearance !
I'm just a nobody but expanding outside of major cities feels like a bad idea if they're already losing money. $15+ for a salad is a tough sell for a lot of people. But living in NYC, I bought a similar salad from Just Salad literally yesterday for ~$16 because I'm used to spending that much on food. Carol from Sioux Falls SD is not. Too many companies like this start rapid expansion when they can't even make their core business and existing locations solid.
I agree, I’ve tried the sweetgreen in DC and the price was on par with a lot of other food places in my area. I’m used to spending 15 dollars minimum on a fast food meal, most Americans aren’t.
I disagree. Coming from a rural area, many of my friends and family crave an establishment like this. Our food delivery apps are just main fast food chains (if we even live in an area with delivery). It gets old so fast. We have hundreds of tweets and posts from younger adults begging for a Trader Joe's or these other sorts of healthy/high end establishments. Mississippi is an entirely blank landscape just waiting for something to land. If anyone was to appreciate fresh ingredients, it would be the people farming the ingredients.
But I bet Carol in Sioux Falls has $1MM easy in ONE of her brokerage accounts.
Honestly 15 bucks is a good deal for some high quality very fresh tasty nutrient rich food from area farms. You're paying that or more for the fried junk so why not pay the same and get some real quality and nutrient rich real food?
I agree. Given the price...its practically a luxury product. who has the means to purchase this regularly? folks in cities of high economy. They can only expand nation-wide when they have got their pricing figured out.
I think they should go hard after the airport restaurant space with a reduced # of SKUs with ready to go offerings for the more popular combinations. Can't think of a more optimized place for their product and clientele
Wonderful food chain company with high quality food. I sure hope they're able to pull through. Their salads are second to none in both flavor and quality. I'll keep supporting them every chance I get.
I really can't bring myself to spend $15...on a SALAD!
@@aramesh428Price wise, this is really no different than going to a Chipotle. Even adding ingredients like diced apples, rice, beans, eggs, avocados , or even Quinoa are all available options. For high quality ingredients I personally think they're priced just right.
it’s unfair to compete with traditional fast food that has so many ingredients (meat) that are artificially kept low by government incentives
I wish there is more american tourists in my country i would definetly change prices to at least triple if you guys are ready to spend 15$ on a salad but i guess you guys eat fake food so anything fresh you think it's high quality...@@archangel115
$15 for a salad. No freaking way. I won't give them a dollar.
Sweetgreen is basically venture capital subsidizing my already expensive lunch. The food tastes great at least.
$15 salads don't need subsidizing. You're promoting inflation.
america 🔥🔥
But capitalism is bad huh
I worked in Sweetgreen when the pandemic was settling down. Honestly the best work place experience. Employees were treated with respect and understanding, our manager was great. Eating a salad every time I was at work was a huge upside too, Harvest Bowl and Fish Taco were few of my favorites. You could tell the people who work there are passionate about what they believe in with the quality of ingredients and taste.
I really love their food. I ate it a lot when I had to travel. I wish there were more locations across the country, because even fried fast food is about $15 anyways.
Burgers are 4$ right?
I can getaway with spending $5-10 at McDonalds and still feel way to full.
$15 for fried fast food? You can go to McDonald’s and spend half as much.
@@dguarino1974 a big mac meal is 16 dollars before tax in new york city which is the same or more expensive than most of sweetgreens menu.
@@jimmibuffe4819I agree ! I don’t eat fast food, but the other day I wanted Taco Bell and for 3 people it was 50 dollars. NYC is so expensive that I rather cook. I make some really good salads that I can eat for days
A great business model that isn't scalable. Listen to the CEO do all types of verbal gymnastics, but is basically saying there is lots of dead weight that holds back profitability. If you look at In-and-Out there is a reason it has capped growth and expansion and has kept its location footprint contained. The reason it does this is because it can't maintain quality and prices if it expands to far away from California. Sweetgreens should have stayed a regional power brand instead of taking VC money and taking the winding path to its eventual death.
People outside of logistics don't understand how fast shipping and warehousing costs ramp up.
@@yutian5884 Yes, especially when it comes to managing perishable food. The idea of fresh alone can smack them in the head. I mean, what is fresh? 2-3 days of lettuce, or a week?
Facts
Tech company=💸
if you can't make a 16 dollar salad profitable you are in the wrong business. Why would you even want that high overhead. Seems like a silicon valley's wet dream. But it won't be sustainable
"Machine learning and AI". Yeah right.
What, no blockchain!
@@mbg9650 Seriously. Everyone and anyone a few years ago was dropping "blockchain" into their pitches to score points.
Right? CEO just spouting word salad and threw in the latest sexy tech words. 😂
Wait what about NFTs?
Oh wait that was 2021.
Now it's AI, ML
Thats the buzzword these days!
Sweet greens can work where folks can pay 18+ dollars for a high quality meals at a high volume. This limits the locations that will be feasible. I could see 250 locations nationally, but if they are going for thousands of locations, I think it’ll be hard to make it work.
Sweetgreen's quality of ingredients and freshness has made me a regular. I'm a fan and rooting for 'em. Especially as popular salad places in NYC have either lacked the scale (# of convenient locations), quality, or no longer exist since lockdowns.
Now you are one rich Bwoy. A regular = Plenty money.
@@PHlophemaybe get off your couch and start working if you want the luxury of a $15+ salad?
@@PHlopheprobably just live in nyc, its easy to make money in manhattan its just difficult to keep it
@@Anthony-cu9go You think people that can't afford a $15 salad don't work and are lazy? Boy do you have a lot to learn about the world.
@@alicedoors4826He sure does!!
When you hear a restaurant chain calling itself a tech company, hide your money.
WeWork vibes
No! Hide your card, use money so you don't leave an electronic trail.
i love sweetgreen and used to be a regular and get it at least once a week but it wasn't strange for me to get it up to 3 times in a week lol it's surprising to me that they're losing so much money because every sweetgreen i've been to always has a line, even on weekends!
They probably consider themselves a tech company because they pay Google wages to whoever is doing the software development for their website, apps, etc. Having a website or web application and a phone app does not make you a tech company, but like WeWork and Tesla, they think they are tech companies.
Hopefully I'll be able to try soon, I love salads😊
Why did you stop being a regular?
No reason in particular, I mostly wfh now so I don’t really pass by sweetgreen that often anymore
@@wizirbyman Interesting. Thanks!
I really enjoy a lot of these American salad or salad/rice bowl places like sweetgreens and Cava and others. It's something I find super unique having lived abroad a little and finding salads pretty basic and items that make salads interesting (creamy but protein rich items like avocadoes or hummus, variety of toppings that add crunch). I even hear from international friends they don't like salads and that eating a salad is not filling or are just boring. I hope they can continue figuring out their business models so they can maintain relevance and profitability.
I don’t normally eat out but twice a month I pick up a warm bowl from my local Sweetgreen and it’s always so good, so fresh. I hope they can keep going because I love their food.
Simplicity is what makes a restaurant business thrive and become profitable. The CEO should have locked down a winning formula before getting wrapped up in frivolous details like tech and catering. Too often businesses are impatient for success and profit, they want to operate like they’re already there, but the financial statements don’t care about that.
Lol, trust me, people in the suburbs are _not_ going to pay $15-20 for a salad. I live in a big city and make good money and I refused to pay that much for a takeout salad.
$9.99 is the highest i
That's a faulty extrapolation but I kinda agree. I just think their CEOs are idiots . I went on a diet once, I literally copied their recipes. I can make the same dishes for $3-4 if I shop the ingredients from Lidl or Aldi, and $6-7 if I shop Harris Teeter and Wegmans.
@@Carltoncurtis1well everything is cheaper when you cook yourself, whats ur point
I thought the same thing but Sweet Green does makes some tasty salads. Not a salad person but they make them so well that I do keep coming back. They seem to be doing pretty well in suburbs where I am. Don't knock it until you try it.
@@tonyhart2744His point is that people don't cook/prep their own meals & yet they complain about the prices. Convenience costs.
As a huge fan of sweetgreens, I hope that they will continue to be an available chain for years to come. They are one of the few places that actually offer such high quality and actually good tasting salads. It may not be an everyday meal for me due to the price but I always seem to crave it here and then and love coming back to it.
I think we should support small family businesses more. $15+ for a salad is insane. In many Asian countries you can eat at food chains too but you can also get healthy wholesome meals from many mom-and-pop shops for a few dollars.
yea but how will the ceo’s get their second yacht or third vacation home???
American regulatory practices and taxation makes this practically impossible.
Well, this ain't Asia buddy. If you want cheap food, go live somewhere else where the costs are lower.
@@MacrosFTW I'm in Los Angeles and eat a huge meal of quality food from street vendors or trucks for $9. Maybe we should support working class entrepeneurs instead of trust fund babies who start restaurants marketed on hipster fluff (locally sourced, woahhhh).
They will never be able to scale this into a major chain to the likes of something like a Chipotle. The buy local and farm-fresh strategy would be better suited for a small regional chain, not the next “McDonalds of healthy eating.”
Modern finance seems to have no shortage of appetite for brute force efforts to corner non-existent markets.
Every one has an MBA in this comment section
@@cloroc We’re all talkers here, the doers are busy doing.
@@tonic4120 busy doing their company into bankruptcy
Except that’s what chipotle is doing already. However chipotle started with a few healthy food items and has made big changes as they have scaled their business - like removing growth hormones which they weren’t able to until they reached a certain level of scalability
i love sweetgreens. so expensive but worth the splurge. hoping they dont go out of business and find a way to turn things around
The founder sounds like he is reading off of a script
They kinda lost me at the automated salad making thing. Hiring 1/3 fewer employees? I’m not paying $15 for a salad when they’re trying to cut out jobs. I don’t use self-checkout because I don’t want to be part of job loss, and I won’t use automated restaurants for the same reason.
that’s the direction the world is going, while labour intensive jobs may be automated there is an opportunity for staff to upskill and move into higher level roles. Fighting it is like saying you want to use a draw carriage when there are cars available
@@harmeenk12 and what about all the people with lower IQ who CAN’T train for anything else. We have a neighbor like that. He struggles to stock shelves at a dollar store. How will those people make a living?
@@tarabooartarmy3654the second wave of human evolution baby😎😂
universal income is going to be a big theme as AI really starts to take away the jobs from the low level and working its way up. Thats the reality. The creator economy will open up even wider than social media has done so, but even this will require humans to have a level of creative thought and passion - not everyone has the drive to pursue this.@@tarabooartarmy3654
You can see how Heather's very unimpressed and just so done whenever she comments on the company.
I honestly thought she also worked for some fast food company because of the way she talked.
It is fast food.
Her face says it all. Just wants to keep it real. I can get behind that.
She's the Aubrey Plaza of WSJ.
Heather is not having any this this nonsense.
The market just won’t bear the costs of high-quality ingredients + expensive labor. It’s too bad, and I’m glad they’re trying, but I don’t think it’s going to happen quite yet.
“We’re profitable according to EBITDA”😂
It will in small town co-ops that have memberships or largely vegetarians, organic food buyers, and "loca-vores." Ours prospers in a town of only 10,000 population. It won't work in NYC, where the square footage and overhead is too high. Ours does make its own salads and sandwiches for take-out lunches, too. Very popular.
@@davidb2206 Are you saying your local Sweetgreen prospers? Or your local co-op? I don't dispute the latter. I'm highly skeptical of the former. Co-ops have other revenue sources & aren't really comparable to Sweetgreen.
The labor is not THAT expensive; it's the super good quality ingredients with usa infrastructure costs (some of the highest in the world). If they used shittier ingredients you'd get a cheaper shittier product
The market would accept this fine if it were a local specialized restaurant. There is a market for high-quality with high prices to account for labor. But, this has to be niche and specialized to a few select markets. One could make a healthy eight-figure business just doing this in the NY Metro with the same concept.
One very small tip from a happy customer: the trash cans are confusing. I think usually there's one for trash and one for compost with a hard-to-read illustration above them showing what goes in what. You glance in them and everyone is obviously just throwing anything in either of them. So, you realize it all probably goes in the trash and all the labeling is for naught. Maybe specific labels like "bowls here" would fare better.
I used to work at sweetgreen, and they treat their staff well and use fresh ingredients. Definitely recommend
Add tax and it's about $20. I cannot STRESS ENOUGH just how crazy it is to spend $20 just for lunch. TWENTY. DOLLARS. This is like an ENTIRE day wage for many developing countries. Insane.
*Week's wage here in India
I never had it..$20???
That's lunch for two days!!!
That way they can red-line minorities from being able to afford healthy food.
I live in Manhattan and it's very obvious how they only put healthy food on high income areas with all the salads, juice bars & kinoa bowls while lower income areas get Popeyes, Mc Donalds & Delis.
It's not a lot of money in the first world. I don't know how to break that to you. I don't care what they're eating in Bangladesh
20 bucks is expensive yes but you comparing that cost to wages of developing countries is irrelevant. Those developing countries aren't paying for the lunch, people earning in USA are so compare their wages not outside world wage. Also the places they are selling this at the moment have way more income per hour then let's say Texas or Florida. Prices fluctuate based on where it's being made and sold. Prices in New York or California obviously will be higher than prices in Texas or those developing countries if it were sold there 🙂
I live in DC and LOVE their delicious salads. Their dressings can be mixed together to create unique flavors-- which I consider genius. I hope they're around for the long haul.
Sweet green is hands down the best and freshest fast food bowl/salad option. The quality and freshness of the bowls can’t be beat. I love the harvest bowl. Hope they stay in business and become more available
The quality of service in Sweetgreen stores has gone down significantly since I started going there. Pickups consistently not ready on time, sometimes you get another persons order delivered. Over that same period- just afew years- my go-to order has gone from ~$12 to ~$16. The product is incredible no doubt- but given these price increases and the in store experience feeling more like McDonalds now that they are trying to cut costs, as a customer it feels like premium prices without the hassle-free experience that I once had.
To be fair, getting another person's order delivered is probably not the restaurant's fault. Usually the delivery driver screwed up. And frankly delivery drivers aren't paid enough to care.
The other stuff though, that's on them. But it's hard to tell if that's a problem specific to your location/store, to the whole company, or the entire industry. There just haven't been enough workers to fill the spots that there used to be - tons and tons of people in the restaurant industry left permanently, either because they found better work in another industry or because they died
@@harmonicaveronicaI worked at sweetgreen, and part of my job was making sure that the food that customer ordered was the correct one taken by the delivery man. So yes it's actually very much the responsibility of the employee here.
Halfway into this I was like this won't work without the labor getting cheaper and bam, machine made "fresh" salads. Brilliant.
You shouldn't be rooting for $15 salads to succeed.
@@Dayvit78 I am. They're delicious.
@@Dayvit78 Have you had the salads? They're amazing.
@@Dayvit78 I mean it’s supposed to be a replacement for fast food options. It’s not a salad you’re eating at home. It sucks when you’re on the road and there’s nothing to eat other than bad food.
Assuming the machines cost nothing to purchase and install, operating with 1/3 fewer employees in 2Q would have saved Sweetgreen $14 million.
Total operating costs stood at $183 million, versus $152 million in revenue.
Post automation, that's still $169 million versus $152 million in revenue.
Maybe down the line they'll be profitable, but only marginally so; to the point where it's not really clear why investors would want to stick around.
I like their philosophy of promoting local produce. I hope they succeed!
I like their philosophy of replacing jobs with robots
i like their philosophy of technology when they are a boring restaraunt chain
I like the philosophy of cutting jobs but purchasing from local producers
Been a customer way before the IPO. Used to go to one in Century City and West Hollywood. Really great salads. They’re not going anywhere - they’ll refine and continue to get profitable.
27 million in the hole is a strange way to be "profitable."
@@charleybarley939 yeah, you’re correct. My call was way off on this.
they should partner w the government to get healthy food in schools
If your market value is losing money, expansion should be the last thing you should do. While ambitious, focus on maintaining the customer base you already have and institute new programs there as well.
Tell me you don't understand contribution profit without telling me you don't understand contribution profits.
I know right? They are a restauraunt after all. Mac Donalds spread slowly and this restaurant should be no different. tbh almost all sole trader restaurants buy their food locally and don't have their food prepped centrally and it's risky but many still make it work. I'm not from new york, but I am from one of the about the top 5-10 most expensive countries to live in. Ireland. and I'm still yet to see long running restaurants offering salads for €14! I honestly think they are wasting their money on software developers. Literally all restaraunts, know their busy periods and can prep for them. And nobody needs to reinvent ordering systems before the business is profitable.
Do the same thing you're currently doing and expect another outcome!
I think there's two things at play here:
1. They are now a public company. investors care only about one thing- Growth. Quality can worsen, employees can be unhappy... doesn't mattter. Stock holders only care about that $$$$ going up.
2. Like most startups, the CEO is probably trying to grow
the company as large as possible to get a huge pyaout when he sells the business.
@@aenorist2431you’re missing the entire point if their comment it’s almost laughable. If they’re overhead expenses exceed revenue by billions of $, the last thing they should do is expand this obviously failing business model. They need to pivot and become a more lean and efficient company, and IMO, they should go private because they would likely become more profitable and efficient
I do love Sweetgreens, but if they raise prices even a bit more then I will be priced out :(
Whole Foods started with providing the same high quality products, great employees and “loyalty.”
It’s now a shadow of its former self.
ALL in the name of CAPITALISM.
ALL COMPANIES go through this same process.
$16 for a salad w fresh ingredients is literally so reasonable. mcdonald’s combos are $14 now so why are people complaining about salad prices
Everyone thinks they’re a tech company. NEWSFLASH - you sell salads. You’re a restaurant.
I think the value is actually there. Sweetgreen salads are healthy, complete meals made from real ingredients. Moreover they typically taste very good. I don't know of any other fast casual restaurant that offers the same.
Until you look at their ingredients and see that everything is made with seed oil. Use evoo ... like seriously?
Kudos to them for direct connection to farms. Counterpoint: my grocery store salad earlier today cost ~$8.23
@@RobBrulinski their delivery on food value is non unique; anyone next door could duplicate it.
Chipotle comes to mjnd
I absolutely LOVE sweet green. I discovered them maybe 8 years ago and have been hooked. They finally brought one to GA, and if I’m in Atlanta, I eat there. They have the best ingredients.
I won't ever be paying that much for a salad. With the cost of that one salad I could buy everything and make it myself.
Wow, profitable when you include all of our revenue and none of our costs!
You can tell the executive in the dark blue shirt went to business school. He knows just the right buzz words to insert, and the right timing for eyebrow raises.
Exactly!!
I can't listen to him. He's a bot.
This is actually kind of inspiring. I like what they're doing, what they value. I hope they can continue to adjust to become more profitable! If the company does go under, I hope they will let people keep their own franchises at least.
It's not a franchise.
I absolutely love sweetgreen I seek them out in every market I’m in their food is incredible and consistent and
My favorite salad chain hands down. I really hope they make it and expand into new areas.
The possible market is far smaller than fast food due to the price. The people who like it, really like it but that market is relatively small. It has much higher potential spoilage costs than other quick service restaurants that use frozen food or refrigerated food that can last several days.
correct. Its a luxury product right now. Willingness to buy increases if price comes down - opening up a wider market. really simple logic..
I've tried to copy one of their salads at home but it was no where near as good as Sweetgreen. And it was very labor intensive. We love Sweetgreen's salads, and consider it a "treat"!
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I’d rather see sweet green, chopt etc get help with being profitable than junk food chains
The CEO seems like such a corporate tool
You mean corporate lever!
This CEO is in the clouds. Someone needs to bring him, along with his costs and prices, back down to earth.
It's wild how much cheaper you could do something like this in Asia. Good quality veggies are so much cheaper out here.
Honestly, if I were them I'd be looking to expand into Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, etc. Reduce costs to suit local salaries, massively cut the ingredients budget, and get in relatively early on a very health conscious part of the world that doesn't have many fast food salad places yet.
People in those countries are not going to pay $15 USD for a salad lol.
yeah tbh as a Singaporean, I would not pay over 8 SGD for any salad when I have so much local food options.
As a Singaporean, there are local chains that serve ~$10 (SGD14) salads so Sweetgreen will definitely have to compete in this area. But there is definitely demand among office workers especially those that earn more, too busy & want to live healthy.
@@cleverusernamecl5532 hence why I talked multiple times about reducing the cost according to local salaries with the savings made in ingredient acquisition.
Well does it fit the culture? youre looking at it in a way too simple manner my man. in india for example this wouldnt work- the culture is fixated on a certain food menu for which buying a salad is out of place.
Great reporting. I love Sweetgreen and I wish them most success.
It all comes down to locations and how many people can be served each day ... Get people to sign up for daily delivery. This can work, but only if they focus on profits over number of locations. They don't need to focus on saturation. Focus on coastal high cost of living cities with younger populations.
I was in the US for business a few months ago and went to Sweetgreen every opportunity I got. Such tasty food and I was very happy to support a business with an ethical supply chain. Fingers crossed they come to the UK at some point!
As a Nebraska who visits NYC to see my sister, I never skip Sweetgreen when I’m in town. I hope they can expand to my area soon!
This segment is so smart, it's an ad disguised as content :) You get to know the company products, price, distribution, the founders, etc.
Used to work there. Food is great. Management sucks, pay is low, and you’re reasonable for literally everything, but paid the cost of a salad an hour, doing something you don’t even enjoy, due to the stress and literally working a practical restaurant.
Not saying the whole company is like that, but my store was like that, and it is an appealing job only if you desperately need it, and I mean desperately
So stressful putting lettuce in a bowl...
@@a004 it is stressful, you have to assemble everything quickly and deal with a lot of pressure during busy periods
@@a004restaurant is among the most intensive, laborious and risky businesses
because you're literally just a human robot until they replace most of the labor with automation like they showed in the video@@ManMan-ul1pn
@@a004they have to prep all the food and then serve. It’s like working front and back of house in a restaurant. Similar to Dig I presume. Won’t hate on people working non stop all day
You have to _pay_ to join their loyalty program?? 🤣🤣🤣 Good luck with that!
You pay $10 a month and get $3 off every purchase. Pays for itself
Great service and great, fresh food. I hope they make it a success!
I love how by automating their food process their labor is cut by 1/3 but they keep the same price. Customers don't want faster food, they want to lower prices.
I live in NYC, but I never got the Sweetgreen hype. This seems to be an unpopular opinion, but their menu options never appealed to me, and I remember finding the taste of their salads to be odd both times I've tried them. It wasn't an issue of freshness, I just didn't like the flavor combinations. On top of that, the first time I had Sweetgreen, I paid $15 for a salad and I wasn't even full. To each their own, but I'll stick with the local salad spot by me in Brooklyn or even Chopt.
Girlie, when the flavor is a little funky it means that they managed to sneak in some nitrate or preservative for at least one of the aliments . This means you done ate some chemicals.
I got me some fresh salad, tomatoes , a bit of cheese . added a bit of oil . I'm good.
Their start up story sounds very similar to Chipotle - fresh ingredients, accessible locations offering healthier fast food alternatives. The issue with this is high costs, I hope they don’t lose sight of their mission.
Love these videos! Keep it up WSJ 💪
WOW.. love the robotic aspect of assembling the food--ingredients are dispensed by machines.
I can see that being the trend moving forward in many of the fast food restaurants. Labour cost will continue to be the biggest overhead expense.
I still remember that time I wanted to try sweet green. I found a worm in my salad. It was still squiggly around. My first and last time going there.
Man the consultant speak on that man was tough to listen to. Levers, ML, AI, oh my.
A company that understood me in college that all I wanted was healthy and could find it now is amazing.
Thank you for that prospect employee Zion Hiritho stay healthy.
This is my favorite place to eat. When i lived in Boston i was lucky to have them around but only recently did they expand into the area i ended up moving to. I really hope they survive and don’t go the way of chipotle, because i genuinely love this place.
why would you approach this like a tech company when you are a restaraunt chain??
ceo just sounds like he's memorizing a textbook
"We make the food daily in our Fresh Prep Kitchen."
AKA: A Normal Kitchen.
I hope the make it, we really need more places like this
Love sweet green. Hope they keep things the way they are.
3 words. Unsustainable business model. I give this attempt another couple years until the whole house of cards tumbles down.
Salad & go in Arizona is a great example of a salad that can cost under $6. Though, they are strictly drive thru and only sell salads/ wraps and breakfast burritos. However, they have carved a good folloeing by sticking to that model.
I went to visit Oklahoma recently… check out Braums. They farm their own meat and veggies… you can get a spicy crispy chicken sandwich with Braums farmed lettuce, tomato and cheese with their own fries and a soda for around $8.00 😆 why in the world is a salad $15?!? Braums has a policy of no stores further than 300 miles from their own farms…. If they can do it why can’t this place?
The Super Green Goddess is only $10, the Guacamole Greens is only $14 and comes with both avocado and chicken where some you have to add either driving up the price, all come with nice whole grain bread, you don't have to go full bougie at Sweet Green to have a good meal. The quality is really top notch and you feel good afterwards, the bowls and salads are also huge, sometimes too big to finish in one sitting, always satisfying. Glad to see this video!
also Build Your Own for only $11.50, just sayin.... that's the same as going budget at Chipotle or subs & sandwiches at delis
@@tetsuoshima2314 or you could literally build your own for a third of the price at home. 💀
but of course, the restaurant business is all about convenience. In this market segment, I suppose it does offer good bang for your buck, especially when it comes to fresh/healthy options
im sorry what world do u live in where $10 for a meal is cheap or "affordable" do people spend like $20,$30 a day just on food?
@@josephdantes1605 Thats just silly, buying all those ingredients separately will cost a fortune, certainly way more than $15.
@@alainportant6412 It costs more than $15 but you would make more than 1 salad (probably 3+). It's borderline impossible to buy just enough for what's in that salad (unless you throw 50-75% of the ingredients away)
I love their food. Nice video WSJ.
The automated salad making is actually brilliant. In my experience, tons of people love Sweetgreen for the quality of its ingredients and the taste of their end product. However, the number one reason most people stop ordering Sweetgreen is because they just can't make the "Custom Bowl" as per the EXACT instructions provided by the customer through the mobile app. Note that Sweetgreen still charges full-price (roughly $20) for that Custom Bowl -- but typically leaves out at least 2-3 ingredients that the customer originally wanted (and paid for). I would 100% go back to buying Sweetgreen if they guaranteed that my order would be assembled by a machine that's not as error-prone as humans.
There has to be a way for this company to profitable!! I love their vision and commitment to excellence and high quality. May they never compromise and grow profitable.
Grow into small college towns!!! How about Northampton or Amherst, MA?
"branded themselves as a tech company" I just got a good vision of the management and why its not profitable
The founders have my respect. They've been at it for 17 years and carried the company through IPO.
Food is expensive period, but these guys are actually trying to help the problem of poor eating! I can't afford to pay $20 for a salad everyday, but I support them 100%
It sucks because I love them. It's ridiculous that they have to charge so much while fake food gets priced at a couple bucks.
I’m hoping that the robo-salad maker will still make minor adjustments to the bowls (adding wild rice to guacamole greens), their website does not allow this so it would be unfortunate if doing this in store was no longer an option.
It won't at first, then they'll re-adjust it so it will, then they'll be desperate to cut costs so they'll get rid of the option.
>machine learning and AI
that's how you know it's a scam, you don't need a supercomputer AI to "personalize" someone's food order
He probably meant to say “big data”, but had a Biden moment.
This is what America needs, clean fresh food!! Hope the company is successful !!
My husband and I enjoy eating at SweetGreens every time when visiting our daughter in Chicago. We hope to see this restaurant model thrive and stay successful!😊