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ability to pinpoint problems—like the source of an E. coli outbreak.
And with that visibility comes the power to grow without com-
promising the company’s devotion to all things small and local. As
Jammet puts it, “If we can build real-time traceability and tracking
into the infrastructure, it allows us to completely scale but keep
working with farms of different sizes, so we can find 10 other Jim
Wards”—i.e., farmers Sweetgreen knows and trusts.
While the company is still in the early stages of letting salad fans
in on a direct view into its supply chain, that’s where the cofound-
ers want to go next. Sweetgreen plans to build its own version of
Domino’s pizza tracker, in which a progress bar chronicles an or-
der’s journey down the assembly line and out the door. “Instead of
‘John’s flipping your pizza. It’s on its way!’ our tracker will say, ‘Hey,
you like the tomato kale caesar. We know because you’ve ordered
it before. These tomatoes were planted two months ago with this
kind of seed, there was a lot of rain, and because of that, they’re
super sweet. They’re great for the next two days, order now!’ ”
says Jammet.
In the meantime, Sweetgreen is relying on its email newsletters—
it sends an average of six per month—to keep devotees apprised
of the latest on its local broccoli leaves and organic carrots and to
introduce customers to the dozens of small farmers who provide
those salad fixings. In April, its “Open Source” newsletter waxed po-
etic about the beets grown on Faurot Ranch in Watsonville, Calif.,
by Arturo Sanchez, “who crossed the border in 1983 from Mexico”
where the food’s coming from, or the farmer
that’s involved, or soil health,” which is “some-
thing our customers are getting savvy about,”
he says. As evidence, he points to a recent se-
ries of surveys the chain conducted with more
than 7,000 customers, which returned results
affirming that, yes, soil health is apparently
top of mind.
“That’s why we went so hard with the mes-
saging around the koginut,Ó says Jammet,
referring to the new breed of squash Sweet-
green developed with chef Dan Barber. Last
fall, Sweetgreen mailed 100 of the auburn
volleyball-size squashes to loyal customers
as part of a ploy to generate buzz around the
gourd, which features a “built-in ripeness
indicator for peak flavor.” (In other words, it
changes color when ready to be picked, like
many things that grow.) “We wanted to create
the same kind of excitement that’s created
around major consumer brands, like, ‘Let’s
create as much hype for a vegetable as a Nike
shoe because the vegetable is more important
in the long run,’ ” says Jammet. “We want to
connect this food to happiness, to joy, the way
that brands like Pizza Hut and McDonald’s
have done for years.”
To that end, the company is launching a
new customer satisfaction metric that will
ask customers to rate every Sweetgreen salad
they eat. “Like Uber or Lyft,” says cofounder
Neman. “Imagine being able to correlate that
to the farms and to which ingredients get
higher ratings based on flavor. You’re able to
start to understand: Do certain farms and
ingredients create happier customers?”S
WEETGREEN may have cornered the
market on making vegetables traceable
and trendy, but customers also care
about convenience. And while Sweet-
green boasts the largest national footprint of
any salad chain, it’s not everywhere—namely,
in the center of the country, where population
density thins, local produce can be harder to
source, and people may be less willing to pay
$12 for a bowl of lettuce. This is where Daily
Harvest, a company that takes a very different
approach to selling the veggie-centric lifestyle,
comes in. Daily Harvest founder Rachel Drori
offers vegan, subscription-based meals featur-
ing vegetables that are flash-frozen, pack-
aged in individual serving cups (prices range
from $6.99 to $7.75), and shipped directly to
customers, who typically heat the bowls up in
the microwave. So while she and her competi-
tors on team Sweetgreen agree that produceand is now “a proud U.S. citizen and ranch
co-owner, working to convert his fields from
conventional to completely organic.”
Do hungry office workers really want an
inbox full of salad missives? Sweetgreen
cofounder Nate Ru thinks so. “Our consum-
ers want to double-click one layer deeper intoDaily Harvest
founder Rachel
Drori is betting
on quick-freezing
to bring veggies
to the masses.