The Whoop fitness band, which measures a user’s heart rate variabil-
ity and offers insights into everything from workout intensity and
recovery to sleep performance, was initially designed for elite ath-
letes. It’s now going mainstream. Last May, the company launched the
Whoop Strap 3.0, which boosted battery life from two days to five, and upgraded
its app to allow users to access a new Strain Coach feature that helps them maxi-
mize performance without overdoing it. “Whoop is the first fitness product to tell
you to rest and not exercise,” says Whoop founder and CEO Will Ahmed. The new
app also lets users overlay data on top of video and photos to analyze (and share)
performance, and assesses different stages of slumber. (“Sleep is the new steps,”
Ahmed says.) These analytics are key to Whoop’s business model: The company
offers its fitness tracker for free, but charges $30 a month for a subscription. The fast-casual
salad chain opened
only 11 freestanding
restaurants in 2019
(for a total of 102
nationwide), but it
has grown nonethe-
less, thanks to the
lunch-pickup sta-
tions it has estab-
lished in nearly 1,000
locations in 9 cities.
The company’s
18-month-old Out-
post program, which
offers free delivery
at set times to select
buildings, has
allowed Sweetgreen
to build its capabili-
ties without having
to wrestle with one-
to-one delivery. It
also helps the chain
gain new customers,
via the employers
and landlords who
offer the service
to office workers and
residents. Outpost
has more than
100,000 users,
roughly a third of
whom were new
to Sweetgreen, and
it’s poised to reach
nearly 3,000 more
locations this year.
Says cofounder and
CEO Jonathan
Neman: “Outpost is
a Trojan horse for us.”FOR
STREAMLINING
DELIVERY20
FOR
BRINGING
PRO-LEVEL
SCIENCE TO
EVERYDAY
ATHLETES19
customers’ location data. Once
Luckin has blanketed a market, it
shuts down delivery—because
the economics don’t make sense
for a product that sells for about
$2.50—and relies solely on
pickup. “We started as an onlinemodel, so 100% of the transac-
tions give us data,” says Reinout
Schakel, Luckin’s chief strategy
officer and CFO. As of Q3 2019,
Luckin’s store growth was more
than 200% year over year, its
customer base climbed by 413%,the number of customers who
returned every month grew by
398%, the number of products
they bought rose by 470%, and
Luckin’s revenue increased by
558%. In January, it announced
a new vending machine prod-uct, which could help it grow
even faster. Luckin is still operat-
ing at a loss as it continues its
rapid expansion, but its model
is being copied worldwide—
including by Starbucks in
a New York City test.MARCH/APRIL 2020Resting Heart Rate (RHR)
Over the course of a year, the average resting heart rates of users dropped
from 53.7 beats per minute to 49.2 beats per minute (data from 2019)Sleep
On average, over four months,
users gained an additional
41 minutes of sleep per nightAverage Daily Cardiovascular Load
A yearlong look at Whoop users’ “strain” metricsRate of InjuryChange in Alcohol
Consumption
(before bed)8.5 hours7.9 hoursHeart^RateBPM(beats^per^minute)Scale^0 -21JanJanFebFebMarMarAprAprMayMayJunJunJulJulAugAugSepSepOctOctNovNovDecDec405060701512
925th
Percentile79%
less often60%
less often75th
PercentileBiggest drop
in RHR during the
summer months