Striking out on your own and starting a business is one thing, but maintaining a company’s success while constantly evolving is a challenge all its own. Nicolas Jammet, cofounder of Sweetgreen, started his fast-casual restaurant business on the heels of his graduation from Georgetown. Jammet and his cofounders—Nathaniel Ru and Jonathan Neman—wanted quick, healthy lunch options but couldn’t find them, so they took matters into their own hands. Today, their midday meal solution is now in its 12th year and boasts 91 physical stores; with a reported $1 billion valuation, Sweetgreen has become one of the most successful startups in the food industry.
At a recent WeWork Now talk in New York with Sierra Tishgart, cofounder of cookware company Great Jones, Jammet revealed why he believes his business has succeeded, and why Sweetgreen’s future isn’t focused on expanding its brick-and-mortar operations. There was also some advice for fledgling entrepreneurs baked—or tossed, in salad speak—in, too.
Look outside your lane for inspiration
Jammet cast a wide and eclectic net when it came to sourcing professional mentors and innovation. “We quickly started to find a lot of inspiration outside the food world, in other industries that had been disrupted, and other industries that had helped change consumers and their behavior,” he said of Sweetgreen’s early days. If you don’t seek inspiration outside your niche, he said, you’re in danger of simply reinventing the wheel. With Sweetgreen, Jammet was interested in building something different. “I think Chipotle is an incredible company, but we’re not trying to just build the next Chipotle.”
These days, Jammet is inspired by megabrands like Whole Foods (“how they built a culture and connected people to food”) and Peloton (“completely disrupting people’s relationship with fitness and how they work out”), as well as smaller ones like Madhappy, a lifestyle clothing company built around the intersection of happiness and mental health. “We try very hard to be inspired by a broad set of companies that do different things, that are different sizes,” he said.
Clear time for your mental space—just to think
While it’s almost too easy for entrepreneurs to get bogged down with day-to-day operations and hole up in their offices tackling the never-ending to-do list, Jammet emphasized the importance of slowing down every day to engage in deep thinking.
“I calendar it into my day just to have mental space to think,” said Jammet. “It’s really easy to fill your day with meetings and micromanaging, but the bigger we’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized the power in stepping away from that.”
Rule the tech; don’t let the tech rule you
Much has changed since Sweetgreen’s inception in 2007. The company has gone from being a popular lunch spot in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood serving hearty salads to an ordering app that powers more than 50 percent of the company’s transactions. While the physical storefronts will always be an important part of the business, Jammet and his team have been nimble enough to lean into the technology component of the business, adapting it to meet their customers where they are.
So along came the ordering app, which Jammet hopes to infuse with even more customization in the future. “Think about the way Spotify changed the ways you discover music, build your playlists, and listen to music—we believe in doing the same thing with our app,” he said. “If this customer doesn’t eat chicken and loves Asian flavors and spicy food, but this person is the opposite, why should they open the Sweetgreen app and see the same exact menu?”
Forgo quick cash and focus on the long-term reward of staying true to your brand
Of course, profitability is essential, but if you want your business to be sustainable for the long haul, you should focus on bigger-picture rewards. Sometimes that means feeling the burn in the short term, but Jammet assured audience members that the payoff is worth it.
In the early years of Sweetgreen, there were certainly ways that the company could have made a quicker profit, but Jammet remembered how he and his cofounders were vigilant about their partners, even though it meant scaling at a more moderate pace. Ask yourself what kind of story you want your business to tell, and remain mindful of what’s most important to you. For Sweetgreen, that’s always been the food quality and supply chain.
“Most places, as they scale, their product gets poorer. But the food quality is our sacred cow,” he said. “We’ve doubled down on our food as we’ve gotten bigger, and our food has gotten better year after year.”
