A 2,000-ish word, slightly snarky field guide from Kuypers Creative
If you work in restaurants, you’ve probably been cornered at a party by someone clutching a compostable bowl and asking, “So… what happened to Sweetgreen?” Depending on the year, the tone of that question has ranged from adoration (“They’ve solved lunch!”) to concern (“Why is my salad $17 and why is there a robot smiling at me?”).
Here’s our friendly, humorous, and operator-minded answer. No doomsday, no stanning—just a practical autopsy of a living brand that helped invent modern fast casual, then tried to reinvent itself while the world kept moving the goalposts.
The romaine empire (a brief origin myth)
Sweetgreen didn’t so much open restaurants as it opened a vibe. Minimalist interiors, avocado-green typography, menus that sounded like a yoga playlist—Guacamole Greens, Harvest Bowl, Earthy Crunchy but Clean Energy Something—you know the drill. They surfed the early wave of “real food” fast casual: chef-y sourcing, bowls you could hold in a single hand while morally judging office candy, and a brand voice that made kale feel cool.
From there: scale, lines out the door, celebrity investors, an app that taught millennials that “pickup shelves” are a personality trait, and eventually an IPO. For a while, Sweetgreen was shorthand for “We cracked lunch.”
Then two things happened: (1) the world and (2) physics.
The world: the office left the building
Sweetgreen’s natural habitat was the urban lunch hour: dense daytime populations within a comfortable walk of a store. Translation: office towers with a 12:00–1:30 p.m. surge that printed money. Then the pandemic said, “What if we… didn’t?”
Hybrid work didn’t kill weekday lunch, but it made it moody. That five-day drumbeat became two-and-a-half with surprise cancellations. Tuesday is the new Thursday, except when it’s not because the team’s “offsite” is in the conference room with a ring light. If your model depends on a sharp midday peak, and your guests respond with, “We might be here Wednesday. Or 2036,” your throughput math needs a hobby.
Meanwhile, delivery and pickup—great for convenience—aren’t free. They move sales from a tight in-store peak to a spiky omnichannel puzzle. Congratulations: you now run a small logistics network with arugula.
Physics: bowls are fast until they aren’t
Sweetgreen’s product looks simple—greens + toppings + dressing = lunch. Operationally, it’s a Rubik’s cube. Half your items need to be chopped; hot components must be hot without becoming “soup-adjacent”; cold components must be cold and photogenic; and guests want modifications like it’s a Build-A-Bear for roughage.
When the line is 40 humans deep at 12:17, the production system either (a) hums like a disciplined ballet, or (b) becomes a kale-scented traffic jam with an audible anxiety soundtrack. That’s not a Sweetgreen problem; that’s a complex-assembly-in-90-seconds problem. Add channel mix (in-store, pickup, delivery, catering), and every decision reverbs: where to stage, who gets priority, who gets the last scoop of roasted sweet potato without inciting a TED Talk on fairness?
The tech era: from playlists to platforms (and robots)
To their credit, Sweetgreen didn’t shrug. They invested in digital ordering, loyalty, pickup shelves, and eventually automation. The acquisition of a kitchen robotics startup led to the Infinite Kitchen, a Rube Goldberg-but-actually-serious line that portions ingredients, speeds assembly, and reduces the “Oops I double-scooped goat cheese” variance.
The idea is correct: when your core constraint is peak-hour production, you either (a) hire the Avengers, (b) simplify the menu, or (c) instrument the kitchen so it behaves on purpose. Automation won’t fix bad recipes or moody demand, but it buys you consistency and throughput—and it does it without needing PTO. (Robots request nothing but uptime and the occasional firmware pep talk.)
Of course, new toys create new jobs: calibrate portions, refill hoppers, clean meticulously, keep food safety bulletproof, and maintain uptime at the exact hour the CFO looks at labor per order. It’s still hospitality, just with a little mechatronics and a label printer that can bench 300.
Price, portion, perception: the unholy trinity
Nothing melts brand goodwill like a guest thinking “I paid $16 for this?” while excavating a bowl for signs of life. Sweetgreen walked the tightrope every premium fast casual walks: wage inflation, supply cost volatility (hi, romaine; hi, avocado), and a guest who compares you not to the macroeconomy but to last week’s lunch.
Raise prices and you become a meme. Shrink portions and Twitter becomes a courtroom. Hold the line and your P&L mutters obscenities. The only way through is value clarity: make me feel I got something (quality, nutrition, speed, ritual, taste) I can’t easily replicate at home. When Sweetgreen nails it—big flavors, hot + cold contrast, craveable dressing—the value feels obvious. When they don’t, we all become auditors.
Menu engineering: when “healthy” meets “hungry”
Sweetgreen’s most successful builds follow a pattern: crunch + cream + acid + heat + herb. Think warm grains, roasted veg, a punchy dressing, a salty crumb (parmesan crisps, hello), and one “this is why we’re here” element like blackened chicken or tofu with attitude.
Where things wobble is “virtuous but joyless.” If a bowl leans too monkish—underdressed, underseasoned, texture monotone—your guest leaves emotionally hungry. The brand learned this; warm bowls and comforting builds became winter workhorses, and LTOs brought bolder flavors. Lesson for the industry: restriction is not a growth strategy. People like fun. Give them vegetables that high-five them back.
Real estate: from downtown darlings to “hello, suburbia”
As the office pendulum slowed its swing, Sweetgreen did what many urban-first brands did: follow the human. Suburbs, lifestyle centers, near-grocery co-tenants, even drive-up parking where that’s feasible. That changes daypart mix, staffing patterns, and marketing. The suburbs want dinner and weekend; downtown wants Tuesday 12:20 + a prayer. Your store design, hold-time rules, and campaign calendar have to reflect the zip code’s actual life.
Also, co-tenancy matters. Put Sweetgreen next to a fitness concept and a bougie coffee shop and you basically built a behavioral funnel. Put it next to the DMV and you built an anger management lab.
Brand voice & culture: earnestness grows up
Sweetgreen’s brand voice launched as “we’re cool but caring”—think lowercase captions and a zillion farmers. Over time, the internet became more cynical and attention became a contact sport. In that climate, earnestness can feel old-fashioned… unless your food is banging and your tech is smooth, in which case earnest feels like a relief. The wrong move is to chase trends you can’t own (no one needs a lettuce meme coin). The right move is quiet competence with moments of delight: great photography, tight microcopy, and a loyalty program that knows your usual and never nags.
So… what actually happened?
Nothing mysterious. Maturation happened. Sweetgreen went from a rocket ship surfing a cultural tailwind to a complex, public, omnichannel operator navigating real-world headwinds. They faced the same forces everyone else did—labor, food inflation, bouncy demand—only with a model that concentrates demand into a ninety-minute mosh pit and a guest base that notices everything.
They responded with tech, menu iteration, format tweaks, and an automation bet. Some choices landed perfectly. Some will keep evolving. That’s not failure; that’s operations with a spotlight.
The more interesting question is: what did Sweetgreen teach the rest of us? As it happens, quite a lot.
The Operator’s Playbook Sweetgreen Accidentally Wrote (and We Shamelessly Annotated)
- Own a ritual.
“Let’s get a Sweetgreen” became a sentence because the product solved both decision fatigue and lunch guilt. Your brand doesn’t need kale; it needs a ritual people can repeat without thinking. (Burrito ritual. Wing ritual. Tuesday burger ritual. Pick one.) - Throughput is marketing.
The best ad is a line that moves. Train for peak like you train for a sport. Stage the expo like choreography. Measure abandonment (ghost guests) and fix choke points with station rules, prep schedules, and—if you can justify it—smart hardware. - Digital isn’t a side quest.
If your pickup shelf is chaos, you didn’t “add a channel;” you added a boss. Treat app, delivery, and in-store as one system with clear SLAs. Prioritize orders, message honestly, and don’t make the guest play “Which bag is my lunch?” - Ingredient truth beats Instagram.
If the roasted carrots are sad, the bowl is sad. Fix procurement and prep before you fix photography. Nobody remembers your color grading when the chickpeas squeak. - Loyalty should feel like manners, not math.
Guests don’t want to do calculus to earn a crouton. Offer a simple tier, recognize frequency, surprise occasionally, and give meaningful perks (skip-the-line moments, early LTO access, or “we know your usual” delight). - Price ≠ value.
Ask a non-restaurant friend to hold the bowl and describe how it feels. If their eyebrows say “shrinkflation,” your portion and plating are off, even if the grams say otherwise. Value is perceived with eyes and heart before it hits spreadsheets. - Automation is a scalpel, not a sword.
Use tech where humans are least consistent (portioning, routing, timing) and keep humans where guests feel cared for (greeting, exceptions, recovery). If a robot solves lineup variance but creates a sanitation saga, you didn’t automate—you relocated the mess. - Winter is coming (every year).
Warm bowls and comfort flavors are not seasonal LTOs; they’re survival tools. Your cold salad can moonlight as a grain bowl with a heated component. Write the winter menu in August, not when the first frost murders morale. - Hybrids need hybrid ops.
Downtown stores with suburban expectations will break your soul. Build playbooks by store archetype (office core, suburb lifestyle, campus, mall) and stop pretending they’re the same restaurant. - Microcopy prints money.
The line between “$2 avocado?” and “add avocado?” is conversion. So is the little note on the receipt that says, “We saw you at 12:07; next time, try pre-order by 11:30 for a smoother pickup.” Words move behavior. Use them. - Catering can be therapy.
Office lunch is chaotic but lucrative. Simple trays, big labels, allergen clarity, and a reorder link turn one meeting into a monthly habit. If Sweetgreen can ship a 40-bowl order without fear, so can your taco bar. - The brand is the bowl you hand over at 12:23.
Not your investor deck. Not your mission wall. Not even your clever TikTok. It’s the exact feeling the guest has when they sit down and take the first bite. Protect that feeling like it pays the rent—because it does.
Some likely futures (lightly seasoned with humor)
- Infinite Kitchen grows up. Expect more automated lines where volume supports them, and manual lines where community and cost say “not yet.” The smart move: a hybrid that can flex when the machine sneezes or when you host a school fundraiser and everything gets weird.
- Suburbs keep mattering. Dinner and weekends become less of an afterthought. Family bundles get friendlier. “We made salads feel like dinner” becomes a design problem (warm lighting, shareable sides, maybe bread that doesn’t apologize for existing).
- Bold flavors win. Citrus-tahini and chile-crunch are not fads; they’re the bridge between “healthy” and “happy.” If your menu reads like a nutrition label, hire a flavor DJ.
- Smarter portions, clearer pricing. The gap between “this feels skimpy” and “this is perfect” might be 20 grams and a different bowl angle. Fix optics and the complaints fade. (Yes, we just told you to become a salad cinematographer.)
“But be honest—did Sweetgreen lose the plot?”
No. They just discovered the plot has sequels. The first movie was “Make Salad Sexy, Fast.” The second is “Run a Public Omnichannel Brand With Real Unit Economics and Occasional Robots.” The third is “Win Outside the Urban Core Without Becoming Boring.” We’ll watch all three.
Brands don’t live or die by a single decision. They live or die by habits: tight prep, sharp labor plans, kind service, brave flavors, clean data, and the humility to roll back anything that doesn’t serve the guest. Sweetgreen has shown both the ambition to try and the willingness to adjust. That’s not a scandal; that’s adulthood.
If Kuypers Creative were handed the tongs (our playbook)
- Define three archetypes (Office Core, Suburb Lifestyle, University) and publish a one-page ops + menu + marketing grid for each.
- Rewrite the winter calendar now: warm hits, cozy LTO cadence, email/SMS that actually helps (“Skip the line: order by 11:15, pick up at 12:05”).
- Photograph for truth. Real bowls, real portioning, minimal styling. Perception is a KPI; control it.
- Personalization light. New / Lapsed / VIP segments, one surprise per quarter, and a bounce-back that feels like a favor, not a funnel.
- Infinite Kitchen SOPs that read like an airplane checklist: daily calibration, cleaning, redundancy, and a “machine down” play that turns chaos into theater (“chef’s line” moment).
- Catering pre-sets with delight baked in: labeled trays, the “bonus” cookie box, and a QR to re-order in three taps.
- Host the neighborhood. Weekend pop-ups with local gyms or farmers. Salad can be community if you let it.
Final bite
So what happened to Sweetgreen? The same thing that happens to every restaurant once the honeymoon ends: reality. Guests still want fast, fresh, craveable food; the world makes delivering that harder than your brand book implies; and the solution is never one thing. It’s fifty small things done consistently, with occasional brave leaps (like a conveyor of arugula that doesn’t panic at 12:14).
If you’re an operator watching from the sidelines, don’t just follow the headlines. Follow the habits. That’s where the money is—and the hospitality, too.
When you’re ready to make your version of “salad sexy, fast” (or tacos, bowls, wings, pastries—pick your ritual), Kuypers Creative will bring the brand, the website, the menu engineering, and the tech plumbing to the same table. We’re not robots (yet), but we do run on espresso and well-seasoned operations.
Now pass the chile crunch. This kale wants to live a little.
