Sweetgreen Spins Up Its Comeback Plan

Exclusive: Co-founders Jonathan Neman and Nic Jammet offer real talk on where the healthy chain has stumbled, and how its trading millennial cringe for Gen Z cool.

On a Tuesday afternoon in April, Jonathan Neman, cofounder and CEO of Sweetgreen, is talking about the early days of the salad giant, which celebrates its 20th anniversary next year. Over the weekend, he was on the couch watching a livestream of The Strokes from Coachella. 

“I felt like the old, aging dad,” says Neman, 41, “telling my five-year-old, ‘Back in the day, they played our festival’.” 

Hearing this, Nicolas Jammet, Neman’s co-founder and the company’s Chief Concept Officer, laughs at the memory. The pair was recalling the Sweetlife Festival, which began as a block party in DuPont Circle in 2010 and grew significantly over the next six years, featuring artists like Kendrick Lamar, The Weeknd, and Lana Del Rey, before winding down in 2017. “The Washington City Paper was like, ‘How were three guys with a salad joint able to hire The Strokes?’”

Nothing illustrates the venture-capital-gone-wild days for consumer brands quite like a salad start-up’s music festival. Founded in 2007 by three friends from Georgetown, Sweetgreen catered to a generation of health-conscious office drones willing to spend big for a better lunch, happily waiting up to an hour in line for the privilege. Investors were lining up, too. Before going public in 2021, Sweetgreen raised about $470 million with a final........

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