He has me dying when he started talking about AI and Machine learning 😂

Omg thought it was just me LOL

I mean I get what youre saying, but CEO's do operate at a high/theoretical/abstract level. So its expected mate....

Fast slick talk will never make me pay $15 for a salad. Learning how to cook and going to a class would be cheaper even. I think this business will fail..

i think you mean S tier.

They won't. You can be in the public markets with a desire to scale and maintain the quality and overhead for what they do. There is a reason why public food companies do the centralized approach and work with economies of scale, they do it as it is the only path to profits in a slim margin industry.

start by decreasing salaries of overpaid corporate chair sitters

​@@jadenpark7943you're better off streamlining than cutting pay. Especially when everyone says companies don't pay enough.

You could do it too charging that much for a salad

@@HH-le1vi I get your point but he only mentioned decreasing Salaries of top corporate officials and nobody thinks they are underpaid .

It shouldn't be this way. Sweet greens salads are clearly overpriced for what it is. Where I live I pay $2.66 for a bowl of salad.

@@AndreVictorGoncalves ....where do you live?? and what is in this "salad"?

@@abramjessiah I live in Rio de Janeiro. The bowl of salad has chick peas, quinoa, tuna, pieces of pumpkin, slices of pineapple and tomatoes, and a leaf of lettuce

​@@AndreVictorGoncalvesThat sounds delicious! Unfortunately, I think alot of salad bars in US is usually a little more expensive than other food options.

The U.S government spends $38 billion each year to subsidize the meat and dairy industries, but only 0.04 percent of that (i.e., $17 million) each year to subsidize fruits and vegetables. A $5 Big Mac would cost $13 if the retail price included hidden expenses that meat producers offload onto society.

The more salads you eat, the more you will crave. Its all in our mind.

@@jennferley8854 Slight correction: it's in our microbiome,/gut, which influences our mind! crazy! And yes simply put the more you eat unhealthy foods the more the variety of good bacteria will die off, which makes you crave more unhealthy food

Sweet green tastes like junk compared to Chopt tbh

Agreed! Their salads are excellent.

@@mr.g937Chopt portions are also HUGE

16$ for a salad?

@@thaicuisineoui Different cities, different standards of living, different salaries, different budgets, different lifestyles, different eating.

You don't think the $8-$10 salad at another salad bowl restaurant is healthy? A healthy salad bowl doesn't need to be $15-$20.

@@ask230they live in DC, $8-10 salads don’t exist.

Go to the one in Georgetown. That’s the first sweetgreen ever. It won’t have some things the bigger locations have, but it’s still good. That’s the one job I miss and it’s been over 5 years since I worked there

I agree! I really enjoy salads so I would love to see more salad bar chains

I agree if they were focused on human hands getting the food 2 more but the more they move to automation the worse things will become

How do you know where they're sourced high pesticides and herbicides have been used to grow the crops?

I would only eat there if they've got there own farms where they source their produce.

Supported by the government? It isn't the taxpayers' fault if the companies don't know what t f they're doing.

Agreed. Increase food portions. No reason I should spend more at sweet green and be twice as hungry if I would have spent that same money elsewhere.

This. I actually laughed a bit when he spoke about the AI.

Why would they scale more if they're not profitable? Already have 200 stores

Everyone has an opinion about what should and shouldnt be done but the reality is not everyone is a ceo of a billion dollar company

@@keatonf3they said in the video that individual stores are profitable, it’s just the overhead costs that get them. So maybe increasing stores would result in more profit without a symmetric increase in those overhead costs

Thanks for this insight. I think the people/workers "make" Sweet Greens the great business that it is. A $15 salad made by a robot will tank the business. It's a balance between scaling down on workers and finding cheaper ways to source high quality foods.

It’s unfortunate that companies are beginning to compromise the authentic customer experience (talking to cashiers and line cooks) just to be more profitable. The employees make restaurants lively and fun. It’s kinda sad they think that’s replaceable.

I've had it once or twice just to see what the hype was and sweet green is my least favorite salad place of all the salad places I've tried in NYC. It's a really small salad and it's not tasty, nor memorable.

talking to cashiers isnt customer experience tbh ordering from a totem is way faster/practical and you also avoid mean cashiers@@iamthenicheee

Unfortunately when companies become publicly traded, it's a bit of a deal with the devil. Yes, you have way more capital, but there will always be pressure from shareholders to increase profitability at all costs. Hopefully Sweetgreen is able to push back against this.

$15 salads don't need subsidizing. You're promoting inflation.

america 🔥🔥

But capitalism is bad huh

Really interesting. Thanks for sharing

Wow I had no idea thanks for the info!

it's because when the price goes up there are shortages, usually do to bad weather or disease, which leads to worse produce (worked on farms my entire life)@@melz4766

And a restaurant is expected to have stable offerings instead of rotating seasonally. Who cares if it's February and the tomatoes are flavorless and 3x as expensive? People want tomatoes on their salad year round, not just in July/August

@@harmonicaveronica I would bet there's a market for eating in season. It's a thing that's been very much forgotten with the supermarkets appearance !

I really can't bring myself to spend $15...on a SALAD!

@@aramesh428Price wise, this is really no different than going to a Chipotle. Even adding ingredients like diced apples, rice, beans, eggs, avocados , or even Quinoa are all available options. For high quality ingredients I personally think they're priced just right.

it’s unfair to compete with traditional fast food that has so many ingredients (meat) that are artificially kept low by government incentives

I wish there is more american tourists in my country i would definetly change prices to at least triple if you guys are ready to spend 15$ on a salad but i guess you guys eat fake food so anything fresh you think it's high quality...@@archangel115

$15 for a salad. No freaking way. I won't give them a dollar.

my girl's cat and his litter box output has an evaluation of over $10bil

They "have to" in order to appeal to investors and get funding.

“Capitalism allocates resources efficiently” 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Remember WeWork? A "tech company" that definitely wasn't a real estate company with a bloated engineering department.

Only in USA. In my southeast asian country, if your products involve giving food to customers You are automatically categorized as a food manufacturer. And we have specific law, rules, documents submitted for a food company, regulated by the govt. You cant choose " tech" company label bec you want it

Burgers are 4$ right?

I can getaway with spending $5-10 at McDonalds and still feel way to full.

$15 for fried fast food? You can go to McDonald’s and spend half as much.

@@dguarino1974 a big mac meal is 16 dollars before tax in new york city which is the same or more expensive than most of sweetgreens menu.

@@jimmibuffe4819I agree ! I don’t eat fast food, but the other day I wanted Taco Bell and for 3 people it was 50 dollars. NYC is so expensive that I rather cook. I make some really good salads that I can eat for days

I agree, I’ve tried the sweetgreen in DC and the price was on par with a lot of other food places in my area. I’m used to spending 15 dollars minimum on a fast food meal, most Americans aren’t.

I disagree. Coming from a rural area, many of my friends and family crave an establishment like this. Our food delivery apps are just main fast food chains (if we even live in an area with delivery). It gets old so fast. We have hundreds of tweets and posts from younger adults begging for a Trader Joe's or these other sorts of healthy/high end establishments. Mississippi is an entirely blank landscape just waiting for something to land. If anyone was to appreciate fresh ingredients, it would be the people farming the ingredients.

But I bet Carol in Sioux Falls has $1MM easy in ONE of her brokerage accounts.

Honestly 15 bucks is a good deal for some high quality very fresh tasty nutrient rich food from area farms. You're paying that or more for the fried junk so why not pay the same and get some real quality and nutrient rich real food?

I agree. Given the price...its practically a luxury product. who has the means to purchase this regularly? folks in cities of high economy. They can only expand nation-wide when they have got their pricing figured out.

What, no blockchain!

@@mbg9650 Seriously. Everyone and anyone a few years ago was dropping "blockchain" into their pitches to score points.

Right? CEO just spouting word salad and threw in the latest sexy tech words. 😂

Wait what about NFTs? Oh wait that was 2021. Now it's AI, ML

Thats the buzzword these days!

People outside of logistics don't understand how fast shipping and warehousing costs ramp up.

@@yutian5884 Yes, especially when it comes to managing perishable food. The idea of fresh alone can smack them in the head. I mean, what is fresh? 2-3 days of lettuce, or a week?

Facts

Tech company=💸

if you can't make a 16 dollar salad profitable you are in the wrong business. Why would you even want that high overhead. Seems like a silicon valley's wet dream. But it won't be sustainable

Now you are one rich Bwoy. A regular = Plenty money.

@@PHlophemaybe get off your couch and start working if you want the luxury of a $15+ salad?

@@PHlopheprobably just live in nyc, its easy to make money in manhattan its just difficult to keep it

@@Anthony-cu9go You think people that can't afford a $15 salad don't work and are lazy? Boy do you have a lot to learn about the world.

@@alicedoors4826He sure does!!

They probably consider themselves a tech company because they pay Google wages to whoever is doing the software development for their website, apps, etc. Having a website or web application and a phone app does not make you a tech company, but like WeWork and Tesla, they think they are tech companies.

Hopefully I'll be able to try soon, I love salads😊

Why did you stop being a regular?

No reason in particular, I mostly wfh now so I don’t really pass by sweetgreen that often anymore

@@wizirbyman Interesting. Thanks!

Modern finance seems to have no shortage of appetite for brute force efforts to corner non-existent markets.

Every one has an MBA in this comment section

@@cloroc We’re all talkers here, the doers are busy doing.

@@tonic4120 busy doing their company into bankruptcy

Except that’s what chipotle is doing already. However chipotle started with a few healthy food items and has made big changes as they have scaled their business - like removing growth hormones which they weren’t able to until they reached a certain level of scalability

yea but how will the ceo’s get their second yacht or third vacation home???

American regulatory practices and taxation makes this practically impossible.

Well, this ain't Asia buddy. If you want cheap food, go live somewhere else where the costs are lower.

@@MacrosFTW I'm in Los Angeles and eat a huge meal of quality food from street vendors or trucks for $9. Maybe we should support working class entrepeneurs instead of trust fund babies who start restaurants marketed on hipster fluff (locally sourced, woahhhh).

WeWork vibes

No! Hide your card, use money so you don't leave an electronic trail.

$9.99 is the highest i

That's a faulty extrapolation but I kinda agree. I just think their CEOs are idiots . I went on a diet once, I literally copied their recipes. I can make the same dishes for $3-4 if I shop the ingredients from Lidl or Aldi, and $6-7 if I shop Harris Teeter and Wegmans.

@@Carltoncurtis1well everything is cheaper when you cook yourself, whats ur point

I thought the same thing but Sweet Green does makes some tasty salads. Not a salad person but they make them so well that I do keep coming back. They seem to be doing pretty well in suburbs where I am. Don't knock it until you try it.

@@tonyhart2744His point is that people don't cook/prep their own meals & yet they complain about the prices. Convenience costs.

“We’re profitable according to EBITDA”😂

It will in small town co-ops that have memberships or largely vegetarians, organic food buyers, and "loca-vores." Ours prospers in a town of only 10,000 population. It won't work in NYC, where the square footage and overhead is too high. Ours does make its own salads and sandwiches for take-out lunches, too. Very popular.

@@davidb2206 Are you saying your local Sweetgreen prospers? Or your local co-op? I don't dispute the latter. I'm highly skeptical of the former. Co-ops have other revenue sources & aren't really comparable to Sweetgreen.

The labor is not THAT expensive; it's the super good quality ingredients with usa infrastructure costs (some of the highest in the world). If they used shittier ingredients you'd get a cheaper shittier product

The market would accept this fine if it were a local specialized restaurant. There is a market for high-quality with high prices to account for labor. But, this has to be niche and specialized to a few select markets. One could make a healthy eight-figure business just doing this in the NY Metro with the same concept.

I do not disagree, there are strategies that could be put in place for solid gains regardless of economy or markt condition, but such execution are usuallv carried out by investment experts or advisors with experience since the 08' crash

The issue is most people have the "I want to do it myself mentality" but not equipped enough for a crash, hence get burnt, no offense. In general, invt-advisors are ideal reps for investing jobs, and at firsthand encounter, since Jan.2020, amidst covid outbreak, my portfolio has yielded nearly 300%, summing up to 7-figure as of today.

this is huge! think you can point me towards the direction of your advisor? been looking at advisory management myself.. seeking ways to invest and make more money with the uncertainty in the economy

There are several independent advisors you could research. However, I have been working with “Melissa Rose Francks” for almost four years, and we get along great. If she appeals to your judgement, you could continue with her. I support her.

I just googled her and I'm really impressed with her credentials; I reached out to her since I need all the assistance I can get. I just scheduled a caII.

27 million in the hole is a strange way to be "profitable."

@@charleybarley939 yeah, you’re correct. My call was way off on this.

You shouldn't be rooting for $15 salads to succeed.

@@Dayvit78 I am. They're delicious.

@@Dayvit78 Have you had the salads? They're amazing.

@@Dayvit78 I mean it’s supposed to be a replacement for fast food options. It’s not a salad you’re eating at home. It sucks when you’re on the road and there’s nothing to eat other than bad food.

Assuming the machines cost nothing to purchase and install, operating with 1/3 fewer employees in 2Q would have saved Sweetgreen $14 million. Total operating costs stood at $183 million, versus $152 million in revenue. Post automation, that's still $169 million versus $152 million in revenue. Maybe down the line they'll be profitable, but only marginally so; to the point where it's not really clear why investors would want to stick around.

It's not a franchise.

I like their philosophy of replacing jobs with robots

i like their philosophy of technology when they are a boring restaraunt chain

I like the philosophy of cutting jobs but purchasing from local producers

I honestly thought she also worked for some fast food company because of the way she talked.

It is fast food.

Her face says it all. Just wants to keep it real. I can get behind that.

She's the Aubrey Plaza of WSJ.

Heather is not having any this this nonsense.

To be fair, getting another person's order delivered is probably not the restaurant's fault. Usually the delivery driver screwed up. And frankly delivery drivers aren't paid enough to care. The other stuff though, that's on them. But it's hard to tell if that's a problem specific to your location/store, to the whole company, or the entire industry. There just haven't been enough workers to fill the spots that there used to be - tons and tons of people in the restaurant industry left permanently, either because they found better work in another industry or because they died

​@@harmonicaveronicaI worked at sweetgreen, and part of my job was making sure that the food that customer ordered was the correct one taken by the delivery man. So yes it's actually very much the responsibility of the employee here.

Tell me you don't understand contribution profit without telling me you don't understand contribution profits.

I know right? They are a restauraunt after all. Mac Donalds spread slowly and this restaurant should be no different. tbh almost all sole trader restaurants buy their food locally and don't have their food prepped centrally and it's risky but many still make it work. I'm not from new york, but I am from one of the about the top 5-10 most expensive countries to live in. Ireland. and I'm still yet to see long running restaurants offering salads for €14! I honestly think they are wasting their money on software developers. Literally all restaraunts, know their busy periods and can prep for them. And nobody needs to reinvent ordering systems before the business is profitable.

Do the same thing you're currently doing and expect another outcome!

I think there's two things at play here: 1. They are now a public company. investors care only about one thing- Growth. Quality can worsen, employees can be unhappy... doesn't mattter. Stock holders only care about that $$$$ going up. 2. Like most startups, the CEO is probably trying to grow the company as large as possible to get a huge pyaout when he sells the business.

@@aenorist2431you’re missing the entire point if their comment it’s almost laughable. If they’re overhead expenses exceed revenue by billions of $, the last thing they should do is expand this obviously failing business model. They need to pivot and become a more lean and efficient company, and IMO, they should go private because they would likely become more profitable and efficient

plant

correct. Its a luxury product right now. Willingness to buy increases if price comes down - opening up a wider market. really simple logic..

*Week's wage here in India

I never had it..$20??? That's lunch for two days!!!

That way they can red-line minorities from being able to afford healthy food. I live in Manhattan and it's very obvious how they only put healthy food on high income areas with all the salads, juice bars & kinoa bowls while lower income areas get Popeyes, Mc Donalds & Delis.

It's not a lot of money in the first world. I don't know how to break that to you. I don't care what they're eating in Bangladesh

20 bucks is expensive yes but you comparing that cost to wages of developing countries is irrelevant. Those developing countries aren't paying for the lunch, people earning in USA are so compare their wages not outside world wage. Also the places they are selling this at the moment have way more income per hour then let's say Texas or Florida. Prices fluctuate based on where it's being made and sold. Prices in New York or California obviously will be higher than prices in Texas or those developing countries if it were sold there 🙂

Exactly!!

I can't listen to him. He's a bot.

Girlie, when the flavor is a little funky it means that they managed to sneak in some nitrate or preservative for at least one of the aliments . This means you done ate some chemicals. I got me some fresh salad, tomatoes , a bit of cheese . added a bit of oil . I'm good.

Until you look at their ingredients and see that everything is made with seed oil. Use evoo ... like seriously?

Kudos to them for direct connection to farms. Counterpoint: my grocery store salad earlier today cost ~$8.23

@@RobBrulinski their delivery on food value is non unique; anyone next door could duplicate it.

Chipotle comes to mjnd

People in those countries are not going to pay $15 USD for a salad lol.

yeah tbh as a Singaporean, I would not pay over 8 SGD for any salad when I have so much local food options.

As a Singaporean, there are local chains that serve ~$10 (SGD14) salads so Sweetgreen will definitely have to compete in this area. But there is definitely demand among office workers especially those that earn more, too busy & want to live healthy.

@@cleverusernamecl5532 hence why I talked multiple times about reducing the cost according to local salaries with the savings made in ingredient acquisition.

Well does it fit the culture? youre looking at it in a way too simple manner my man. in india for example this wouldnt work- the culture is fixated on a certain food menu for which buying a salad is out of place.

He probably meant to say “big data”, but had a Biden moment.

🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦

Their food costs are sky-high relative to their peers and bloated salary costs for all the prep-work. It is a business model that isn't supposed to scale. They got this far from VC hype and good timing, it really should not be public and this big, but here we are.

Why do companies do this? Is it to show how much cash is generated by their core business to attract and keep investors? It still doesn't represent the bottom line, if I understand it correctly. That's all that matters in my opinion.

@@Collinsv8 EBITDA puts companies on an even playing field and makes them easier to compare to one another and in essence is a measure of profitability. It is your Earnings Before Interest (meaning it doesn't take into account your capital structure - companies have different combinations of debt / equity that they use to fund themselves) Taxes (companies in different tax statues and regions) and Depreciation and Amortization (usually more impactful for a business in a capital intensive business). Just makes it a more level playing field. So yes, you are correct that it doesn't represent the bottom line and as an equity investor that is what you care about, but you might also care about the upside of a business and these businesses need to invest for growth... Amazon wasn't profitable until a few years ago, but it could have been if it cut off those investments.

You pay $10 a month and get $3 off every purchase. Pays for itself

So stressful putting lettuce in a bowl...

@@a004 it is stressful, you have to assemble everything quickly and deal with a lot of pressure during busy periods

@@a004restaurant is among the most intensive, laborious and risky businesses

because you're literally just a human robot until they replace most of the labor with automation like they showed in the video@@ManMan-ul1pn

@@a004they have to prep all the food and then serve. It’s like working front and back of house in a restaurant. Similar to Dig I presume. Won’t hate on people working non stop all day