Another chain might have taken the easy route: dial Sysco, a national food-distribution behemoth. But Jammet and his fellow Georgetown University classmates Nathaniel Ru and Jonathan Neman founded Sweetgreen with an idealistic agenda: to provide sustainable, healthful food at fair prices. That eco-friendly ethos had been built into the brand, from the green-leaf pattern on the walls of each store to the chalkboard menus of seasonal ingredients and the biodegradable cutlery. If Sweetgreen were to succeed, big couldn’t mean business as usual. The three partners are proving it is possible to scale sustainable food.
It’s easy to paint Sweetgreen’s founders as sustainable-food wunderkinds; the three 26-year-olds fit the part. Jammet comes from a well-connected New York restaurant family: His parents owned Manhattan’s La Caravelle, which closed in 2001, and Sweetgreen counts Stonyfield Farm’s Gary Hirshberg, Honest Tea’s Seth Goldman and New York restaurant entrepreneur Joe Bastianich as advisers and investors. In meetings, the partners talk a lot about branding, synergy and the power of social media.
At an interview at their newest store, in Foggy Bottom, only Neman wore dress shoes; Jammet and Ru sported flannel shirts, jeans and Converse sneakers, a look more Mark Zuckerberg than slick restaurant entrepreneur.
Jammet, Neman and Ru admit that they stumbled into sustainable food. The trio had taken an entrepreneurship class as business majors at Georgetown. The Sweetgreen concept, Neman says, “was the answer to a problem that we saw”: the lack of fast, affordable, healthful food available to students.
Planning began in earnest in early 2007, the second semester of their senior year. Jammet’s first call was to a Laurel distributor, Keany Produce.
“One of their newest salespeople arrived with a case of lettuce and a case of snap peas. And we had to move all the beer over to get it in the fridge,” Jammet says with a laugh. “I think she was thinking to herself, ‘Who are these guys?’ ”
That was certainly company vice president Ted Keany’s initial reaction. But after a debut on M Street NW in fall 2007, Sweetgreen showed itself to be a serious customer. “When they opened in Georgetown, there was a line around the block. They bought $1,200 to $1,400 worth of product that first week,” Keany says. “All of a sudden, we wanted to know: Who are these guys?”
Between 35 and 45 percent of Sweetgreen’s produce comes from national organic partners that can deliver throughout the year. Its greens come year-round from California’s Earthbound Farm. (“We’re a salad bar,” says Jammet. “We can’t ever, like, not have greens.”) Bell & Evans provides antibiotic-free chicken. Shrimp is wild-caught in Mississippi. Stonyfield supplies the organic frozen yogurt.
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