Sweetgreen, growing yet committed to local sourcing

The chain’s fast growth has posed challenges for sourcing local ingredients. With each new store, it became more difficult for Jammet to pick up fresh food at the market or to persuade farmers to make multiple deliveries. “Just imagine Georgetown,” says Mike Koch, president of FireFly Farms on Maryland’s Allegheny Plateau, which supplies goat cheese to Sweetgreen. “You’re in traffic. There’s no place to park, and if you’re in a van, you’re just hosed. Now imagine doing this at six or seven stores. We did it for a few months. It was pretty painful.”

Like Keany, though, Koch was eager to keep Sweetgreen’s business. Firefly sells about 20 percent of its cheese to the restaurant chain, more in months like this past October when goat cheese is featured in Sweetgreen’s rotating seasonal salad. But he didn’t want to pay the standard 20 percent fee to a distributor. Jammet arranged for Firefly to drop off its cheese weekly at Keany’s central warehouse; from there, it is trucked to individual stores along with other items.

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If that doesn’t sound revolutionary, think again. It’s precisely those kinds of seemingly ordinary logistics that allow businesses like Sweetgreen to grow. At Jammet’s request, Keany now picks up feta cheese at Mountain View Farm in Fairfield, Va., north of Lexington. At Keany’s suggestion, Jammet now buys blackberries from the distributor’s longtime purveyor, Westmoreland Berry Farm in Colonial Beach, Va., instead of a smaller producer that required a special trip.

Sweetgreen’s goal is to source 85 percent of its produce organically and locally. Today, depending on the time of year, between 25 percent and 40 percent is local — far more than in the early days, when it was limited to the sources at farmers markets. “It’s a win-win-win,” says Jammet. “It’s better for us because we get one delivery. It’s better for the farmers because they can spend time farming, not on the road. And it’s better for Keany, who gets more business.”

Sourcing wasn’t Sweetgreen’s only challenge. As the number of stores has grown, the company has streamlined its menu and the number of ingredients on offer, which allows for “more focus on hospitality and less on the chaos in the back,” says Neman. It also lets Sweetgreen spend more money on higher-quality ingredients its shops can use up quickly with minimal waste. In the four years since it launched, Sweetgreen has raised prices only once, increasing the basic salad from $6 to $6.35.

“You hear a lot of stories about people who are going to open 10 restaurants, and most of them don’t,” says Ted Keany. “These guys have really got it going on.” FireFly’s Koch calls Sweetgreen “the next Starbucks.”

Sweetgreen’s founders hope to take their concept national. But they have no fixed plans about where and how quickly that will happen. For now, it makes more sense, they say, to concentrate in areas where they have established relationships with small farms and distributors. Their next store will open in College Park early next year. The company also is looking at new locations in Philadelphia.

“We want to grow consciously,” says Neman. “It’s the only way to grow smart.”

Former Food staffer Black’s Smarter Food column appears monthly. Follow her on Twitter: @jane_black.