Jonathan Neman
Co-Founder & CEO, Sweetgreen. On 3 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestor@JonnyNemo ↗LinkedIn ↗sweetgreen.com ↗
Jonathan Neman co-founded the fast-casual restaurant chain Sweetgreen in 2007 with Georgetown University classmates Nicolas Jammet and Nathaniel Ru. He led the company from a single Washington, D.C. salad shop into a publicly traded nationwide brand operating hundreds of tech-enabled and automated locations.
3shows
3appearances
41statements
20resolved
14supported
2contradicted
70%fully supported
11said about them ↓ Everything Jonathan Neman said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Neman: Consumers rank health fourth behind taste, convenience, and value
“What we've learned is, while a lot of people say they care about health, when it comes down to making a decision about what they're gonna eat, it's taste, convenience, and value. Your health is kind of there, right, you know, right in the number four range.”
Sweetgreen CEO: Infinite Kitchen requires 30% to 50% less store-level labor
“But on, on average, 30 to 50% less labor. At the store level. So you're running it with far, you know, far fewer people.”
Neman: Wingstop added sandwiches to lower costs by purchasing whole birds
“Wingstop didn't introduce sandwiches until like two years ago. And by the way, the reason they did it was not from a customer perspective. It was from a supply chain perspective because they realized that if they introduce sandwiches, now they can buy whole bi…”
Sweetgreen rejected a 100-location licensing deal when it had three stores
“If you go back when we had three restaurants that we got an offer for a very, you know, we got, we always got franchise requests from day one, you know, one off franchise requires probably a thousand of them. But at one point we got an offer from like a very l…”
Automation is the restaurant industry's next 20-year platform shift
“And we think that, you know, over the next 20 years, automation is that next platform shift, similar to the digital transformation we've seen over the past 15.”
Sweetgreen will not eliminate jobs during its Infinite Kitchen automation rollout
“We don't plan on eliminating any workers as part of the rollout. So it's going mostly in new restaurants and in any retrofits, That we have, we will keep those jobs for our team members.”
Sweetgreen avoids public brand commentary outside food, health, sustainability, or staff
“We are going to focus on if it's an issue related to food, Health, sustainability, or our people directly, we will do something. We may comment internally about certain issues, but as a brand, we do not believe it's appropriate to make comments on any of those…”
Corporate leaders should speak up personally, but brands should stay silent
“I think it's important for leaders to speak up on those things, but I think it's inappropriate for the brand itself to speak.”
Neman: Sweetgreen line workers can become $100k+ managers within three years
“With not a lot of experience or education, you can start here as a, you know, work in the line, and if you work hard, you can be a manager making over a 100,000 dollars a year in less than three years.”
Neman: Sweetgreen was built to reach 3,000 locations like McDonald's
“The vision was we want to be the next version of McDonald's. So we had, we built it to be that. It was never built to get to two 50. It was built to get to 3000.”
Neman: Opening physical restaurant locations lifts existing delivery business
“Well, what's interesting is I can have delivery coverage in an area, and then I can open a restaurant there, and the whole thing lifts. So the physical presence of an actual, a place is Actually can help lift your wholesale and the rest of the business.”
Operational difficulty creates a restaurant company's defensible moat and long-term value
“How hard it is, is what makes the moat, and what makes it so valuable and powerful over time.”
Scaling startups need specialists but must keep generalists as culture carriers
“Because when you start, you know, you have small team and everyone's a generalist. You need just generalists that do everything. And as you get bigger, you need more specialists. And that generalist may not have the experience of a specialist, but there's such…”
Sweetgreen delayed opening in Midtown Manhattan to establish a lifestyle brand
“In New York, very intentionally wanted to tell a story with our real estate. So the best place to probably to open in New York would have been Midtown Manhattan... Very intentionally did not go to Midtown because we wanted to build a lifestyle brand and be par…”
An IPO is a financing event, not an exit for founders
“Some people view an IPO as an exit. We don't view it as an exit at all. It's just, it's a financing. It's a way to, you know, bring capital onto the balance sheet, have, create a more public platform and more exposure, and continue on this mission.”
Sweetgreen stores with automated kitchens see significantly lower employee turnover
“The happiness we're seeing in the stores that have it are much higher. We're seeing much less turnover. In the restaurants that feature the Infinite Kitchen.”
Sweetgreen paid its general contractor in equity after a $50,000 shortfall
“We ended up raising almost 300,000. And it did cost about 350,000 dollars, so we were short 50,000 dollars or so, which means we owed the contractor 50,000 dollars at the end, which means the contractor owned a piece of our company at the end.”
Sweetgreen's original concept would have failed in New York or LA
“The sweet green of, that we started in D.C. Would not have been successful in New York or L.A.”
Sweetgreen never franchised to maintain tight supply chain and cooking control
“It's never been part of what we wanted to do because you just can't control what we do, and what we do from a supply chain and scratch-cooking perspective, we were just always scared of franchising our business and have never done it.”
Sweetgreen CEO: Expanding Infinite Kitchen by 20 to 25 locations this year
“We have 12 open today, and this year we'll open at least 20 to 25 new ones.”
Neman: Sweetgreen's Entire Top Executive Team Quit Within One Year
“Yeah. I remember, like, the last one where we thought it couldn't get any worse, and I get the text from someone, and it's always like the worst text when someone says, hey, can you talk? And then, so, the last person quits, and we're just like, oh god, what a…”
Sweetgreen pitched 250 people to raise $300k from 50 investors
“We ended up getting about 50 investors in that first round to raise 300,000 dollars. That means we have to talk to like 250 people.”
Sweetgreen raised capital individually for each of its first three restaurants
“And each one, we actually, we raised money individually for them. We had no corporate team. It was just the three of us, three, three guys, three restaurants. Imagine each of us effectively managing one of the restaurants.”
The other half of the tape: Jonathan Neman's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 8 times in 2 episodes across the shows. 3 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 7Guy Raz 1
Statements about Jonathan Neman, by other people (3)
Neman: Young founders succeed because naive fearlessness reduces perceived risk
“There's a reason so many of these, like, transformational ideas get started by kids. It's because they don't know any better. They're willing to take the risk because it doesn't even feel like a risk.”
All three Sweetgreen co-founders are children of immigrant entrepreneurs
“We were all kids of immigrants, kids that had come to this country, parents that had come to this country and built businesses. They were all entrepreneurs.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 7
How I Built This 1
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Jonathan's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, Sweetgreen | 1 | 21 | 100% 6/6 | full record on Masters of Scale → |
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, Sweetgreen | 2 | 20 | 71% 5/7 | full record on How I Built This → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, Sweetgreen | 0 | 0 | 43% 3/7 | full record on 20VC → |