The Ledger, every show
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks, across all 44 shows. Pick shows below, then mix any filter with any other.
shows 
every show 44 of 44
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…”
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.”
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.”
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 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.”
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.”
Sweetgreen's highest-volume restaurant locations are in Midtown Manhattan
“Today, our highest volume locations are in Midtown.”
Sweetgreen owns and operates all of its restaurant locations directly
“We own all of our restaurants.”
Sweetgreen designed early restaurants with secondary digital make-lines functioning as ghost kitchens
“So very early on, we started building restaurants that effectively had a ghost kitchen in them. It would have a secondary digital make line for all of the online orders that, and then you had our in-store traffic.”
Digital orders account for 60% of Sweetgreen's total business
“Digital, it makes up about 60% of our business happens digitally.”
Sweetgreen currently operates two automated restaurants using its Infinite Kitchen technology
“We have two restaurants that are automated today.”
Sweetgreen sales dropped by almost 70% during its first winter
“It dropped by about seven, almost 70%.”
Almost half of Sweetgreen's current food sales are warm menu items
“And today, almost half of our food is warm food.”
Sweetgreen's Outpost initiative scaled to nearly 1,000 locations under a year
“Outpost, for example, is one of those things that was a little trial that now has almost a thousand Outposts in less than a year.”
Sweetgreen's fast-growing Outpost business vanished entirely overnight due to COVID-19
“So as the whole world moved to work from home, our outpost business completely disappeared overnight. It was a large part of our business and the fastest growing part of our business, and so it literally overnight disappeared.”
Neman: Sweetgreen operates 250 locations across 22 states
“So today Sweetgreen has 250 locations around the country. We're now in 22 states.”
Sweetgreen's founders used clickers outside competitors to calculate break-even demand
“We went and stood outside the other restaurants in the area. We went to the subway, we went to the Chipotle, we went to the Buoymongers, all these places with a clicker, and we literally counted, like, ok, like, they got 300 people in a day. How many people do…”
Sweetgreen currently operates 230 individual restaurant locations
“Our business is 230 individual restaurants”
Over 90% of airport dining operations are licensed concessions
“Back to the franchising piece, most airport operations are actually licensed. Almost, almost all. It's about nine, 90 plus percent.”
Sweetgreen sold just over 100 salads on opening day in August 2007
“The first day we sold just over a hundred salads.”
Sweetgreen operated as a D.C.-only brand for over five years
“We were a D.C. Only brand for over five years.”