The Exchanges

Q to expand, right? And as you did, as, as our show has, everybody wants to do that. And I think there are good arguments to be made to do it. If you were in Dini's position here, and you're thinking about, okay, how do we take this from the shop in Rockville, farmers markets, to at least a bigger regional presence? What do you think are interesting options for her?

A I am actually very bullish on, on brick and mortar right now. I think that in this world, and you said of kind of everything digitized, we're seeing a lot of energy around the analog experience again, and the power of building community in a physical space. You know, I'll give you an example in our business. When delivery became a thing, we're like, oh, maybe we don't need restaurants. Because people know the brand, we can open these kind of ghost kitchens, and we can just deliver to people through either our app or all these other, uh, all the, all the marketplaces. 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. You have to make sure you can afford it and build it out and all of that. Um, and with real estate, I'll say real estate markets are relatively efficient when rent is really, really cheap. There might be a reason it's really cheap. And that the old adage of location, location, location, it's means something. It's real. Like even today, a brand like sweet green, big, we can market, we give all of this capabilities. If we take a bad location, It doesn't work.

AI assessment note: “I am actually very bullish on, on brick and mortar right now.”

Q And what did your, I mean, when your parents came to LA and sort of start over, what, what did they do? What was their work?

A Yeah, so, so my dad worked with his two brothers, and he did what he was doing in Iran, which was, he was a importer of textiles, And then he would sell textiles. And so my early memories was, were going to see my dad at his office, and he had a warehouse, and I remember, like, my dream was to, like, be able to ride the forklift that would carry, like, the rolls of fabric, and that's what he did. He sold rolls, you know, he would design fabric and sell rolls of fabric to brands and manufacturers to make garments out of. And similar to Nick, I think starting a business was always almost an expectation. Everyone I, everyone I looked around.

AI assessment note: “he was a importer of textiles, And then he would sell textiles.”

Q harder to maintain the culture, Maintain the quality, maintain the commitment by the staff. It's very, very rare when you go to a chain of restaurants and they are all entirely consistent. You know, um, I think In-N-Out is an example of a brand that does it very well. I don't know how they do it. How do you make sure that they are all operating at the same level?

A So you're asking the, the billion or maybe the trillion dollar question, because that is the business of restaurants. I think that, you know, the way we think about it is a balance of art and science. The science is all of the tools. How do we make it really easy for you to, to do your job? Whether it be, you know, software in the back of house or helping you, or, you know, AI to help you order the right amount of food, or we're now leveraging AI to schedule labor, kind of make some of the routine things easy for you. But the art is really, really important. The art is leadership. And the most important position at Sweetgreen is the general manager of a restaurant. We call them the head coach. And one of the critical metrics we track is our stability at the head coach level. We know if we can get a head coach to stay in their store for a few years, everything gets more consistent and all the numbers get better. So really figuring out what's the right profile for a Sweetgreen employee. And the amazing thing about the restaurant industry is it's one of those places that 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. And for us, those are our best managers. Our best managers were promoted from within. They're the ones that prese…

AI assessment note: “the way we think about it is a balance of art and science.”

Q because you have 250 locations, and we talked about maintaining, you know, brand and, and quality, and I think that Sweetgreen's done a great job at it. Obviously, uh, Dini's in a different spot, but as she thinks about growing and expanding, how, how could she keep the ethos, that kind of homespun feeling with a brand that might, you know, sell in a dozen or two dozen different places?

A You know, I, I really think it starts with the ultimate vision you have, and what, what your goals are, and what, what's gonna make you happy. Cause it's, from the way I hear about it, so much of it is about, The love you put into it, and the connection to your customers, and scale will change that. Your business will change. You won't, you know, I, I mean, I'm in restaurants a lot, and I meet my customers, but it's not the same as when I was working in the first store, and I knew all the customers, and I remember, you know, my CFO tells this story. He joined us exact, almost exactly 10 years ago, and he's like, you know, these guys had a really beautiful business. They almost owned all of it, And they could have slowly opened a store a year and owned all of it and had full control of this high quality experience, but that wasn't the vision. The vision was we want to be the next version of McDonald's. So we, we had, we built it to be that. It was never built to get to two 50. It was built to get to 3000. And I think you have to kind of think about what is like, is that what you want or do you really want to have Known for the best pies that are really high priced, with great margins, and you're sold in the best restaurants in the world, and you're on Gold Belly, and you're better, your key lime pie is known to be better than Joe's Stone Crab, and Like, that's what's gonna bring…

AI assessment note: “scale will change that. Your business will change.”