Business
Sweetgreen’s CEO on Robots, RFK Jr. and Why Salads Are So Expensive
When Jonathan Neman was a student at Georgetown in the mid-2000s, he and some friends wanted to start a restaurant. A fast-food restaurant, but it would be healthy. And cool.
The documentary “Super Size Me” had made waves, and “we were going to be rejecting the fast food of the previous generation,” Mr. Neman said.
He and his business partners, Nicolas Jammet and Nathaniel Ru, opened the first Sweetgreen in 2007, on the edge of campus on M Street in Washington. As they expanded, they decided against franchising the brand, keeping control of every new location. Soon it became a buzzy millennial lifestyle brand. It sponsored an annual music festival. It went public in late 2021.
Sweetgreen now has more than 250 restaurants across the United States. The chain is known for its endlessly customizable salads — and for how quickly the cost of all those extra toppings and dressings can add up. (A recent lunch there cost me $16.28.)
The company also runs a growing number of locations that include what it calls the Infinite Kitchen, with salad-slinging robots that assemble bowls faster than human workers.
With great fanfare, Sweetgreen recently put fries on its menu — air-fried in avocado oil, to make customers feel better about adding a side of carbs to a salad. Much of its food is sourced locally, including avocados from California, which will limit the hit the company takes on tariffs, executives have told investors.
And Sweetgreen doesn’t cater just to office workers eating salads at their desks. Mr. Neman, 40, said he had heard that teenagers were “obsessed” with the salads, which wasn’t the case when Sweetgreen started. “The fact that they think that eating healthy is cool is something that we envisioned,” he said at his office in Los Angeles, where the company is now based.
Back in Washington, the Trump administration is also thinking about what goes into food. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the standard-bearer of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, recently declared that “sugar is poison” and pushed to ban artificial dyes in foods.
Some of those aims resonate with Mr. Neman, whose company worked with the former first lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign. But he — like many other company leaders — is trying to talk about the company’s priorities (like eliminating seed oils) without being pulled into the polarized politics of the moment.
“We say we’re not red or blue, but we’re green,” he said.
This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.
Sweetgreen is all about healthy ingredients. Now, there is the “Make America Healthy Again” movement and R.F.K. Jr. pushing to ban artificial dyes in food. What are your thoughts on that?
As it relates to “Make America Healthy,” funny story: In 2016, during a festival, we had a campaign that was a joke, a play on “Make America Great Again.” We made “Make America Healthy Again” hats.
Wow.
We are on the team of anyone who wants to help make America healthier. Back in the days of the Obama administration, we partnered very closely with Michelle Obama.
With R.F.K. Jr., I’ll speak to the parts related to our world. I think bringing more transparency to our food system is great. I think some of those dyes are bad. Sweetgreen has never sold soda very intentionally. We’d make a lot more money if we did. A lot of people wish we did. We never have and I don’t think ever will.
We don’t like to get involved in the rest of it. So we’re not trying to insert ourselves politically, either me personally or as a brand.
Have you communicated with the White House about healthy foods?
We haven’t been directly involved at this point. But if there’s a place for us to help, we’re totally up for it.
There have been cuts at the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees food safety. Do you have any concerns around food safety in the U.S. right now?
I think some of the things I’ve seen could be a little bit alarming. Others seem great.
What are the things that concern you?
I’d want to be careful to have certain guardrails around food safety, for example. And to be careful that there are not any adverse impacts to moving too fast. But overall, I think more transparency around the food system, promoting more real food, getting rid of these artificial chemicals that are allowed in our food and removing any conflicts of interest in people that are regulating our food are all good things.
Let’s talk about the robots. Will they help with profitability?
Absolutely. So what we’ve seen is at the store level, the Infinite Kitchen adds at least seven points of margin. So if you look at our store, right now we’re about a 20 percent margin business. An Infinite Kitchen store should be at least seven points better.
So as more robots make more salads, can people expect prices to come down?
We are very conscious of making sure that Sweetgreen can be something for everyone. I think automation does give us a hedge as labor costs continue to go up, to be able to drive more value and offer that to our customer.
How much is too much to pay for a salad?
It really depends what you put in it. When you think about the cost of something, you have to sometimes think about the total cost. There’s the cost to you, but when you eat certain things, what’s the cost to your health? What’s the cost to the environment? People are paying not only for the quality of the taste in the food, but the fact that it’s made by hand, the fact that we pay our farmers and our team members fairly.
What’s your back story? Tell me about your parents and growing up in Los Angeles.
My parents immigrated here in 1979. They were Iranian Jews who came during the revolution. And that was a big part of my story growing up because I think about how fragile your life and reality can be.
I’m the oldest of four boys. Being Jewish is a big part of my identity. I’ve always been very connected to Israel and my Jewish faith and big family.
My dad has four siblings. They each have four kids, so 20 cousins. Shabbat every Friday. A lot of us Persian Jews came to Los Angeles during that time.
Entrepreneurship is really a part of the culture. Growing up, I knew very few people who worked for big companies. Everybody was a small-business owner in some way. My dad and his brothers worked together. They started a textile business.
I always knew I wanted to be in business. From a very early age my dad would take me to work with him. One of my earliest memories was that I’d want to put on a suit — because he put on a suit — and go to his factory and walk around.
You had this great network of entrepreneurs during the start-up process. Were you calling your dad?
I had a lot of mentors in the community, including my dad. Always was and still is. I always give my dad a lot of credit because I don’t think he expected me to go to Georgetown and then to, like, start a little salad shack.
What was it like to be an entrepreneur in Washington at that time?
Entrepreneurship has become a lot sexier over the past 20 years. At the time, especially at Georgetown, that wasn’t the culture. The cool thing was going to get a job in government or consulting or banking.
I got accepted to what I thought was my dream job, at Bain & Company, the consulting firm.
I would have had to leave D.C. The restaurant was up and running. I spoke to my partners, like what should I do? Should I stay? Should I go? They’re like, “It’s one restaurant now. Why don’t you go and get these skills and then see what happens?” I went and realized consulting wasn’t really for me, especially after being an entrepreneur.
Finally, it was actually a conversation with someone at Bain. I always remember this conversation because he’s like: “Listen, you have two big opportunities to take huge risks in your life. One is now. The other is after your kids are out of school. You don’t have anything to worry about right now.”
I remembered this phrase: “You can’t fall from the floor.”
Time for the lightning round. Do you have any secret Sweetgreen menu tips?
The big unlock to the secret menu is the mixing of dressings. Putting two together, like spicy cashew with a green goddess. You have this whole different experience.
Do you use A.I.? If so, what was the last question you asked a bot?
I do use A.I. a lot. The last thing I did was not a work thing. It was personal. I have two kids, a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old. I put a picture of them in and asked what they’re going to look like when they grow up. It has blown my mind because I can’t unsee it now.
What other C.E.O. do you admire?
I’d always looked up to Howard Schultz. I think what he did at Starbucks was amazing.
Do you work on a plane, or do you zone out?
I work a lot on the plane. It’s this amazing quiet time where I can do a lot of the work that I can’t do day to day.
How do you sign off your emails?
Usually just “JN.” If it’s a more inspirational message, I’ll write, “Onward.”
Business
Commentary: Trump wants to let companies make fewer disclosures, thus keeping investors in the dark
Trump’s SEC is considering eliminating the mandate for quarterly corporate financial reports, but even some big investors call it a lousy idea.
This being the “information age,” it would be understandable if investors sometimes feel inundated with too much information to wade through about the stocks in their mutual fund portfolios.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, bowing like a puppy to the urgings of President Trump, is considering exactly the wrong solution to this supposed burden. It’s proposing to allow public companies to give their investors less information, as though that’s a good thing.
On May 8, the SEC proposed rescinding its mandate that public companies report financial results on a quarterly schedule. Instead, it suggests, semiannual and annual reports should suffice.
This takes an already-unlevel playing field where Main Street investors are already disadvantaged, and makes it more unlevel.
— Dennis Kelleher, Better Markets
The SEC left its proposal open for public comment for 60 days, meaning the window closed Monday. By then, the agency had received more than 68,000 comments, according to a tracker posted online by accounting professor Tzachi Zach of Ohio State.
Almost 99.9% of the comments were negative. Several organizations of institutional investors and auditing professionals, as well as a tsunami of individual investors, expressed opposition.
A similar initiative the SEC aired in 2018, during Trump’s first term, received an overwhelmingly negative response and was eventually dropped.
The tide of opposition coming from individual investors shouldn’t be surprising. “Taking away basic quarterly information means investors are blind for six months at a time,” says Dennis Kelleher, co-founder and chief executive of the investor advocacy nonprofit Better Markets.
That’s especially true for small investors, though perhaps not so much for major institutions, insiders or deep-pocketed individuals. “If you’re a big dog, you’ll get the information anyway,” Kelleher told me. “And insiders, who are trading in their own stock all the time, will have the information. This takes an already-unlevel playing field where Main Street investors are already disadvantaged, and makes it more unlevel.”
Trump set off the latest initiative with a social media post on Sept. 15, advocating the move to a six-month reporting schedule. It read, in part, “This will save money, and allow managers to focus on properly running their companies. Did you ever hear the statement that, ‘China has a 50 to 100 year view on management of a company, whereas we run our companies on a quarterly basis???’ Not good!!!”
As was usual with Trump, his argument was a string of uninformed and irrelevant non sequiturs.
It’s doubtful that eliminating quarterly reports will save much, if any, money. Most 10-Qs are cookie cutter documents disclosing financial figures already embedded in corporate records.
The idea that managers would become empowered to “focus on properly running their companies” if only they were relieved of the burden of preparing a report every three months is just malarkey: Any CEOs who feel the impulse to drop everything and involve themselves in what is essentially an automated process can’t be very good at their jobs.
As for China’s “50 to 100 year view on management of a company,” what would that even mean, even if it were true? China doesn’t operate on a 50 to 100 year corporate horizon, but rather on a string of five-year plans. The most recent of these was adopted by the government in March, covers the period up to 2030, and is its 15th in a row.
Despite the flaws in Trump’s arguments, Trump’s SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, a former corporate lawyer and securities industry consultant, fell into line. Within a few days of Trump’s post, he showed up on CNBC to minimize the potential effect of the change. Private companies rely on semiannual reports, after all, he noted, although the idea of taking private companies as models for publicly traded corporations might not strike experienced investors as the wisest thing.
Atkins cited an enduring chestnut, for which there’s no evidence, that quarterly reporting is responsible for “short-term thinking” in corporate suites (though he admitted that his evidence was “anecdotal”). And he suggested that small investors have ample access to corporate information even without quarterly reports — why, he said, they can just tune in to CNBC!
“To propose change in what our rules are now would be a good way forward,” he said. “So I welcome the president’s putting this up for discussion.”
Something more insidious undergirds the SEC’s proposal than its immediate effect on corporate behavior. The agency rationalizes its proposal as seeking “a tradeoff between reducing regulatory burdens … and promoting efficient financial markets through timely disclosure.”
The problem here, Kelleher points out, is that “reducing regulatory burdens” isn’t part of the SEC’s mission in any way, shape or form. It’s a regulatory agency, and its mission since its founding in 1934 has been to protect investors, not to make things fluffier for stock issuers.
The history of financial disclosure in the U.S. shows a long-term trend favoring more disclosure, not less. In the 1880s, quarterly reporting by railroads and other transportation companies were common.
Early on, pressure for more frequent disclosure came not from government regulators, who barely existed before 1934, but from investors. The reporting of quarterly earnings, notes corporate finance expert Owen Lamont of Acadian Asset Management, was “a bottom-up historical phenomenon reflecting voluntary arrangements between firms and investors, not a top-down phenomenon imposed by law.”
By 1931, according to financial historians, 63% of New York Stock Exchange-listed firms were publishing their quarterly earnings. The Big Board mandated that frequency for most listed companies in 1939. The SEC mandated semiannual reports in 1955 and quarterly reports, as Atkins said, in 1970.
The evidence in favor of dropping the quarterly reports is uniformly thin. Some advocates cite a 2018 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Warren Buffett that was headlined “Short-Termism Is Harming the Economy.”
Couple of points about this: First, the target of Dimon and Buffett wasn’t quarterly financial reporting, but quarterly earnings guidance — that is, the practice of some top executives who project their earnings into the future. (This guidance usually comes at the same time they issue their SEC disclosures.)
It’s guidance, they wrote, that is “a major driver” of short-termism in corporate behavior. That’s because management is giving itself a target it feels obligated to meet, even if factors outside its control interfere with the quest.
Furthermore, Dimon and Buffett wrote, “Our views on quarterly earnings forecasts should not be misconstrued as opposition to quarterly and annual reporting.” They called transparency about financial and operating results “an essential aspect of U.S. public markets … so that the public, including shareholders and other stakeholders, can reliably assess real progress.”
Individual investors may be unmoved by the SEC’s proposal because — let’s be candid — how many of them read quarterly earnings reports, anyway? But that’s unimportant, Kelleher says, because other market participants are reading them. “So that information is in the marketplace, and that’s what actually enables price discovery, so stock prices roughly reflect what’s going on at a company, most of the time.”
More to the point, the quarterly reports reflect the highest-quality, detailed information, the information the SEC requires executives to disclose on pain of facing a civil lawsuit from the agency or even criminal liability for faking data. “Main Street investors, whether they read quarterly reports or not, are the real beneficiaries,” Kelleher says.
That’s so. The bottom line is that quarterly financial reporting helps investors. It doesn’t promote short-term behavior and its costs, modest as they are, don’t outweigh its benefits.
Over the decades, scandal-ridden corporations have hidden fraudulent behavior in the interstices between mandated disclosures—think Enron, WorldCom and Tyco, among others. Why give any corporation, even an honest one, the opportunity to disclose less?
The luxury shopping center in Pacific Palisades will reopen next month after more than $100 million in renovations forced by the January 2025 wildfire that devastated the Los Angeles neighborhood.
Palisades Village will reopen Aug. 15, owner Rick Caruso announced Wednesday. The outdoor center survived the blaze that destroyed homes and other businesses but needed refurbishment to eliminate contaminants that the fire could have spread.
Crews are putting finishing touches on mall buildings after tearing them down to the studs, treating the wood and rebuilding the walls, Caruso said.
“Everybody’s working, and stores are moving their products in,” he said. “It’s a really cool feeling that people have really locked arms and are working together.”
An electrician installs lighting for a restaurant at Rick Caruso’s Palisades Village on Thursday. The shopping center is scheduled to reopen mid-August.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Pacific Palisades resident Allison Polhill, who is rebuilding the home of 30 years that her family lost in the blaze, said she is “thrilled” at the prospect of returning to the mall she used to frequent. Its comeback is a boost for the community, she said.
“Every single step that we make to reopen our commercial corridors is going to bring more people back into the Palisades,” said Polhill, who expects to move back into her home at the end of August.
A total of 6,822 structures were destroyed in the Palisades fire, including more than 5,500 residences and 100 commercial businesses, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Caruso previously attributed the mall’s survival to the hard work of private firefighters and the fire-resistant materials used in the mall’s construction.
The $200-million shopping and dining center opened in 2018 with a movie theater and a roster of upmarket tenants, including Erewhon, which may be the only grocer in the heart of the fire-ravaged neighborhood when it opens.
Caruso’s company was able to fill the mall with tenants despite the long shutdown.
Palisades Village is 99% leased, with the majority of tenants returning, said Jackie Levy, chief financial and revenue officer. Nearly one-third of the shops and restaurants are new to the property.
A firefighter carries a hose back to his rig while walking through a destroyed home from the Palisades fire in Pacific Palisades on Jan. 7, 2025.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Last year, Pacific Palisades-based fashion designer Elyse Walker said she would reopen her eponymous store in Palisades Village after losing her 25-year flagship location on Antioch Street to the inferno.
Other neighborhood shops destroyed in the fire that are reopening at the mall include K Bakery and Loomey’s Toys, which caters to children up to age 12 and used to be across the street from Palisades Elementary Charter School.
“It’s been a journey and I’m excited because I wasn’t sure that there was going to be a place to come back to,” said toy store owner Amanda Rastegar. “Hopefully we can bring some of that magic back.”
Rastegar’s home in the Palisades survived but was damaged by the fire. The family returned about eight weeks ago. Her last memory of the fire was a burning supermarket.
“I just couldn’t wrap my brain around what was happening,” she said. “By the time I left, Gelson’s was on fire.”
Among the returning tenants is Angelini Ristorante & Bar. Well-known Los Angeles chef Gino Angelini said he will be in the kitchen next month for a return of the Italian restaurant.
“We won’t do a big celebrity open,” he said. “We want to have a very soft opening and see our customers come back.”
Construction takes place at Rick Caruso’s Palisades Village on Thursday. The shopping center is scheduled to reopen mid-August.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
An elaborate celebration would not feel “correct for me,” Angelini said, because the devastation has been “very sad” for so many.
Other new tenants include local chef Nancy Silverton, who has agreed to move in with a new Italian steakhouse called Spacca Tutto. Women’s activewear retailer LESET will open its first West Coast location.
Caruso said he is optimistic that customers will return to the center, even though many Pacific Palisades residents are still dispersed. One tracking system estimated that about 30% of the Village’s customer base was impacted by the fire, he said.
“That means 70% did not get impacted, so there’s a lot of customers still left out there,” Caruso said. Historically, the center drew customers from as far away as Beverly Hills and Calabasas, as well as Malibu, Brentwood and Santa Monica.
He also hopes many will be inspired to visit the revived mall.
“I believe in the goodness of people and I believe that people are going to want to support the Palisades,” he said. “They’re going to want to be there and support the businesses that have had the courage and the heart to reopen.”
Walmart is rapidly expanding its network of electric vehicle chargers designed for customers to use while they shop.
The network could help fill gaps in EV infrastructure in states with greater need for chargers. Walmart, which has more than 5,000 locations in the U.S. and hundreds in California, says more than 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of one of its stores.
The chargers also offer an incentive for customers to choose Walmart — Walmart Plus members will receive a 10% discount off an average price of $0.46 per kilowatt-hour of energy at the company’s chargers.
Walmart chargers are already available at more than 75 locations in 17 states, with Texas boasting the most charging stations, followed by Florida and Arizona.
Matthew Nelson, Walmart’s director of energy policy, said last week on LinkedIn that the network will soon reach 29 states, including California.
“We are delivering on the promise of affordable, reliable and convenient charging,” Nelson said in his post.
According to Walmart’s website, six charging stations are coming to California soon, though the company did not offer a specific timeline.
The chargers will be installed at stores in Antelope, Brea, Fresno, Stockton, Suisun City and Vallejo.
Most charging sites in California will include eight to 16 fast-charging stalls, said Walmart spokesperson Kelsey Bohl.
The company first announced plans in April 2023 to install its own EV chargers at Walmart and Sam’s Club stores, with a goal of installing thousands of chargers by 2030. Partnering with ABB E-Mobility and Alpitronic, it added 25 new charging sites this past May and six more in June.
“Walmart is building a leading retail-integrated EV fast-charging network, focused on delivering an affordable, reliable and convenient charging experience where customers already shop,” Bohl said in an emailed statement. “Customers can charge while they shop, access stations through the Walmart app they already use, and benefit from affordable pricing.”
The charging stations already available include 612 individual charging stalls using 400-kilowatt chargers. Each stall has a dual charging cord with both Combined Charging System and North American Charging Standard connectors. The standard connectors, designed by Tesla, are smaller and lighter than the combined systems.
The primary way to pay for the chargers is through the Walmart app, but the company is also experimenting with built-in credit card readers to allow those without the app to use the stations.
Customers can check charger availability on the Walmart app. The company said the chargers will be available 24 hours a day.
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