Make Usa Health Again Hat Sweet Green

Over Valentine'south Day weekend in 2016, a winter tempest wiped out most of New England'southward peach ingather — a development that left Sweetgreen'south supply concatenation team scrambling.

In the thick of summer menu planning, the group was forecasting supply for the restaurant chain's popular peach and goat cheese bowl and coming up short. While other fast-food companies might have opted to truck in less-than-fresh peaches from a far-flung location, Sweetgreen's team on the ground took a unlike route.

They swapped out the peaches for locally grown (and unscathed) blueberries and strawberries, whipping upwardly a brand-new bill of fare item that was dubbed the "Patriot Bowl" in an homage to the region. It speedily became one of the most pop orders throughout Sweetgreen'due south northeastern restaurants — and is at present a prime example of a concept that co-founder and Primary Make Officeholder Nathaniel Ru calls intimacy at scale.

"When we started out, you had ii choices: food that was either fast, cheap and unhealthy or slow, expensive and fresh. We wanted to create a place where you lot didn't have to sacrifice price for flavor or convenience. For us, intimacy at scale is about proving that that we can serve salubrious, real food at scale, while nevertheless making it experience like your Sweetgreen and not just a Sweetgreen," he says. "There are all of these cautionary tales about startups or restaurants that grew massively, transforming into slow-moving corporate entities where quality takes a nosedive, products become more bland, customers are no longer at the center, and employees feel less involved and inspired. We've been determined to avoid that."

Ru and his two co-founders, Jonathan Neman and Nicolas Jammet, started out on a journey to bring this philosophy to life more than than 11 years ago, opening up a 500-square-pes eatery in Washington, D.C. only a few months after graduating from Georgetown. Cozy and decorated with local art, this first location became anchored into the folds of the community, providing a stable foundation for further expansion along the Eastern seaboard. By maintaining a flexible supply chain and crafting a seasonal, curated feel for customers, Sweetgreen has bottled the essence of its apprehensive beginnings as information technology has scaled, tapping into that familiar-yet-fresh feeling to fuel impressive growth.

The visitor now boasts more than three,500 employees and nearly 100 locations in viii states, with plans to double the number of restaurants in the adjacent year. Just Sweetgreen has been growing beyond mere physical footprint as well. From launching enterprise office commitment and using blockchain to track ingredients to unlocking unicorn condition and raising over $300 million in funding, the company seems to share more DNA strands with tech startups than with their fellow fast-casual competitors.

In this exclusive interview, Ru draws on his experience scaling Sweetgreen to offer startups a clearer window into how speedily growing companies can maintain intimacy with customers, partners and employees. He deconstructs the essential strategies for authentically approaching new markets and collaborations, while diving deeper into the tactics Sweetgreen used to infuse intention into its supply chain, mobile app and team building efforts. Founders looking to build a company that can withstand growing pains and stay connected with customers will benefit from Ru'south masterclass on building a brand steeped in community.

Accept A LEAF FROM THE PLAYBOOK FOR SCALING INTIMACY

Every bit more than cooks crowd the kitchen and new locations are spun upwards, standard operating procedures and efficiencies are introduced to maintain consistency. Presently enough, the culture gets watered down, the products lose flavour and the founding spark of inventiveness dims as a cookie-cutter approach takes over.

This description could just equally easily utilise to a scaling tech startup every bit to a rapidly growing eatery chain (and as nosotros've previously noted, there's considerable overlap in the skillsets of chefs and product managers besides). As Ru is quick to bespeak out, companies in both industries face an inherent tension between scale and intimacy.

"Focusing on intimacy is much easier when y'all're starting out. It'due south hard to opposite engineer or revive it once you've reached a certain size," says Ru. "That'due south why building the mindset to embrace change and flexibility from the beginning is important. It'southward easy to concentrate on sales and growth, but losing the storytelling and emotion of your early on days is a recipe for a transactional approach that won't last."

For Sweetgreen, scaling intimacy revolves effectually expanding access to healthy food without compromising on the core, inherently local spirit the company started out with — a guiding calorie-free that requires a mindset different from that of their food industry peers. "In our space specially, many food companies obsess over building more than restaurants. Simply we try to recall more about deeply near client-centric metrics, focusing on NPS, frequency by channel, social sentiment and overall loyalty over time," says Ru. "And we believe we can increment that value past thinking less similar a traditional eatery company and more like a customer subscription business."

To further unpack the thinking behind scaling intimacy, Ru details the four core principles that take formed the ethos of Sweetgreen's approach, sharing the mistakes he and his co-founders learned from along the way.

1) Tiresome down to speed up.

"Similar many startups, nosotros started off with a few cadre values, but it quickly ballooned from there. I retrieve at i point nosotros got up to 20 values and we couldn't even memorize all of them. That was definitely a reflection of us trying to do too much in our early on years. Over time nosotros learned the power of maxim no and slowing downwards," says Ru.

While it'south tempting to grow as fast as yous tin in every dimension, information technology'southward the decisions that you say no to that ascertain who you lot are.

"Afterwards opening our start restaurant, nosotros immediately thought we could open all over the land in L.A., New York and Miami within the offset 3 years. In that location'due south a lot of pressure for startups and restaurants alike to expand to new markets quickly. But eventually we realized that by saying no to expansion, nosotros could focus on building the brand and get stronger, not just bigger," says Ru. "We made the conclusion to stay in D.C. for the first half-dozen years, and honestly, it was one of the all-time things we ever did. It allowed us to build a network issue and actually learn from our mistakes before we took that blueprint to new markets. Whether it was connecting to the local farmer's marketplace, edifice out an entirely local supply chain, scoping out real-estate or working on social impact projects, we incubated every tactic in D.C. get-go so we could put deliberate and accurate growth at the eye."

2) Study the community.

Further embodying that philosophy of taking things dull, the Sweetgreen team takes its fourth dimension before entering a new market, knowing that the exact aforementioned launch playbook won't work in every location.

"Unlocking intimacy and the ability to resonate with customers hinges on doing the legwork to understand them. You have to connect with each community differently. At least a year earlier we enter in a new market place, we're introducing ourselves to the community and taking the time to understand its unique culture so we can so that we tin can show upward in a more meaningful fashion," says Ru.

"We're students kickoff, analyzing each customs before every new market place launch. For instance, we've been immersed in Houston now for over a twelvemonth, coming together with the largest farmer'south marketplace, combing through real estate options, working with local artists and architects, learning about what people who alive in that area like to do and consume, and looking at historical data for everything from traffic patterns to demographics," he says. "We've also created our own mindset model that nosotros overlay on different ZIP Codes to approximate how well we would perform in certain regions. And so in the case of Houston, our diligence has led us to employ new tactics, such as introducing heartier food plates, serving beer and wine, and adding in more seating to cater to the culture of driving."

3) Embrace modularity.

In Ru's eyes, Sweetgreen's earliest stumble was underestimating how fast the world was changing. "When nosotros first started expanding outside of D.C., nosotros were essentially building the aforementioned version of the Sweetgreen eating house over and over again, focusing purely on adding more than locations, instead of lasering in on the expectations of the client" he says. "Over fourth dimension, we've discovered the power of modularity, designing our restaurants to comprehend change. Simply as a fashion retailer changes trade by flavour, our locations have the flexibility to change menus, ambiance and decor, feature local artists and different playlists."

And with Sweetgreen'south ambition to become the "Starbucks of real nutrient" that flexibility could come in handy. "Information technology gives us room to grow if we want to go international. Imagine what Sweetgreen would expect like, say in Japan," says Ru. "Nosotros've intentionally held the space in our make to permit for Sweetgreen to fit in many different environments."

Sweetgreen has as well explored another dimension of modularity: addressing the recent explosion of delivery apps and online ordering. "Nosotros had to figure out how we could provide Sweetgreen anytime, anywhere. We built our own app, only we've likewise introduced Outpost, a shelf-based costless Sweetgreen delivery to offices. It'southward non our traditional storefront and it's non typical commitment either," Ru says. "You accept to tinker with different formats that span across physical and digital to rethink how y'all're serving customers."

You have to design products and experiences for modularity because everything changes so quickly. Don't simply focus on the today's functionality — peer into the future and start thinking about how you can show upwards in unexpected ways.

4) Thrive on collaborations.

To tap into customs specific microcosms, accomplish out to customers in new ways and inject flavor into the make, Sweetgreen has utilized unexpected collaborations from the start. From a Kendrick Lamar "Beets Don't Kale My Vibe" entrada in 2015 to a recent partnership that delivers salads directly to WeWork locations, the visitor has dabbled across an incredibly various range of domains.

But i of Ru'due south personal favorites was the recent partnership with Michelin-starred chef Dan Barber.

"Everyone says 'farm to table' these days, but we wanted to try 'seed to restaurant,'" he says. "Dan has a seed company that breeds new strains of vegetables to maximize flavor, so we bought 100,000 seeds of a brand-new squash he invented and nosotros planted them in six farms beyond the land. They all came out in completely different shapes and sizes. Information technology had never been produced in mass quantities and plainly no client had ever heard of the Koginut squash earlier, but we put it on the fall menu at every location. That's non something about fast-food companies would practice, but for us, it's most showing our customers a different side of food and making certain purpose permeates throughout our brand," says Ru.

When considering partnerships, Ru advises early-stage teams to go with what feels similar a natural fit, not a forced extension. "The relationships that have been the biggest successes for us have always been the ones where the brainstorming and execution were seamless," he says.

Fifty-fifty at scale, yous can still observe ways to experiment with assuming, wild bill of fare ideas and look for partnership opportunities that bring out a different side of your brand.

Sweetgreen co-founder Nathaniel Ru

To make full in more colour beneath these 4 strategic pillars, in the following sections Ru goes on to reveal the tactical threads of how intimacy at scale has been woven into Sweetgreen's supply concatenation, tech platforms, brand edifice efforts and internal company civilisation.

LOCAL LOGISTICS TO SCALE SUPPLY FROM THE GROUND Upward

Although centralized sourcing and distribution has been the operational bedrock of fast-food for decades, Sweetgreen has upended convention from the very beginning. By going straight to the farmers themselves (including more than innovative suppliers such as Barber'due south seed-convenance company and Bowery's indoor farms,) Ru and his co-founders are dedicated to instilling intimacy and fugitive a typical conglomerate supply chain mentality at every turn.

"We want to evidence people that fast-food tin be good for you and likewise taste dissimilar in different places. Our kale in Philadelphia tastes different than information technology does in Palo Alto, and our goal is to make that completely normal in the fast-food globe," says Ru.

While most startups aren't struggling to figure out the logistics of planting a new strain of squash or distinguishing different kale varieties , early-stage consumer-facing companies often rely heavily on operations and suppliers — and stand up to acquire a few things from how Sweetgreen has set information technology all up.

Today the visitor has seven split supply bondage that involve over 150 local farmers across the country so menus can exist designed around the regions and the seasons. "Our supply chain is incredibly circuitous — but it's also our moat," Ru says.

If you lot're willing to do the upfront work of setting upwards different supply bondage or upending traditional operating models, y'all tin reinvent the business you're in.

"Some ingredients are procured nationally, such as wild rice or olive oil, but most of it is sourced locally. We also modify our menu five times a year, and each one involves more than 3,000 hours of research. There's also last-mile coordination and a value-chain coordination in each supply chain, which includes managing relationships, checking quality and helping farmers with purchasing ability," he says. "The biggest challenge is agreement forecasting and making sure that we set the correct expectations with farmers and the right volumes. It's much harder to exercise all of that in seven split up areas at once, but for united states of america, it pays off in spades. Our food tastes better, nosotros can be more transparent on where it's coming from and we're able to support local nutrient economies, all of which comes together to build a fresh take on fast-nutrient."

Here are two tactics Sweetgreen relies on to power this procedure:

Go deep to build supplier relationships that terminal. Before Sweetgreen moves in on a new market, the start task is to make certain it can be supported by a local supply chain. "We always say that we run across farmers before we come across landlords," Ru says. "Our second eatery in D.C. was really in the parking lot of the biggest farmer'south market, which enabled united states to connect with every vendor. That meant going to their farms, seeing what they do and figuring out how we could start working together and then calibration that further," he says. "We nonetheless utilise this tactic today. Don't merely view your partners or suppliers equally inputs or cogs in your operations; have a long-run view and recall of each one as an opportunity to build a existent relationship that tin grown wildly beyond where you get-go started. We partnered with our goat cheese provider in the D.C. region, Firefly Farms, back when we were both actually small-scale. eleven years afterward, we nonetheless work with them and their business has grown aslope ours."

Open upward with blockchain. Out of a desire to better nutrient safety (and avoid the tainted tribulations of competitors such equally Chipotle), Sweetgreen has started using blockchain to runway ingredients from seed to store. "Nosotros know exactly where our food came from, when it was picked and how it got to us," says Ru. "We partnered with Ripe.io to tag ingredients, put sensors in the ground and map the full journey of food past looking at variables in soil, microclimate and timestamps. It maximizes transparency and traceability, as the blockchain-based public ledger will allow whatsoever customers to see what's going on. Just it also enabled u.s. to really dig into and quantify taste," he says. "We've been conducting taste contour projects on heirloom reddish tomatoes in Boston and goat cheese in Chicago to validate our thesis that local, sustainably grown ingredients are amend than grocery store ones from an unknown source. For instance, through using blockchain and running customer gustatory modality tests, nosotros could pinpoint that peak flavor occurs more than five days later a tomato is harvested."

Transparency is an unbelievably powerful tool for startups looking to milkshake things upward in their manufacture. Open up and demystify your operating practices as much every bit possible to forge connections with your customers.

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN BOWL AND APP: INTIMACY AS AN INGREDIENT IN TECH

While Sweetgreen is known for the snaking lunch lines and fast-moving assembly stations of the physical realm, the company has been steadily dialing up its digital presence also.

Near fifty% of orders in the last year came through its mobile app, which has more than a million users. Given that Sweetgreen can count only ninety physical locations, these figures stand out.

"Nosotros're a food visitor first and tech company 2d. For u.s.a., it's always going to be important that the food is flavorful and succulent, but we as well want to make sure we're meeting our customers where they are, so forth with caput chefs and line cooks, we have developers and product designers," says Ru. "We want to ain that relationship with customers and bring a deliberate authenticity to every touchpoint, which is why we're as well prepping for our own commitment launch this year."

Tech needs to heighten the human experience, not supervene upon it.

Ru shares a behind-the-scenes await at how the company built its order-ahead app and internal operating system in a quest to deliver digital offerings with Sweetgreen'south signature streak of intimacy:

(Mobile) ordering with the eyes and Spotify for salads.

Sweetgreen was an early mover as one of the first in its category to release an app.

"Nutrient ordering and delivery apps have since exploded, merely when we were starting time designing our mobile app back in 2011, there wasn't anything that represented the experience that you felt in a restaurant. Information technology was a mixed pocketbook of radio buttons and dropdown menus, but we wanted to create an app that was as good as ordering in our restaurants," says Ru. "We spent two years developing it and when it launched in 2013, mobile ordering only made up five% of the business organisation. Just now only five years later, its nearly one-half of our volume. And we'll expand on this even further by exploring new functionality such as text, vocalization or even Slack ordering in the future."

Hither are two goals Ru kept the team focused on during the design procedure:

Content forward. "We had this mantra of 'ordering with your eyes.' At our restaurants, you walk down a front line and you lot cull what you lot want to get into your bowl based on what you see. We wanted that experience to come through in our app, and so we invested heavily in content descriptions and photography of every basin and every ingredient to create really rich, storytelling experiences around nutrient," says Ru.

Personalization. "Navigating through dropdowns or grids of standard card options is boring and we wanted to reduce the cognitive load of ordering nutrient online. We incorporated everything from dietary restrictions to society history to create the most customized experience possible. It could exist adjusting the heaviness of the dressing, specifying if you lot desire the salad mixed or using the 'salve to favorites' push so you can quickly re-society your custom creations," says Ru. "Somewhen this will evolve to using this data to nowadays you with a completely personalized, curated menu based off your preferences, more similar to Spotify than a salad chain."

Updating to Sweetgreen OS.

Early, the Sweetgreen team recognized the importance of back-of-house functionality. "Many focus on what our website or mobile app looks similar, just we've invested a lot of time in redesigning our kitchen infinite. Because the pace of online ordering was overwhelming the front associates line, we had to brand some operational changes," says Ru. "Today, every single Sweetgreen eating house has a secondary make line to handle online orders. Some of our New York locations really have four assembly lines to meet mobile demand."

For Sweetgreen, thinking through the configurations of the behind-the-scenes kitchen operations is also about making it easier for store teams to execute real food from scratch, as everything from the dressings to the roasted steelhead trout is prepared fresh at every eatery, every day.

"In the restaurant concern there aren't many technical tools to help make the chore easier," says Ru. "That's why we developed Sweetgreen OS, which nosotros similar to call up of as the turn-by-turn directions an Uber or Lyft driver gets. It takes in the inputs of sales forecasting, weather and historical performance to help the squad know how much nutrient to make, when to make it and what steps to follow."

It's tempting to focus only on externally-facing platforms, simply don't fail dorsum-of-house operations. Don't be afraid to spend the time custom-building the tools that your team needs to work more effectively.

THE STORY BEHIND THE SALAD: SERVING UP PASSION AND ASSEMBLING A COMMUNITY-DRIVEN Brand

When Ru and his co-founders kickoff started Sweetgreen, they were dismayed that the food companies with the best marketing were the most unhealthy options: Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Red Bull.

"Our thesis was, 'How can we utilize similar marketing tactics to tell the story of existent, healthy nutrient, and brand it a bigger part of the conversation?'" says Ru. "Simply telling people to consume their vegetables wasn't going to work. We had to connect it to lifestyle and civilization while making it feel different and fresh. Like to Nike and Supreme drops or new Netflix originals, we run across the white infinite to create hype around healthy food through our five seasonal bill of fare launches, which is why we partner with noted chefs such equally David Chang," he says.

Outside of menu launches, Sweetgreen seeks other ways to weave food, music, fine art and social impact into its brand. "For case, when nosotros hosted our large Sweetlife music festival in D.C., you lot could eat quinoa and sentry Kendrick Lamar at the aforementioned time," says Ru. "Merely even that's a great example of how scale results in a loss of intimacy. We've since pared things back and are now focusing on smaller, local block parties or having musicians play at an event hosted at Blueish Hill at Stone Barns."

For Sweetgreen, this search for connectedness has led the squad to notice means to contribute in the communities they operate in that have zero to do with restaurants. "Our mantra is to get out people meliorate than we found them. It's easy to apply that thinking to the mode nosotros care for our customers or our teammates, but every bit students of the customs, nosotros need to extend it to our broader environment," says Ru.

As we become bigger, we need to act smaller. There's no such thing every bit a successful business in an unsuccessful community.

The team has invested heavily in social impact projects, including partnering with an urban farm to renovate an old motorbus to help serve the 'food desert' of Southside Chicago and turning a local corner liquor store in L.A. into a existent food destination consummate with a point-of-sale arrangement and access to Sweetgreen's local supply chain.

"In every city where there's a Sweetgreen, the team seeks out a partner that inspires them to brainstorm ways to solve a existent problem. They donate ongoing resources to back up this partner, including opening mean solar day gain. It could be acting small, such as offering gratuitous bowls on a contempo weekend to federal workers affected by the authorities shutdown in the D.C. area," Ru says. "Merely we're also focused on scale. For example, Sweetgreen in Schools started equally a homegrown plan in 2010 as a 1-calendar week nutrient and health curriculum in D.C., and we've grown it into a serial of wellness workshops involving more v,000 students."

A Sweetgreen in Schools workshop.

COOKING UP A CONNECTED Civilization THAT SCALES

As companies grow and new locations open, managing an e'er-expanding team, maintaining hiring standards, inspiring big groups and reducing turnover are converted into instant challenges. So it makes sense that the last ingredient in Sweetgreen's approach is bringing intimacy to the employee experience. The chief goal? To foreclose the unique visitor culture and customer-axial focus from wilting as the company has grown from three college friends to over 3,500 employees.

"Every bit leaders, nosotros're focused on two things: retaining our employees by supporting them with a great environment and edifice a team that can both embrace and get excited about the constant change. Our hourly squad members in our restaurants and our 'head coaches' or general managers, are all on the frontlines of customer experience. They are the ones that deliver peachy service daily," says Ru. "And the reality is that working in the restaurants is actually difficult. My co-founders and I make sure to accept a store shift with every menu change, so we know immediate the current challenges they face. As important equally it is to create innovative products and launch trendy initiatives, it'southward just as important, if non more, to serve those who work with you lot," he says.

Here are 4 tactics Ru and his co-founders rely on to nurture the seeds of Sweetgreen's civilization:

Intention to kick off the day. Across every single restaurant, each morning general managers atomic number 82 a session called 'The Sweet Talk.' This ritual is a huddle, a pep talk — and a primal team building tool. "It tin be a forum to recognize great talent, or to share best practices from corporate or other restaurants. Information technology's 15 minutes of inspiration, ideas and recognition, every day, and information technology'southward my favorite part of visiting our restaurants," says Ru. "Whether or not y'all accept multiple physical locations, every startup has sub-teams that need a dash of inspiration to kick commencement their mornings and feel continued to the bigger motion picture. Using stand up-ups, sending out a quick note or belongings huddles are powerful opportunities to reinforce that every day."

Shark Tank for salads. Each year, Sweetgreen holds an offsite for every caput coach and corporate squad member to get together. Only 1 of the retreat sessions stands out more than than others — and it proves that the all-time ideas tin can come from anywhere. "We create a mock 'Shark Tank' where squad members get to pitch their adjacent big thought. Information technology'south almost like the food world version of a hackathon," says Ru. "The winners two years ago came up with this idea called 'Sweet Plate,' which was an effort to solve the trouble of getting more customers in at dinner. They pitched a heartier offering that was warmer, just the best function was that it was inspired by a underground menu hack eating place workers had started making for themselves subsequently their shifts. 'Warm Bowls' launched two years agone and are now almost thirty% of the menu mix visitor-broad," he says. "When you lot're an early on-stage startup, anyone can toss an idea out and bring it to life. The trick is encouraging those seeds when your team grows to hundreds or even thousands of people. Expect for ways to source ideas from all over the company, especially your forepart-line employees — they'll about ever be the best ones."

Nudging with new tools. To shore up employee retention, Sweetgreen turned to another tech solution: Lazslo Bock's new startup, Humu. By enlisting analytics, economic inquiry and people ops expertise from Google, Humu provides Ru and his co-founders with another tool to help improve the squad experience of working at Sweetgreen. "After the assessment from Humu, we found that while employees were pretty happy, career advocacy was a spot we need to work on. The software sends 'nudges' to remind head coaches of more specific topics to address in this realm, which could be covered in a Sweet Talk or past holding one-on-one conversations with the eating house team members," says Ru.

Staying tethered as a founder. For many founders, remaining connected to a growing business organisation is a full-time job in and of itself. "In the beginning, everything was bootstrapped — nosotros waited until we opened three stores before hiring any corporate staff. Since it was just the 3 of us for a while, we've each probably washed every task in the company," says Ru. "But equally the organization grows and your role becomes more focused on one certain expanse, it's important to not to lose curiosity. Groovy founders, regardless of visitor stage or functional expertise, are really well-versed in all parts of the business concern," he says. "Today, I manage marketing, creative and design but I've maintained my marvel about everything from our supply chain to our CX team. I likewise focus on a dissimilar a market every quarter, making site visits and working to understand the nuances. All of this makes information technology easier for me to connect the dots and help solve bug in my own role, whether information technology'southward a national campaign or a product design hurdle."

In the early days as a founder, you lot article of clothing all the hats, but over time your function narrows in on a specific role. Don't lose your marvel — staying well-versed in all aspects of the business organization will make y'all stronger as a functional leader.

TOSSING It ALL TOGETHER

Conventional wisdom suggests that rapid hypergrowth and expansion necessitates a cede of intimacy and familiarity. Sooner or later, "a way of doing things" develops, customers and employees feel less connected, and ideas go dried every bit companies struggle to escape the consequent, slow-moving trappings of predictability that accompany scale.

To avoid this fate, focus on getting stronger and saying no, not just on getting bigger and growing faster. Before entering new markets, avoid a templatized feel past studying the community to custom-tailor your approach and experiment with how y'all serve customers. Tap into collaborations to show up in unexpected places. Don't be afraid to invest in anarchistic operational models or custom, in-firm tools that'll brand your team stronger and moat wider. Accept a wider lens view of your brand'southward purpose by making time for social impact projects that make a difference. Source new ideas from employees and implement them, introducing new forums and tools for keeping the team connected amid the growth.

"In that location isn't a blueprint for achieving intimacy at scale, just the biggest lesson I've learned along the way is making it a reality comes down to building meaningful connections and relationships with your internal and external customers. It's easy for founders to be heads-down and focused on building the business, and often we forget that this is a muscle we always need to work on," says Ru.

"On a personal level, it's most the smallest touches, such as a handwritten thank-you card. Every bit a director, it may hateful taking the fourth dimension to inspire and appreciate your team. For the new community, it's taking that step back to spend the time doing your homework before plunging in and prescribing a solution. From an industry standpoint, information technology'south about changing the narrative and finding unorthodox channels to reach new audiences," he says. "'Leaving people improve than you plant them,' is the motor driving intimacy at scale forwards. We're going to exit our customers, our community, our employees and our suppliers better than we found them — and we're going to feed the world salubrious food and have some fun along the way."

Sweetgreen in Schools photo by Allison Zaucha . All other photos courtesy of Sweetgreen.

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Source: https://review.firstround.com/what-sweetgreen-can-teach-startups-about-scaling-intimacy

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