Advice Line with Jonathan Neman of Sweetgreen

Sweetgreen’s co-founder Jonathan Neman joins Guy on the Advice Line to answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Sweetgreen’s plans to automate salad assembly in the coming years. First, we meet Dini from Maryland, who's learning how to maintain her brand’s character and product quality as her pie company scales. Next we hear from Matt in Massachusetts, who’s leaning into success growing premium mushrooms for local chefs without getting too big, too fast. Then Joey in Chicago, owner of a restaurant specializing in fried chicken wings and fresh-cut fries, who’s deciding whether to introduce new products or double down on what’s already working. Thank you to the founders of Dini’s Divine Pies, Underground Mushroom Co. and Dak Dak Korean Wings for being part of the show. If you’d like to be featured on a future Advice Line episode, leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and a specific question you’d like answered. Send a voice memo to [email protected] or call 1-800-433-1298. And to hear the founding story of Sweetgreen, check out Jonathan’s first appearance on the show in 2020. https://art19.com/shows/831bd173-0992-41b7-b1eb-112db904d947/episodes/48687d51-c07c-4d3a-917a-e4d6ce7ae1a8/embed This episode was produced by Iman Maani. It was edited by Casey Herman. Our audio engineer was Neal Rauch. You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram and sign up for Guy's free newsletter at guyraz.com http://guyraz.com and on Substack https://guyraz.substack.com/. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 5:19Guy Raz?

  Hello and welcome to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. And each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show, who will help me try to help you. And so if you are building something and you need advice, go ahead and give us a call and you might just be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Send us a one-minute message with your name, a bit about your business, and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. Or you can send us a voice memo at [email protected]. And make sure to tell us how to reach you. Also, don't forget to sign up for my newsletter.

• 6:04Guy Raz?

  It's filled with insights and ideas from the world's greatest entrepreneurs. You can sign up for free at guyraz.com or on Substack, and we'll put all this info in the podcast description. All right, let's go.

• 6:17Guy Raz?

  Joining me this week is Jonathan Neman. He's the co-founder of Sweetgreen. Jonathan, it's great to have you back on the show.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Guy, it's great to be here with you.

• 6:25Guy Raz?

  So you were first on the show back in 2020. I think you were my last in-person interview before COVID. And it was crazy. It was like a week later. And for anyone listening, if you haven't heard that story, we will put a link in the episode description of this episode. And it's well worth going back and listening to it. It is such a cool story. You guys started Sweetgreen in 2007. You started with your friends Nicholas Jamay and Nathaniel Rue. And you guys opened it, a salad shack in Georgetown in Washington DC. You guys were students there. I know the location well. I used to live there. Since then, you guys have grown into a huge national chain of almost 250 stores all over the US. And I think just about a year, Jonathan, after your episode aired,

• 7:08Guy Raz?

  this is in November of 2021, you guys went public. And you are now the CEO of a publicly traded company valued at around $3 billion, which is just incredible. What a ride.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Well, thank you. First of all, I'll never forget that day recording with you because it must have been exactly five years ago, almost to the day.

• 7:25Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Because when we flew up in the morning, everything was fine. And I remember landing in San Francisco and getting a call from a board member, Steve Case, and he's like, are you ready for what's about to happen? I'm like, is this really that big of a deal? We recorded, we left, and within hours, you know, the news started coming out. And so it's been, it's been quite a wild ride the past five years.

• 7:46Guy Raz?

  And so much was happening. Like you guys were going through all kinds of changes with the business. I think your entire like corporate team turned over and you had to kind of start again. And amazing things that have happened and amazing innovations, which I want to ask you about. But before I do, I want to ask you some, first of all, give me a quick update of where we are now. I mean, a lot of people have heard your episode of How I Built This. A lot of people have eaten at Sweetgreen. I know it well. I have my go-to. I love the lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. That's my thing.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  I love it. Very healthy.

• 8:20Guy Raz?

  Tell me a little bit about where you guys are right now and just a kind of a taste of where you're headed.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So today's Sweet Green has 250 locations around the country. We're now in 22 states. And since we last spoke, a few things we've been focused on. One has been a broadening of our menu. So while we started as more of a salad shop, our vision was always more around connecting people to real food and leveraging the supply chain we had built and the scratch cooking and more the ethos and the brand to go beyond just salads. So over the past couple of years, we've introduced protein plates. We've introduced caramelized garlic steak. We had a huge launch introducing ripple fries.

• 8:59Guy Raz?

  Ripple fries?

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:00Guy Raz?

  These are air fried french fries?

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Exactly. Sweet Green's take on the classic french fry. Only five ingredients, air fried, no seed oils, cooked in avocado oil, just about transparent ingredients, cooked, great quality food cooked simply. And the vision is to redefine fast food. It's kind of this idea of you can have your cake and eat it too. There's a permissible indulgence. So one has been this menu expansion and broadening. Obviously, we've been opening a lot of restaurants. And then there's been a new innovation that we've been working on, which is called our Infinite Kitchen. We've always been, you know, huge innovators in technology, thinking about ways to leverage technology to improve the experience for customers and team members. And the Infinite Kitchen is our newest way of doing that. It

• 9:44Speaker 01

  is an automated assembly line. So the way it works is you still put in your order, we still scratch cook and prep and cook, you know, make everything from scratch, but the actual bowl is now assembled by a machine.

• 9:56Guy Raz?

  By robot, by like, by hands?

• 9:58Speaker 01

  It's not a hand. It looks more like a giant kind of mainframe, like giant, like refrigerators. They're clear tubes where you can see the food and there's a track underneath it.

• 10:08Guy Raz?

  Oh, wow. And it shoots out like lettuce or shoots out the cabbage?

• 10:12Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. And every single dispenser had to be engineered for that ingredient.

• 10:18Guy Raz?

  I bet.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. So to get the perfect Dispense, the right, you know, thinking about the different viscosity levels of different dressings and different items.

• 10:26Guy Raz?

  And you've got to make sure it doesn't get blocked up.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:29Guy Raz?

  It was like kale.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Exactly. If everything was, it was as easy as almonds, this would have been an easy exercise.

• 10:35Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  But you have to make it so that it plates perfectly. It doesn't all sit on top of each other. So, you know, the bowl, you know, spins around and customers are loving it. We can do 500 bowls an hour.

• 10:46Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Perfect consistency. The food quality is better. We're seeing great results from a business perspective as well as, you know, we're able to run the stores with significantly less labor and I think a better quality job for our team members.

• 10:58Guy Raz?

  So how many of these locations do you have now?

• 11:00Speaker 01

  We have 12 open today and this year we'll open at least 20 to 25 new ones.

• 11:06Guy Raz?

  So is the experience, essentially, because we had Steve Ells of Chipotle on a year or so ago, and he talked about trying to do an automated concept to New York, which I think they are doing. I don't know where it is now, but when you go into one of these stores, are you ordering from a human or do you order from a screen?

• 11:23Speaker 01

  So you have the option of ordering from a human that has kind of a mobile tablet where they can take your order.

• 11:29Guy Raz?

  Okay, and they're walking around and they can go up to you?

• 11:31Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. So we're, the, the idea, the vision for this is actually to give more hospitality and more service. So we save some labor on the menial task so we can lean into the, to more of the service side of the business. We also do have kiosks and you can order on your phone. So we have those options available for you. But yeah, again, the idea is how do we make it feel more human, more theater, more soul? And the technology just being an enabler to that experience.

• 11:58Guy Raz?

  Compared to a, let's say a non-automated store, how many people do you need to run the automated store?

• 12:04Speaker 01

  So like, like all of our stores, it depends on the time of day, you know, peak lunch in a New York store is much more than an average store, for example. But on, on average, 30 to 50% less labor.

• 12:17Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  At the store level. So you're running it with far, you know, far fewer people. But what's interesting is our turnover, our employee turnover is a really critical metric for us because the more we can hold our team, the more productive they are, the more they know their customers, everything kind of starts from there. The turnover in the stores with the Infinite Kitchen is significantly less than our classic stores.

• 12:38Guy Raz?

  Because there's less stress.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  It's less stress. It's a little bit, it's an easier job to work in.

• 12:42Guy Raz?

  Jonathan, before we get to our callers, I'm curious. When you started Sweetgreen, you had that location in Georgetown. It was the three of you running it, and then you had a couple more people in. But you had a really clear vision, like the dorm food sucked. You wanted really great, healthy food. And I remember going to those restaurants in the early days. But they've evolved over time. 250 locations, even though they're corporate owned and managed. It does become 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. I think In-N-Out is an example of a brand that does it very well. I don't know how they do it.

• 13:24Guy Raz?

  How do you make sure that they are all operating at the same level?

• 13:33Speaker 01

  So you're asking the billion or maybe the trillion dollar question because that is the business of restaurants. I think the way we think about it is balance of art and science. The science is all of the tools. How do we make it really easy for you to do your job? Whether it be software in the back of house or helping you, 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.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  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 work in the line. And if you work hard, you can be a manager making over $100,000 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 preserved the culture and understood the business kind of from the frontline.

• 14:54Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 14:56Guy Raz?

  Jonathan, why don't we take some calls because I know people are are super excited to have you on and to get your advice. So why don't we go ahead and take our first call? Welcome to the advice line. You're on with me and Jonathan Neman from Sweet Green. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Hello, Guy. Hello, Jonathan. My name is Dini Makala. I'm Osorutia. I own a small pie company called Dini's Divine Pies in Rockville, Maryland. And we make all of our pies in small batches, handmade, using simple ingredients, all butter crusts, and a whole lot of love. So that's the ethos of this company.

• 15:34Guy Raz?

  Cool. And is it like, tell me, I mean, what kind of pies?

• 15:38Speaker 02

  I really like to draw on my own background. I'm half Mexican, half Irish American. And so right now, we're working on some Irish-inspired recipes. Other times, I am putting together, you know, I have like a mixed berry made with mezcal, for example. So I really like to play with my my background, but also to be very creative with the recipes.

• 16:00Guy Raz?

  And how long has the business been around?

• 16:02Speaker 02

  So it started during the pandemic. I was actually recently divorced. I was dating my former yoga teacher, and he really liked key lime pies. So I made him one for his birthday that year. That was October of 2021. And, you know, you do crazy things for love. So I I just busted out the best key lime pie I could imagine. I'd never made, you know, I'm not a baker. I didn't grow up baking or anything like that. So anyway, he said, this is the best key lime pie I've ever had in my life. There's a market for this. I'm going to prove it to you. So he took it to work the next day. And then that, you know, fall, basically fall and winter, people were asking me to make not only the key lime pie, but then they'd say, well, that was so great. Can you make, you know, a strawberry pie?

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Can you make, you know, whatever. So I, having never Been a chef or anything like that. I learned a lot on YouTube. I read a lot and figured it out. And, um, and lo and behold, you know, now three years later, I have a really thriving small business. I quit my job. I'm a lawyer. Uh, I'm a public interest attorney. I, uh, resigned last spring and I'm all in.

• 17:11Guy Raz?

  So I'm reluctant to ask this because I'm imagining the Andy McDowell, Hugh Grant movie version of this story. What happened to the yoga instructor boyfriend?

• 17:19Speaker 02

  It's, that's a secret question, actually. Um, you know, he moved away. He, he made some choices and it's okay.

• 17:26Guy Raz?

  But he inspired the business.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  He did. And I had this amazing thing and you know, it's, it's all good.

• 17:33Guy Raz?

  It's all good. We can still make a movie out of it.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  We can.

• 17:35Guy Raz?

  He just, he just had a small role in the end and got, you know, yeah.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 17:40Guy Raz?

  Good part. Okay. Um, Jonathan Neman, um, first of all, questions for Dini? Where are you selling the pies?

• 17:49Speaker 02

  I, I'm, I have a small little brick and mortar that's in not a really great strip mall. And I'm doing all of my production out of a gorgeous, huge commercial kitchen where I am right now. But I see that I need to pivot and really think about if I'm going to scale up the way that I am, I have to diversify, I think, my revenue streams. And so I'm pivoting away from the retail and focusing more on wholesale and pop ups and I'm on DoorDash as of last week. Part of what happened in the beginning was that I wanted, I, I was baking out of my house. So I approached a winery and they said, hey, you know, bring us five pies of your favorites and, you know, we'll try them and no promises.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  So I did that. And they said, you're on the schedule for Mother's Day. That, that was 2022. And they said, you're going to need to be licensed insured and be prepared to, you know, serve pie to 500 people. So having, you know, again, I, I figured it out. I found a shared commercial kitchen space and squeezed a lot of key lines and rolled out a lot of dough by hand and peeled apples by hand and was incredible.

• 18:59Guy Raz?

  Before we forget, you brought a question for, for us. What do you need help with?

• 19:03Speaker 02

  So, well, I mean, what's very important to me in all of this is that it, the company retains its heart and soul. I think part of why it Has taken on a life of its own is because there's something about these pies that make people joyful. I've made so many friends, I've gotten to know customers who have now become very good friends. It's kind of like a little neighborhood hub in a big city. Assuming that I can scale this up, and I have some conversations actually this week that are happening with a major national food chain, and they're already asking me questions about, well, are you willing to change the name? Are you willing to change the logo? And things like that.

• 19:42Guy Raz?

  Jonathan, I want to bring you in here because you have 250 locations and we talked about maintaining, you know, a brand and, and quality. And I think that Sweet Greens did a great job at it. Obviously, Deanie's in a different spot, but as she thinks about growing and expanding, how, how can 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?

• 20:07Speaker 01

  You know, I, I really think it starts with the ultimate vision you have and what, what your goals are and what, what's going to 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 with the 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

• 20:51Speaker 01

  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 250. It was built to get to 3,000. 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 the 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 Goldbelly and you're better, your key lime pie is known to be better than Joe's Stone Crab and.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Like that's what's going to bring you joy. You're still actually baking the food. So I think you just, I think where some people get stuck is they think bigger is better.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  And it's not always better because you're gonna actually, to get big, you have to go through years and years of less profit. I have friends today that have like a really nice businesses that they own a hundred percent of, don't have investors, do what they love and make really, really good money.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:54Guy Raz?

  Oftentimes they make more money than, than people who says they're doing tens of millions of dollars that aren't profitable. Look, Deanie, the question is like, again, to Jonathan's point here, do you want to put resources and time in trying to get into stores and, and, and see if, if, you know, this can really drive business directly back to your business? Or do you want to focus on creating a premium product that people will line up and pay for? And, and it's a, it's an important question to ask yourself because you could charge a premium price for what you're making. You're using high quality ingredients. It's all handmade. It's really special and local.

• 22:36Guy Raz?

  I mean, I, there's a, a pizza place I used to go to in Berkeley and the guy only opened from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM and you had to order it and Venmo the guy. It's, it's a well-known place. I think it's called Amelia's Pizza and it is amazing pizza. And he sells out every single day. He's only open four days a week, you know, and he controls his schedule. He controls his lifestyle. You're probably spending a lot of your time now baking, right? I imagine.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  I mean, I spend my time doing all of it. So it's, you know, I'm doing the social media, the everything right now. And that's something as I'm growing, I have to figure out how to, you know, manage. But I do bake, but I do have, you know, my, I have two chefs who are part-time and that's made a huge difference because I can just give them the recipes and they're off and running. And I can, you know, go try to, you know, talk with people about wholesale opportunities or work on the social media stuff.

• 23:33Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, Jonathan, I mean, I think it's a natural human instinct, right? To want 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 are in Deanie's position here and you're thinking about, okay, how do we take this from the shop in Rockville, farmer's markets? To at least a bigger regional presence. What do you think are interesting options for her?

• 24:02Speaker 01

  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, all the marketplaces. Well, what's interesting is I can have delivery coverage in an area and then I can open a

• 24:47Speaker 01

  restaurant there and the whole thing lifts. So the physical presence of an actual, a place 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. 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.

• 25:12Guy Raz?

  It's means something.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  It's real. Like even today, a brand like Sweet Green, we can market, we give all of these capabilities. If we take a bad location, it doesn't work.

• 25:23Guy Raz?

  Right. You know, I just had an idea, Dini, which is, you know, especially in where you are, it's all over the country, right? There are often incentives to bring local businesses to a new development, right? Like, I think here in the Bay Area, there was, there's a famous fried chicken place in Oakland called Baked Sale Betty's. And then when the Chase Center, where the Golden State Warriors play, opened up, they invited them to open a location there because it's local. It's, you know, you go to San Francisco Airport and there are all these local restaurants there with locations there. And I imagine that, to Jonathan's point, this idea of authenticity of analog experience, like, I think that's so true. I'm seeing it anecdotally, and I'm sure the data is going to back this up soon, which

• 26:08Guy Raz?

  is a brand like yours, which is, it's rooted in Rockville, it's rooted in the Maryland, Virginia area. I bet that there might be opportunities to partner with, you know, somebody who's building some kind of. You know, new development, or maybe a food hall, or something where your presence will be really welcome because you are local. And I don't know exactly what's available, but there might be something out there.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  I love that idea, Guy.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  I do, too.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  You've probably been to Union Market.

• 26:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah, exactly, like a Union Market.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  Union Market would be like a perfect place for that. And then you could, you have the discovery. The people that go there are looking for those sorts of things. It can also, you know, function as your bakery. So instead of the rent space you're renting there, but then you have a physical presence for discovery. So I really like that idea.

• 26:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I think there's a lot of cool opportunities. Deanie, good luck.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 27:04Guy Raz?

  The company's called Deanie's Divine Pies. We are cheering you on.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 27:08Guy Raz?

  And we'll, we'll keep tabs on you.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Thank you very much. It's so nice to meet you both.

• 27:12Guy Raz?

  Thank you.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Best of luck, Deanie. Great to meet you.

• 27:15Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, I feel like especially with a business like this where people are willing to pay more for, like when you're seeing the people actually made it and you can talk to them and it's a sense, it's like wine, it's like a terroir, like you're tasting a sense of the place. In this case, Rockville, Maryland.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:33Guy Raz?

  And you know what I mean? So I feel like there's something there about a willingness to pay more for something that you can really connect with.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I also think you've probably heard of the Japanese term ikigai.

• 27:48Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  It also matters, you know, what are you uniquely good at? What do you love to do? And what can you be best in the world at and make money? And you got to find that intersection. So from what I heard from, you know, from Deanie, she loved that, the actual hands-on piece of it and that connection. And scale may come at odds with that. And there's a way to have a very successful business and brand and keep it tight still.

• 28:13Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  And do the things you love.

• 28:15Guy Raz?

  We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, another caller, another question, and another round of advice. I'm Guy Raz, and we're answering your questions right here on the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.

• 28:32Guy Raz?

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• 29:59Guy Raz?

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• 30:44Guy Raz?

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• 32:09Guy Raz?

  Welcome back to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and my guest today is Sweetgreen co-founder Jonathan Niemann. Jonathan, let's take another call. Let's do it. All right, let's bring in our next caller. Welcome to the Advice Line. You are on with Jonathan Niemann, co-founder of Sweetgreen. Welcome. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business.

• 32:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, how's it going, guys? Well, Guy and Jonathan, my name's Matt Penstone. I'm calling from Gloucester, Massachusetts, and I am the founder of Underground Mushroom Co. I produce gourmet mushrooms for local farmers markets, at-home deliveries, and restaurants in the area.

• 32:48Guy Raz?

  Nice. Well, welcome to the show. Thank you for calling. And so you, you've got a business, you're growing mushrooms. Where are you growing the mushrooms? Because Gloucester is a, I don't, I don't know enough about mushroom cultivation. I mean, I eat them, but I think Gloucester is pretty cold for a bunch, like a big part of the year. So I'm assuming it's like indoors, like heat lamps, kind of, that sound like you're growing something dodgy, but is that right?

• 33:11Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, so the name Underground Mushroom Co., my intention was to start in a basement, just for that very reason, less fluctuation of temperature and consistency is really the name of the game when you're growing mushrooms. They like about 63 degrees. And I figured the heating and cooling throughout the year would, would be more advantageous in a basement. So that's where I started.

• 33:33Guy Raz?

  You are growing in a basement?

• 33:35Speaker 05

  I am, yeah. And, and you know, as far as retail space is concerned, you get cheap rent.

• 33:41Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 33:41Speaker 05

  I rent 2,000 square feet of commercial basement space. It used to be a lobster pound, so they used to wholesale lobsters out of there. And I took one of the lobster pools and converted it into a mushroom grow room.

• 33:55Guy Raz?

  Oh, wow.

• 33:55Speaker 05

  So it's a 12 by 20 foot space and it allows me to grow anywhere between 150 to 300 pounds of mushrooms a week.

• 34:02Guy Raz?

  Wow. What's your rent like there?

• 34:03Speaker 05

  Oh, it's like 1,600 bucks a month.

• 34:05Guy Raz?

  Oh, so it's nothing?

• 34:06Speaker 05

  It's super cheap. Yeah. I mean, one of the things is during king tides, I've been told that it floods. I mean, there was flood damage in the space, but I saw that and I'm like, what a great place to get my feet wet.

• 34:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah, exactly. And, and what, so how do you make sure that the mushrooms don't get flooded out if, if there's king tides?

• 34:26Speaker 05

  Well, I haven't run into that problem yet. I mean, that's probably the impetus to move to my next space. This space right now is kind of a proof of concept, but I've already become profitable. And I love what I do. So I just want to take this to the next level.

• 34:41Guy Raz?

  What are you doing in, in sales right now?

• 34:44Speaker 05

  So the cost of production is actually pretty cheap. I can produce one of these substrate blocks for only $6 and I'm getting about a $40 return on that investment.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  How many mushrooms in a block?

• 34:58Speaker 05

  It's about two and a half pounds of mushrooms per block. And, you know, not only is it the cultivation of mushrooms, but I actually sell at-home grow kits that I can ship anywhere throughout the country. I also do tinctures that I sell at farmers markets and, um, yeah.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  What's the final product? Are you turning it into, is it more functional mushrooms like the lion's mane, ashwagandha, those sorts of things?

• 35:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Or is it, tell me a little bit more how it shows up for the consumer?

• 35:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, less of that, more of just the gourmet angle.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Oh gourmet, okay gourmet mushrooms.

• 35:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. I studied, uh, sustainable food systems in college and worked on farms. And I got into mushrooms primarily because it's the most sustainable food out there. I mean, because they're decomposers, they take sawdust, which otherwise would be wasted, and creates a viable, healthy food source.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Wow. So you're, so you're selling to restaurants mainly?

• 35:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, high-end restaurants in the area.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  That's awesome. So the idea is to create a, I'm thinking here in LA, for example, we have a famous farmer named Alex Weiser. It's like, you want to be that, the guy known where the best restaurants are serving your mushrooms and they're putting your name on the mushroom, on the menu. They're putting your mushroom name on the menu as a selling point?

• 36:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, you, you got it. I mean, I get a real thrill from seeing my name on a menu. And the way that I go about selling these mushrooms, I really just knock on the back door of restaurants and I get a real kick out of talking with chefs and, and explaining, you know, different recipes that they can incorporate my ingredients into.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  And you said you, you're at the farmers markets as well?

• 36:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, I am. And, and I'm a one-man show right now. So I haven't, uh, hired anybody, but, um, I'm able to hold it down. All the spinning plates I can, I can do myself.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Before I forget, what question do you need help with? What's your question for us?

• 36:52Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, so the question has to do with scaling, but, but not just scaling to scale. I think one of the ways that a lot of people fail in this industry is that they grow too big, too quickly. Mushrooms have a limited shelf life.

• 37:08Speaker 05

  And yeah, as a, as a result, I would rather people start finding me through virtuous food choices. So I was wondering, you know, since Sweet Green really prides themselves on, on people making healthy food choices, um, how do you go about that? How do you, how do you shift, uh, people's perception of choices they make and, and what you're putting out?

• 37:32Speaker 01

  You know, it's interesting because, you know, Sweet Green, when we started the business, was very much positioned around healthy, you know, around the fact that it's healthy. And that's still a core part of the brand. What we've learned is, well, a lot of people say they care about health. When it comes down to making a decision about what they're going to eat, it's taste, convenience and value. Health is kind of there, right? You know, right in the number four range. And so where we've shifted a lot of what we talk about, and I think this is going to be very true for you, is all the things that we do around our supply chain and are made from scratch is really to make it taste better. And yes, it happens to be really good for you and good for the environment. But in terms

• 38:16Speaker 01

  of like, what we're trying to kind of position more so is we do this because it creates better flavor. And I think for you, that's super true. And I think that's, that's why, for example, we do these partnerships with these chefs. Sounds like you're already on it, to kind of be the mushroom farmer to the greatest chefs.

• 38:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  And I think if you do that for a little while, you will build an amazing brand. And the second thing I would do is figure out how to build a little bit of a brand around yourself. You know, I look, how do you become kind of like what Joel Salatin was, or what Al Weiser is? Kind of you become a little bit of a famous farmer? I don't know if you've seen Farmer TikTok? There's a lot of cool stuff going on. And I think-

• 38:57Speaker 05

  I haven't yet.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  If you could go just really authentic, here's how we do it on, you know, and kind Honestly, you know, there's a lot of people that talk that there's no brands anymore. It's just really people.

• 39:08Speaker 05

  Right.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  And it sounds like, you know, given your education background and what you're doing, if you can take people behind the scenes on how you do these things, kind of show them your personality, I think that plus the positioning with chefs and then being at the farmer's market, I think is a really kind of cool winning combination.

• 39:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, thanks, Jonathan.

• 39:26Guy Raz?

  What are your constraints, Matt? I mean, it seems like the business is you don't need a whole lot of money to grow. It seems that the cash flow can kind of help you fuel the growth of the business. Is that true? Do you have any, are there any resource constraints?

• 39:40Speaker 05

  Um, yeah, I mean, I raised $50,000 initially through a company called Mainvest.

• 39:45Guy Raz?

  Oh, wow.

• 39:46Speaker 05

  It's like a crowdfunding, not like a GoFundMe, but there is a rate of return that my investors are expecting. I got 106 investors.

• 39:54Guy Raz?

  Uh, Mainvest, I think, went out of business, right?

• 39:57Speaker 05

  That's correct, yeah. So now it's on me to, you know, allocate those funds back to my investors and I'm not to the point-

• 40:03Guy Raz?

  Oh, this is the plat- the platform was doing it for you, but now they're not doing it.

• 40:07Speaker 05

  Correct, so I have to find another platform when I get to that point. But, but, um, you know, between all, all my expenses and, and trying to keep myself afloat, I, I've yet to be able to pay back my investors, but I mean, that's the next hurdle, that's the next goal. And, and, you know, I don't know if it would be foolish for me to go out and do a second round of investing, having not, you know, started paying back my initial investors. But, um, you know, that would certainly speed things up getting into a second location.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  Are you supply constrained or is it, is it like if you had more supply, you'd be selling?

• 40:48Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  So-

• 40:49Speaker 05

  Certainly. I mean, I'm, I'm selling out everything I produce.

• 40:53Guy Raz?

  Wow. Well, that's a good, that's a great sign.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:56Speaker 05

  Absolutely, yeah. So, so here I've, I've survived the winter. We're coming into the spring. Tourism's coming back to Gloucester, Salem, Beverly, the whole area. And I just bought a second sterilizer, so I'm going to be doubling my output. And, um, you know, that'll, that'll free up some cash and, and hopefully I'll be able to hire someone to help me, but money helps everything, right? So, yeah, I could certainly expand with, with added capital.

• 41:25Guy Raz?

  Well, it seems like you have some really interesting opportunities, especially now that, I mean, you're selling everything you can grow, which is a good sign. It means that you have to figure it out, right? You've got to figure out a way to expand your footprint. And whether you can do that through cash flow, or whether you're going to take a loan out, I mean, it's possible you might be able to get an SBA loan. And that could be another interesting, interesting way to go. But, I mean, it's a great sign. It means that you're producing something that people want.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  You might have some pricing power.

• 41:54Guy Raz?

  Yes.

• 41:55Speaker 05

  Yeah. I do sell my product for $3, $4 over what distributors are selling theirs for, but it's because the quality of my product, my chefs want to purchase something local. And, you know, I'm nervous right now. I can hear it in my own voice. But like, when I'm face to face with the chef, they trust me and want what I have to sell. So, not only can I grow them, I can sell them. And I take that as a point of pride.

• 42:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah. It's awesome. Matt, good luck then. The business is called Underground Mushroom Co., Company Co. Congrats. Good luck.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Congrats, Matt. Can't wait to try it.

• 42:29Speaker 05

  Thanks so much, guys. Yeah, pleasure chatting with you.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Best of luck.

• 42:31Speaker 05

  Take care.

• 42:32Guy Raz?

  Thank you.

• 42:32Speaker 05

  Yep. Bye bye.

• 42:33Guy Raz?

  I just, now I'm going to do grilled mushrooms tonight. I'm going to do sauteed mushrooms. You could take a portobello, you can turn it's like a burger. It's so meaty and delicious.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  It's so good, so good for you. I mean, it's an amazing, amazing plan.

• 42:46Guy Raz?

  All right. We're going to take another quick break, but we'll be right back with one more caller. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to the Advice Line right here on How I Built This Lab.

• 43:14Guy Raz?

  Welcome back to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. And today, I'm taking your calls with Jonathan Neman, co-founder of Sweetgreen. So Jonathan, let's get back into it and take another call.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 43:26Guy Raz?

  Hello, welcome to the Advice Line. You're on with Jonathan Neman of Sweetgreen. Welcome to the show. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business.

• 43:36Speaker 06

  Hi Guy, hi Jonathan. My name's Joey Cornell. I'm calling from Villa Park, Illinois. My business is Dak Dak Wings and we specialize in crispy, double fried wings, fresh cut fries, and unique house made sauces.

• 43:51Guy Raz?

  Yum, awesome. Welcome to the show Joey. And where is Dak Dak Wings located?

• 43:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, so we currently have one brick and mortar location about 10 miles outside of Chicago in Villa Park, Illinois.

• 44:02Guy Raz?

  And it's a late night place, open like super late night or what? What are your hours?

• 44:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, so we're lunch and dinner mostly and we're open for the suburbs fairly late, 10pm on weekdays and Fridays and Saturdays till 11pm.

• 44:19Guy Raz?

  And you've got a brick and mortar and tell me a little bit about how you, give me some background. Are you a chef or is that your background? Are you a cook? Did you work in restaurants? How did you, how did you start this?

• 44:28Speaker 06

  So I got super involved with our high school's culinary program when I was about 15 years old and I just dove into it. And so on top of spending all the time I could in the culinary department, I was working at a local restaurant and kind of in tandem was doing cooking competitions and you know, some illegal catering perhaps for people in my community, but quickly decided to go to culinary slash hospitality school. So I briefly attended Johnston, Wales and Providence, Rhode Island.

• 45:04Guy Raz?

  Culinary school there, yep, yep.

• 45:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, I thought to meet like-minded people is a good place to go. So I was working full-time and I tried Korean-style wings for the first time and was blown away with the texture. It's uniquely crispy, sticky. The chicken is mildly flavored versus being heavily seasoned and you're, it's just an amazing experience. And then when the pandemic hit, I came back home to the Villa Park area and was upset that we didn't have anything.

• 45:38Speaker 06

  Close to it for wings. So yeah, started writing a business plan and looking at spaces to lease. Finally, after about touring 70 locations, I was trying to keep it small, takeout only, you know, almost a COVID-proof concept. And I found a former Little Caesar's that I was able to retrofit into what I envisioned. And yeah, just with my own cash and I was able to get a a small SBA loan. And that's what started our restaurant. Wow. How did you get the cash to do it? I'm just, I'm asking for a friend, people listening. How'd you get the cash? No, for sure. Believe it or not, guy, when I wasn't recipe testing or working on the business plan, I was driving Uber Eats and DoorDash.

• 46:23Speaker 06

  Nice. So I was- That's how you saved the money? Yeah. When, and when people were at home, the roads were clear. I was driving a little fast, trying to go from order to order. And that's how I saved most of the money.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  It's a great story and you probably learned a little bit about part of your business.

• 46:40Speaker 06

  Thank you, Jonathan. Yeah. How, how much did you save from Uber and DoorDash? It ended up being close to 50, 50,000. Wow. Amazing. Yeah. So I was able to then get a SBA loan for a little more than that. And when I say, you know, opening a restaurant on a shoestring, plus building out everything, you know, website, online ordering, that's about as tight as you can do a restaurant for most people I talked to say, you know, a restaurant of similar size is 300 to 500,000.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  I can, I can attest to that. That is-

• 47:14Speaker 06

  Yeah. I, uh, we made it work and came close to running out of cash, but here we stand today, almost three years, a little over three years later. So. Wow. And tell, tell us about what's your challenge? What's your question for us? Uh, yeah. So the question that I had with future restaurant expansion in mind, how much should I focus on our primary product of crispy wings and fresh cut fries? And how much should I lean into potentially leaning into trends? Uh, whether that's frying and beef tallow, offering a chicken sandwich, chicken tenders, et cetera. Interesting. Interesting, Jonathan.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  I think it starts where, where I was going to ask you is understanding who your customer is and a little bit on what the, where the brand is positioned. Is it positioned?

• 48:05Guy Raz?

  Kind of trying to compete with Wingstop, trying to be a healthier, more premium version. Cause I think a lot of the way I'd answer some of those questions depends on which part of the market you're trying to capture.

• 48:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, definitely not healthier. Sorry, Jonathan, with, you know, uh, it's chicken wings and fried food in general is indulgent. So I kind of take the Todd Graves approach is that the day someone wants a salad, they're gonna get a salad. If someone wants, you know, fried chicken, they're gonna get that either way. But with that said, the product is definitely, uh, premium. We use all natural, you know, antibiotic free chicken, um, our coleslaw, our pickles, our sauces, everything we're making at house. So we're definitely chef driven, um, especially with one restaurant, it's definitely easier. I know that gets tougher, uh, as you grow. So

• 48:55Speaker 06

  yes, we are slightly premium, uh, but really with the focus on just a better chicken wing experience in general.

• 49:04Guy Raz?

  The question to me is like, could you offer a chicken sandwich? Could you offer a salad? And what I wonder is, is whether, cause I think the answer is yes, but I don't think it's a yes, and this is the way it is. To me, it's more like a pop-up kind of approach. Like, hey, you know, there's a great pizza place that I go to in, in Sonoma County and they do Roman style pizza, right? But now and again, they'll, on their, on their Instagram, they're like, hey, we're doing New York style pizzas just today. But it's a, the, the place is a Roman style pizza. It's, you know, the big square dishes of pizza. But on those days, people get psyched because it's like something else that is just new and different. And I wonder whether you could just try that pop-up approach. Like, we're doing Korean, like boneless wing

• 49:49Guy Raz?

  chicken, Korean chicken sandwiches.

• 49:52Speaker 06

  Definitely, guys. So we've, uh, we've had really good success with LTOs, you know, limited time offerings that we've done. Uh, now with a decent sized email list, uh, we've done in the past chicken and waffles, chicken sandwiches. We even did a funnel cake and fried chicken special last summer. And just like you say, you send out an email, put it on Instagram, and those always go over incredibly well. Um, but again, those are one time, have to get it now or it's, or it's gone. Of course, those work well, but I guess, um, To take a step to fully integrate a new trend, like Jonathan knows, if you add one menu item, it completely changes the flow of your line, your prep schedule, walk-in

• 50:37Speaker 06

  storage. These are things that I like to have as tight of a menu as possible. We do one thing very well, but sometimes in the back of my head, I get, you know, the constant people saying, oh, you should add a chicken sandwich. You should add tenders. So we offer those as LTOs when we can. But something like frying and beef tallow and eliminating seed oils, we are actively trying to switch over to that. So I guess just what, how do you know when to make those decisions? Do you trust your gut? Do you trust industry data?

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's an interesting one because we've been going through this transition ourselves and evaluating the cost benefit of it. My gut is to stay focused and stay focused on wings and be known for the best wings in the world. Eventually, you will, you know, as you grow, you'll want other growth levers. And so keeping that for, you know, another day, I think is a good thing. I wouldn't go into it yet. 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 birds instead of just buying the wings because there was such demand for the wings. And now they bought the whole birds and brought

• 51:53Speaker 01

  their cost of overall of all of their chicken down. So I will say that a lot of it, you know, I keep going back to who's your target customer and where you're positioning the brand. My view on health is health is less about calories. It's more about the underlying ingredients, not having processed stuff and crap in it. So I think the way you're doing it handmade, you know, no preservatives, no processing, and potentially removing seed oils could have a very cool positioning of a better for you wing. But if you do that, make sure the whole brand is aligned towards that. And in terms of the, you know, the moving to beef tallow, I think it's really interesting. I'd evaluate what's the additional cost? How much more would you have to sell to fund it?

• 52:38Speaker 01

  What I can tell you, and we've spoken about this publicly, is we did start a journey of removing seed oils about two years ago out of our restaurant, just introduced fries cooked in avocado oil. And generally, I'd say it's been worth it. The response has been really good for our customer. People did care and we saw a noticeable shift. However, I will say that we saw it very different by market. So places like LA or New York reacted much more positively to it than certain other cities. Again, this was about two years ago. I think the awareness has shifted a bit around seed oils. So, you know, speak to your customers. I think that even today at our scale with millions of customers, I spend a lot of time talking directly to customers. And I think at your scale, I would just talk to them.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  That's the beauty of kind of starting being small. Do you care about this? Would it make you want to come more? Is it something that you would tell your friends about? And that'll help you get in, you know, kind of sharpen your gut feeling on what the right decision is.

• 53:36Guy Raz?

  Agreed, agreed. Joey Cornell, the business is called Dak Dak Korean Wings. Good luck. Keep at it, man.

• 53:42Speaker 06

  Thank you, guys. Jonathan, guys, it was a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Great to meet you, Joey. Good luck.

• 53:48Guy Raz?

  Thanks for calling in. Jonathan, before I let you go, just a quick question. Now that you have all this experience, I mean, 2007, man, you were a baby. And I still think of you as a baby, but you're a grown up, obviously, today. And running a really significant national business. If you could go back to you in 2007 and just give you some encouragement or advice, what do you think you would say to him?

• 54:14Speaker 01

  I'd probably say, enjoy the journey, that it will be more challenging than you expect, but more rewarding. And the key is not giving up. And don't take anything too seriously. This too shall pass. You know, you think back on all those existential moments. You know, and I still, we still have them today. I think I talked about this on your podcast, you know, one day you think you're on the verge of world domination, the next, on the verge of bankruptcy. You know, you still feel that and you just gotta do your best to kind of maintain that equanimity. You know, that, that, what's crazy when you think it's been 18 years, it's been half my life, pretty much.

• 54:54Guy Raz?

  It's incredible.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  So if you're not having fun while you're doing it, it may not be worth doing.

• 54:59Guy Raz?

  It's awesome. That's Sweetgreen co-founder and CEO Jonathan Neman. Jonathan, thanks.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  Guy, thanks so much for having me on. This is fun.

• 55:06Guy Raz?

  And by the way, if you haven't heard Jonathan's original How I Built This episode, you gotta go back and check it out. We'll put a link to it in the podcast description. And here's one of my favorite moments from that interview. You went to your executive team and you present this plan. And within a year, they all left. Basically, your entire top level execs are gone.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  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 are we gonna do?

• 55:47Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. And by the way, please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for it for free at guyraz.com or on Substack. And of course, if you're working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one-minute message that tells us a little bit about your business and the questions or issues you are currently facing, because we would love to try and help you solve them. You can send us a voice memo at [email protected] or call us at 1-800-433-1298. You can leave a message there and make sure to tell us how to reach you. And by the way, we'll put all of this in the podcast description as well. This episode was produced by Iman Maani, with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei.

• 56:31Guy Raz?

  It was edited by Casey Herman. Our audio engineer was Neil Roush. Our production team also includes Alex Chung, John Isabella, Elaine Coats, Chris Messina, Catherine Seifer, Kerry Thompson, Sam Paulson, J.C. Howard, and Neva Grant. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.