in college?

No, this is about two years after college.

And we literally stood there in front of the restaurant and played music and handed out samples.

And we did that every weekend for weeks and weeks.

And it kind of worked.

It created a little energy around the brand where it wasn't just this restaurant, but there was... a community built around it.

And so we said, okay, let's throw a block party.

And we were just curious, why do you think it's down and how do you get those customers back?

We got nowhere healthy." It's, it's gotta be a very different experience since going public a number of years ago.

It, it's different.

I mean, the scale is different.

You know, when you started, couple stores were doing everything.

We're building it for...

We are the customer.

We're 20-something years old, and we're building.

Do you have the freedom to bring that OG creative expression to things, or do, do you have mandates and, you know?

So what's going on with the lettuce?

All right, so my hot take is that AI is not going to kill us, but processed food will.

If you followed the news this summer, you saw a lot of news about a parasite called Cyclospora.

which is a real thing, so I don't want to discount the reality of it.

However, I think that it was blown a little bit out of proportion.

And what we did is we took something that happens every single summer for as long as we know and used it as a way to scare people away from eating fresh and real foods and move them towards ultra-processed food, which we know will kill you.

And so again, my hot take is that AI won't kill you, but ultra-processed foods will.

So we can eat lettuce.

So how do you convince people, uh, to not only come back to Sweetgreen, but overall just to trust, um, what you're selling? I, have you sort of, uh, planned any sort of marketing campaigns, uh, any more maybe greater disclosures about the farms and, uh, other, uh, uh, you know, uh, sources of your food?

Yeah, absolutely.

So going back 19 years ago when we started Sweetgreen, we had this pretty bold idea that we were gonna list every single farm that we source our food from on the wall and, and it to be fully transparent for every single restaurant in every single city, and we still do that today.

So if you go into any si- any of our restaurants today, you will see a chalkboard listed with dozens and dozens of ingredients and where each, where, where those ingredients come from.

What we do differently than most restaurants, versus going directly to a distributor to source our food, for the vast majority of our products we source directly with farmers.

We spend a lot of time with them in making sure they are, how, how they're taking care of their soil, the conditions on the ground there are coming, are delivering food that is not only safe, but delicious and nutritious.

Um, I wanna address another point.

I, I am curious, though, about, uh, just foot traffic overall and how much of the contraction that we saw in the most recent quarter and what was baked into your forecast, how much of that could actually directly be linked to the fears, uh, over cyclospora, and how much of that was just sort of longer term trends that Sweetgreen had already been dealing with prior to this outbreak?

Uh, but what else, what else are you doing across the business?

I think the key is around the experience.

You know, in restaurants, it, the fundamentals wins championships, so it's really about delivering a consistent experience around quality and hospitality, and that gives you the opportunity to layer in the menu innovation.

So right now, you know, we've been very focused on innovation for a while, and right now we're really just trying to dial in the basics.

... not to combine those things in the way that, that I-

Put the pizza in the deep fryer.

Yeah.

[laughs] I know you have, uh...

Yeah.

...

but also other systems to make sure you're, you're watching the quality of the food and listening to your customer.

So, like, seed oil's an interesting one.

When we first, we, we got rid of seed oils about exactly two years ago.

And at the time, it was not the national conversation.

It was pre-RFK and all, all of that stuff.

Yeah.

Oftentimes, they make more money than, than people who

... says they're doing tens of millions of dollars that aren't profitable.

Look, Y- Y- Dini, the question is, like, again, to Jonathan's point here, do you want to put resources and time in trying to get into, uh, stores and, and, and see if, if, you know, this can really, uh, drive business directly back to your business? Or do you wanna focus on creating a premium product that people will line up and pay for? And, and it's a, it's a 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.

I mean, I, there's a, uh, 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, uh, order it and Venmo the guy.

Hmm.