- sweetgreen, a fast-casual dining company, announced it closed $150 million in financing co-led by Lone Pine Capital and D1 Capital Partners
sweetgreen, a fast-casual dining company, announced that it closed $150 million in financing co-led by Lone Pine Capital and D1 Capital Partners with participation from existing investors. With this funding round, sweetgreen is now valued at $1.6 billion
And sweetgreen has a goal of building a new type of food company and a sustainable supply chain to challenge how it thinks about real food, explore new retail formats, and elevate consumer experiences.
Ever since Nicolas Jammet, Nathaniel Ru, and Jonathan Neman launched sweetgreen in 2007, the company has been leaving a big mark in the $800 billion U.S. restaurant industry.
“We’re building a new type of food company and a sustainable supply chain to challenge how we think about real food, explore innovative new retail formats, and elevate the consumer experience,” said Neman. “This foundation will allow us to push boundaries and broaden our impact, doing even more with our suppliers, partners, and technology so that together we can bring about industry-wide change.”
This round of funding will enable sweetgreen to make strategic investments in technology, data, supply chain, and social impact. And with more than 50% of sweetgreen’s orders taking place through digital channels, mobile dining has swiftly become the next phase for the future of food.
In order to meet the expectations of its evolving customer base, sweetgreen is going to test and deploy emerging technologies and new models including the rapid growth of Outpost (solution for free delivery at offices). Outpost started out about a year ago with 13 locations. And now it is expected to grow to more than 400 with an expected 600 locations by the end of this year. Next year, sweetgreen is continuing to expand into new cities including Miami, FL, Denver, CO and Austin, TX.
Plus sweetgreen is going to be launching a delivery service on its own app in 2020 in order to create another channel to meet customers wherever they are.
sweetgreen also emphasizes on social impacts. For example, sweetgreen intends to continue to support FoodCorps’ work in schools and cafeterias where its hands-on learning gets kids to eat three times more fruits and vegetables. And sweetgreen provided $1 million in funding to support the next phase of FoodCorps’ work in cafeterias while working together to address systemic challenges to serve healthy and high-quality food in schools.
J.P. Morgan had acted as sole placement agent for sweetgreen on the offering.
