Robot Sweetgreen Vs. Human Sweetgreen

When I work in Williamsburg, it's about the same walk to either a standard human Sweetgreen on N 4th St or a new robot assembly line Sweetgreen in Greenpoint.

At this point in time, I prefer going to the human one. I don't have to order ahead, they prioritize in-store orders, it's quick, and can just tap to pay at the register.

At the robot one, if you don't order ahead, you place your order at a tablet and it's added to a queue with everyone else.

We ordered ahead, still had to wait a bit, then the human staff put our order in the wrong section of the pickup rack. The humans also do tasks like adding goat cheese to Harvest bowls which didn't seem to be in a convenient location relative to the assembly line. They also ran out of apples which created a bit of chaos.

The Robot Sweetgreen is going to get better. At the moment, the Human store has a 3.9 rating vs. Robot at a 3.5 -- so both aren't exactly crushing it.

The system is actually called the Infinite Kitchen. It costs ~$500K to install per store and early results have seen the Infinite Kitchen driving ~6% higher margins. The stock is obviously responding well with Sweetgreen up over 200% YTD.

There's three things to note that I think are important --

1. The Greenpoint location is beautiful, they did a great job restoring the building, and it's a place that people will want to visit and eat. The Infinite Kitchen does not hinder the brand.

2. Sweetgreen has a very solid 4.9 rated app, it's easy for people to order ahead. They aren't forcing people to a bad experience. Right now, I prefer going into the store and ordering with the human assembly line, but I'm not going to ditch Sweetgreen over an Infinite Kitchen setup that's more catered to order ahead. The more people that order through the app the better, as Sweetgreen can support customers with their loyalty programs, save on costs, etc...

3. It seems there's more delivery related issues at the Human Sweetgreen which could (unsurprisingly) signal human staff care less about delivery orders because they're not facing the customer in the store. Infinite Kitchens should solve this and help fix their reputation of being a notoriously bad delivery restaurant. As further case and point, one time Hannah ordered a delivered Harvest bowl and it came with just rice and chicken. 🤷

Overall, new store expansion + higher store margins driven by lower labor costs should set them up for a good run going forward.

-Dan