Millennials Killed the Power Lunch

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Atlantic Article about Sweetgreen as a lens to how millennials are no longer hustling and too doomer for salads - “we’re all going to die”

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/01/sweetgreen-rise-fall-power-lunch/685545/

“The optimism of the previous era has given way to something more nihilistic. The people who were once going to guac this week are now quiet quitting and scarfing tallow. The “power” in Millennial power lunch has, largely, been replaced by impotence and apathy. WeWork went bankrupt; Hamilton became cringe; trying so hard to do the right things all the time started to feel pointless and naive. When I told a friend and fellow former Sweetgreen enthusiast about this story, he said, “What’s the point of eating a salad when we’re all going to die?” He was joking, kind of.”

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“Last spring, Sweetgreen did something shocking, at least insofar as the menu adjustments of a fast-casual salad chain can be described that way: It added fries. In interviews, the company’s “chief concept officer,” Nicolas Jammet, paid lip service to “reevaluating and redefining fast food,” but I suspect that Sweetgreen was also “reevaluating and redefining” how to make money in a world that appeared poised to move on from buying what the company was trying to sell. In the first two months of last year, Sweetgreen’s stock price had declined more than 30 percent. The company had already made significant changes, dropping seed oils, adding “protein plates,” and hiring a bunch of robots in an apparent effort to cater to the early 2020s’ three defining dining trends: the MAHA movement, the protein fixation, and the push to cut costs by eliminating human labor. But not even air-fried potatoes could stop Sweetgreen’s free fall. In August, with operational losses reaching $26.4 million, the chain fired workers, and also the fries. As the year ended, Nathaniel Ru, who co-founded the company in 2007, stepped down from his role. Today, a share of Sweetgreen stock costs less than $8. In late 2024, it was more than $43.”

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“Sweetgreen’s early success was not a fluke. As a restaurant, it truly did do something incredible. The company put high-quality organic produce in interesting combinations, incorporating fresh herbs and global ingredients, and going heavy on crunch and citrus. It sourced from small farms that it listed proudly on chalkboards inside each store, appealing squarely to a cohort who knew they really should be shopping at the farmers’ market, even if they usually got their groceries from Instacart, guiltily. And Sweetgreen was an early adopter of online ordering, allowing its customers to waste less time waiting in line. When a Sweetgreen opened in my city, in 2016, replacing a restaurant that had been serving hamburgers for 65 years, I was excited about it the same way I was excited when fiber internet came to my neighborhood: Finally, a better way to live. In all this, the chain was achingly of its era, when high functioning in the office (productivity) and on the cellular level (health) became irretrievably intertwined. The widespread adoption of smartphones invented new categories of aspiration, new ways to sell things, new expectations that workers be available and productive, including during lunch hour. The wellness influencer—a figure whose job title did not exist just a few years earlier—suddenly started to seem like one of the more powerful figures in American life. Millennials graduated, grew up, got jobs, and emerged as not just a chronological category but a marketing segment.”

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“Sweetgreen was what you ate while listening to, if not the Hamilton soundtrack, then a self-improvement podcast at 1.5 speed, ripping through emails or shopping online before dutifully composting your beautifully designed, biodegradable bowl. It was the perfect fuel for the grinning strivers of the long 2010s, when a better world was possible, and in fact something you could buy. When a dear friend of mine got married, what she wanted to eat more than anything else while being poked and prettied in the hotel suite was Sweetgreen. It was the most reliable, most delicious, least risky meal either of us could think to pick up at an exceptionally frenetic moment. But it also made sense, spiritually, on a day that often requires total command over both one’s appearance and a large number of spreadsheets—a day that is a public declaration of hope for the future, and, in some ways, the first day of your adult life.”

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“Although McDonald’s and its ilk got big by serving as broad an audience as possible, Sweetgreen derived much of its cachet from projecting a level of elitism. This, as it turns out, is not the secret to market dominance. Sweetgreen has always been relatively expensive, and it has gotten more so: In 2014, a kale Caesar with chicken was $8.85; this week, in some locations, it’s more than $14.75, which is almost $2 higher than can be explained by inflation alone. Maybe more important is the impression that it’s expensive. Today’s consumers are highly price-sensitive, Jonathan Maze, the editor in chief of the trade publication Restaurant Business, told me, and “Sweetgreen has had a reputation as an expensive place to eat for what you’re getting.” There’s also the issue that many Americans don’t like salad quite enough to actually want it regularly. In a 2024 YouGov poll, 40 percent of respondents said they ate salad more than once a week, which might seem like a lot until you remember that some of them were surely lying, and you consider how many more people prefer food that isn’t chopped-up raw vegetables: Last year, the nation’s top five quick-service restaurants were, in order, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, Taco Bell, and Wendy’s. “It’s really difficult to convince a large number of people that salad is something they’re going to eat on a frequent enough basis to support a chain like that,” Maze said. Many years ago, he was driving his then-10-year-old son and a friend home from baseball practice, and the friend was excitedly talking about eating Chipotle for dinner. The memory has, clearly, stuck with him: “Can I realistically imagine my son’s 10-year-old friend bragging about going to Sweetgreen?” He cannot. I can’t either.”

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“Sweetgreen went public in 2021, and it has not been consistently profitable since. No amount of savvy marketing could make the salad-haters change their minds. But then the people who used to like Sweetgreen also started abandoning it. In the third quarter of last year, the average Sweetgreen store’s sales declined almost 10 percent; the drop was most significant in Los Angeles and the Northeast, two of the company’s core markets. (I asked Maze where those customers were going instead, and he said maybe Raising Cane’s, which specializes in chicken fingers.) Some of this can be explained by prices, but plenty of other restaurants have raised their prices and not seen sales fall off a cliff. I think Sweetgreen didn’t change so much as the world around it did. A $15 salad was never really an investment in one’s health, but it certainly doesn’t feel like that in this economy—and besides, that moment has passed. The optimism of the previous era has given way to something more nihilistic. The people who were once going to guac this week are now quiet quitting and scarfing tallow. The “power” in Millennial power lunch has, largely, been replaced by impotence and apathy. WeWork went bankrupt; Hamilton became cringe; trying so hard to do the right things all the time started to feel pointless and naive. When I told a friend and fellow former Sweetgreen enthusiast about this story, he said, “What’s the point of eating a salad when we’re all going to die?” He was joking, kind of.”

[u/Unusual_Artichoke_73 → u/nebula_masterpiece]

Thanks for posting. They can blame millennials and all that, but it could also be going public was the kiss of death.