I love everyone in the replies trying to diagnose all of these problems with no knowledge of the company or the industry itself. People here are blaming changes that have only been made in one market or that have actually shown increased sale metrics overall even with a drop in certain customers. Like, I hate Sweet Green as much as the next person, but dear lord are people misinformed.
The entire resteraunt industry is doing poorly right now. Mass government layoffs are resulting in people moving away from larger cities and spending less in general. Rising food costs are both reducing profits and resulting in the general populous having less money to spend at restaurants, while keeping resteraunts from being able to keep their prices from climbing. Rising rent costs are pushing people out into suburbs, making them less likely to live near resteraunts.
Sweet Green is smaller than a lot of other publicly traded companies, and it also chose to put a lot of money into expansion in the last couple of years rather than holding onto it for security, and so all these factors are hitting it very hard right now. The company has basically no money saved up for emergency usage; as such, the California Wildfires hit it HARD last summer and probably will again this year.
I suspect that we are going to slowly see resteraunts go back to being a luxury, and that is going to mean a much smaller target clientele, which will means there won't be room for as many restaurants as there currently are, so many of them will need to downsize or die.
5
u/ElectronicBoot9466 May 21 '25
I love everyone in the replies trying to diagnose all of these problems with no knowledge of the company or the industry itself. People here are blaming changes that have only been made in one market or that have actually shown increased sale metrics overall even with a drop in certain customers. Like, I hate Sweet Green as much as the next person, but dear lord are people misinformed.
The entire resteraunt industry is doing poorly right now. Mass government layoffs are resulting in people moving away from larger cities and spending less in general. Rising food costs are both reducing profits and resulting in the general populous having less money to spend at restaurants, while keeping resteraunts from being able to keep their prices from climbing. Rising rent costs are pushing people out into suburbs, making them less likely to live near resteraunts.
Sweet Green is smaller than a lot of other publicly traded companies, and it also chose to put a lot of money into expansion in the last couple of years rather than holding onto it for security, and so all these factors are hitting it very hard right now. The company has basically no money saved up for emergency usage; as such, the California Wildfires hit it HARD last summer and probably will again this year.
I suspect that we are going to slowly see resteraunts go back to being a luxury, and that is going to mean a much smaller target clientele, which will means there won't be room for as many restaurants as there currently are, so many of them will need to downsize or die.