Jonathan Neman, sweetgreen Co-Founder and CEO
Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais
Dr. Michael Gervais
4.6 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 12 June 2019
⏱️ 80 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week’s conversation is with Jonathan Neman, Co-Founder & CEO of sweetgreen, the destination for simple, seasonal, healthy real food.
Jonathan and his co-founders Nathaniel Ru and Nicolas Jammet started sweetgreen in 2007, opening their first location in Georgetown, DC, just three months out of college.
The mission driven brand's strong food ethos, embodiment of passion and purpose, tech-forward thinking and investment in local communities has enabled sweetgreen to disrupt the fast casual space and grow into a national brand with over 90 locations.
Jonathan passionately believes in the democratization of real food - it should be convenient and accessible to everyone, which is why sweetgreen is on a mission to build healthier communities by connecting people to real food.
He has been recognized as a key innovator in food and business, named to Fast Company's "50 Most Innovative Companies", Inc’s “30 Under 30”, Forbes’ “30 Under 30” and Food & Wine’s “40 Big Food Thinkers 40 and Under,” among other accolades.
I wanted to speak with Jonathan because I went to his restaurant in New York City, loved the vibe.
I wanted to understand how it was built and sure enough, you'll get a feel for just how thoughtfully they've curated their business.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There's pretty much no food brand that as they've gotten bigger they've gotten better |
| 0:05.7 | Like every restaurant at some point like that is today at scale was really good when it was small, but over time they lost their way. |
| 0:16.5 | But if you look at other types of companies, that's not necessarily true. |
| 0:21.0 | There's a lot of other companies that as they've gotten bigger, the product, that product and experience actually has improved. |
| 0:26.0 | So what was it about those companies and what is it about food that makes that so hard to do? |
| 0:31.0 | And how can we start to redesign the system |
| 0:35.1 | so we can make our experience and our food better |
| 0:37.6 | as we get bigger, not get worse, |
| 0:39.6 | and kind of be this death by a thousand cuts. All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast. |
| 0:55.0 | And I am Michael Jervay by Trade and Training, |
| 0:58.0 | A Sport and Performance Psychologist, |
| 1:00.0 | as well as the co-founder of Compete to Create. |
| 1:02.7 | And the whole idea behind these podcasts, |
| 1:04.5 | behind these conversations, |
| 1:06.2 | is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery. |
| 1:09.4 | And we want to understand what they're searching for. |
| 1:11.8 | We want to dig to get our arms around their |
| 1:14.2 | psychological framework, which is really how do they explain themselves and |
| 1:18.4 | events and give it context to what's happening in the world, you know, in their world I should say, in the world in general as well. |
| 1:25.0 | And we also want to understand the mental skills that they use to build and refine their craft. |
| 1:30.0 | I am really excited to announce that this year finding mastery is releasing our first ever holiday gift guide. |
| 1:38.0 | Yes. |
... |
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