As Sweetgreen works to reverse a 13% decline in traffic last year, the chain’s marketing is leaning into a core brand promise:
Offering real food raised by real people.
It’s a message the chain believes will resonate with guests as Sweetgreen attempts to better communicate value, said Zipporah Allen, the fast-casual chain’s chief commercial officer, in an interview with Restaurant Business.
On Tuesday, Sweetgreen unveiled the latest in its ongoing video series focusing on “Faces of the Farm,” spotlighting farmers who supply produce and other ingredients. The latest video features Courtney Schuster Moore of Rio Fresh in Texas, a third-generation farmer who supplies Sweetgreen with organic kale and other produce.
Women make up more than a third of U.S. agricultural producers, representing more than 1.2 million farmers and generating $222 billion in sales, the company said.
Moore’s story is particularly remarkable because her family farmed conventionally for 85 years. But Sweetgreen called and asked if she would consider growing organically—which at the time was not a popular notion in South Texas.
Moore planted 50 acres of kale, and sold it to Sweetgreen. Now she appears to be all in.
Organic farming is not easy, Moore says in the video.
A mother of three, the farmer metaphorically compares organic farming to raising her young son with Down's Syndrome.
There are factors outside her control from the outside world that can be threatening, she said. But she can nurture him—and her organic kale—in a way to strengthen both for challenges to come.
It’s a sweet story. Other farmers spotlighted in the series included Alex Weiser Family Farms, Drake Family Farms, and the four-generation Freitas Brothers Farm.
The message is that these are the funny, quirky and hard-working humans behind Sweetgreen’s more premium ingredients.
But after a year in which same-store sales fell nearly 8%, will knowing more about the farmers help turn things around?
Allen believes it will. In part, because the campaign is a bit of a return to roots.
Earlier this year, CEO Jonathan Neman at an analyst conference said Sweetgreen wants to become a “lifestyle brand” again.
In its early days, for example, Sweetgreen hosted annual music festivals where its healthful food and drinks were served. And at those Sweetlife festivals, specific growers/suppliers were sometimes promoted.
Because Sweetgreen is in a pre-earnings quiet period, Allen couldn’t really elaborate on what Neman meant about Sweetgreen becoming a lifestyle brand again. But she said the company is looking at a number of possible “lanes” to do that.
The connection to farmers, however, remains a core tenet that fundamentally plays into perceptions of value and food quality, she argues. It also tells the story of Sweetgreen’s impact on communities, she said.
And that matters to Sweetgreen’s consumer base, said Allen.
“We are in the process of really refining our brand right now,” she said. “And we found that that mission continues to be enduring almost 20 years after the founders started the brand. So that’s the first part, and the anchor and the foundation of how we think about bringing the brand to market.”
Allen said Sweetgreen’s customers don’t just want high quality, affordable, seed-oil-free, organic produce and meat raised without antibiotics.
“They are depending on us for that,” she added. “But they are also buying into what the brand stands for, which is really that connection to the community.”
The word “affordable” is not typically associated with Sweetgreen, and that likely contributed to the chain’s fourth-quarter same-store sales decline of 11.5%.
But Sweetgreen is working on that.
The company is rethinking its menu price architecture, looking to add more lower-priced entry points and deals for loyalty members.
The chain is testing a line of wrap sandwiches for less than $15. And loyalty members have access to $10 bowls featured as Cravings of the Month.
Last year, Sweetgreen brought back its seasonal menu, giving the brand an opportunity to up the cadence on new news and “letting Mother Nature take the lead,” Allen said, on promoting what’s in season and available throughout the year.
When Sweetgreen presented fourth-quarter results in February, Neman described the early weeks in the year as “choppy,” with much of the country experiencing terrible winter weather.
Things may not have gotten better as weather improved. A recent report from traffic-tracker Placer.ai indicated that Sweetgreen’s same-store visits were down 7.6% in March, the deepest decline in six months.
More, however, will be revealed next week. Sweetgreen is scheduled to report first-quarter results on May 7.
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