Sweetgreen’s efforts to reach Gen Z are paying off.
So said Zipporah Allen, the fast-casual chain’s chief commercial officer, in an interview with Restaurant Business this week.
Earlier this year, the chain’s launch of wrap sandwiches was designed to drive traffic, but particularly the youthful Gen Z cohort. The menu launch was backed by a comprehensive campaign that leveraged social media influencers — both big-name collaborators and hundreds of “micro-influencers” with a dedicated audience, who were invited to give Sweetgreen’s new items a try and post about it.
And it seems to be working. Sweetgreen has been winning Gen Z consumers at twice the rate of other generations, said Allen.
“And that’s in part due to, not just the wrap products, it’s due to the way that we architected the campaign,” said Allen. “We launched our first-ever social-first campaign, where we really tapped into these influencers with really dedicated audiences that were authentic fans of Sweetgreen, and got a lot of engagement and social share of voice as a result of that campaign.”
Sweetgreen is not the only fast-casual player to make a big push for Gen Z. That’s a big part of sandwich player Jersey Mike’s growth strategy too, and the 3,300-unit brand has invested heavily in digital marketing.
But Jersey Mike’s is fairly new to the digital media world. Sweetgreen positioned itself as a lifestyle brand in its early days, capturing then-young Millennials with festivals and music and a focus on health. But those Millennials grew up.
Now, after facing somewhat disastrous sales declines last year, Sweetgreen has been working hard to reclaim its grasp on young consumers, especially those who for a time appeared ready to call anything in a bowl “slop.”
Sweetgreen’s answer has been the roll out of wraps, adding to other non-bowl options, such as plates centered around proteins like Miso Salmon, blackened chicken and caramelized garlic steak. The challenge was getting the message out that Sweetgreen has more than bowls.
For the wrap rollout, Sweetgreen tapped a company called Devotion that helped reach influencers at scale, Allen said.
The brand reached out to people who were already fans, and offered “little challenges,” like bring a friend to Sweetgreen or try the new wraps, Allen said. (Sweetgreen offered to pay for the food. And, where that was true, tasters used the hashtag #sweetgreenpartner for full transparency.)
The campaign, however, also included more macro influencers, like writer/actor/”chaos goblin” Taryn Delanie Smith, whose Sweetgreen post about the new wraps has more than half a million views.
For the return of its Fall Harvest Menu earlier this month, Sweetgreen also included actors Jack Falahee and Maia Reficco in a fashion-forward series of posts promoting maple-glazed brussels sprouts (as “best dressed”). The roasted vegetables are topped with crumbled bacon and charred jalapeno ranch.
The fall menu also included the Harvest Bowl, which is Sweetgreen’s most popular product.
Now, however, one in five orders across all cohorts is a wrap, Allen said.
And when guests try a wrap, they come back within 30 days at a higher rate than even the Harvest Bowl, she said.
Allen said Gen Z guests are loving the wraps because they are portable, high quality, and — perhaps most importantly — they are affordable, with pricing starting at about $11.
Sweetgreen also glommed onto a recent post by a content creator who ate lunch and dinner at the fast-casual chain for 25 days. Though his results were mixed, Sweetgreen opened the challenge to 30 more people for 30 days.
Allen said the chain got hundreds of applications and is now sorting through them. The challengers will likely be notified later this week.
Fundamentally, Sweetgreen hopes to keep pounding the message of its better-for-you (often organic) ingredients, seed-free oils, food made from scratch in restaurants and commitment to quality suppliers.
It’s food worth paying more for, Sweetgreen has long argued.
“That is where the consumer is going, as far as the way they eat, and so it’s really exciting to see Gen Z meet us for the first time,” said Allen. “We are a brand that is youthful. We are a brand that is for today’s consumer.”
Sweetgreen is also hoping to move past the summer’s cyclospora outbreak, which had consumers more broadly skipping salads.
Sweetgreen was in no way tied to the outbreak, which was officially declared over last week. But CEO Jonathan Neman said the headlines in July were estimated to have a 600-basis-point impact on same-store sales.
For the second quarter, Sweetgreen’s same-store sales were down 6.2%, but that was a vast improvement over the 13% drop seen in the first quarter this year.
Through the quarter, negative transactions improved sequentially. And though the food-safety climate is likely to take a toll in the third-quarter results, Neman expressed confidence that the strategies in place would continue to push sales trends in the right direction.
And it’s not just about marketing. Allen said those strategies include a focus on operations, making sure restaurants are adequately staffed and focused on throughput, for example.
Last week, Sweetgreen updated its app with a new home page and more personalization.
And, beyond digital media, Sweetgreen also works to build community in real life, Allen said. For the first restaurant opening in Utah earlier this month, for example, the restaurant hosted a 2.8-mile community run.
Allen said, “There’s an old adage in marketing that you’ve got to recruit a generation every generation. So this is us being really intentional with recruiting that next generation of consumers that is going to love and evangelize Sweetgreen just as much as the previous generation.”