He regularly braved the 12-hour Greyhound bus ride to the Big Apple, where, alone in the city, he often found himself at Sweetgreen. Si, who grew up in Wuhan, moved to Toronto in high school. “It represents this epitome of New York,” Si told Artnet News. Of all the luxury fast-food restaurants Si could’ve called out, he chose Sweetgreen over Dig Inn or Chop’t due to the company’s masterful grasp on brand identity. (Still, it spooked Si when Sweetgreen co-founder Nicolas Jammet started following him on Instagram.) “SG can mean Selena Gomez,” he pointed out. He avoided copyright infringement by inserting a space into “Sweet Green” and keeping the sign outside simple. The project questions the ‘who’ on all levels of the operation and how each is affected.”

In a statement, critic Sophia Ma writes that Si’s mock restaurant “not only replicates the environment, but also subtly examines the people inhabiting the space. “Everything is chopped, made ready for you,” Si said. He likened the fast salad trend to adult baby food. He noticed the clientele’s quandary, working hard to afford the Sweetgreen lifestyle yet reading their emails rather than savoring their salads. Si, who was raised in China and is now based in New York, painstakingly hand-crafted the installation, titled “ Sweet Green,” at the gallery Chinatown Soup after spending hours sitting in different Sweetgreens and studying their environments.

It also instigated a community-wide text thread where area residents considered protesting what they mistook for the arrival of a gentrifying chain restaurant in their neighborhood. It was so realistic that some visitors got mad when they learned there were no salads to be had. It had a first quarter net loss of $49 million.For two weeks in July, the conceptual artist Alexander Si’s replica of a Sweetgreen salad restaurant in Manhattan’s Chinatown agitated just about everyone. Sweetgreen raised menu prices an average of 10% last quarter. Sweetgreen also reported quarterly results this week, with a 35% increase in same-store sales. It went public on the New York Stock Exchange last fall as the first salad chain IPO. The company, which is now headquartered in Los Angeles, has grown to more than 140 locations nationwide. The salad chain was started by three Georgetown students in 2007, with its first location on Georgetown’s M Street. Sweetgreen has close to 30 locations in the D.C. The new digital-only Sweetgreen is a relocation of an existing Sweetgreen at City Vista, at 1065 5th St. There will, however, be an outdoor patio of dining. Instead, customers will pick up their orders made through Sweetgreen’s app or website from shelves. It is also more or less a self-service operation, with no dining area or front line service. The digital-only restaurant concept will allow it to move quickly to fulfill orders and reach new guests in areas that would not otherwise support a full-sized restaurant. It says it is working to provide new and convenient ordering methods to elevate the digital experience and to meet customers where they are. It is an extension of what has grown out of the pandemic for Sweetgreen, and other fast-casual and fast food restaurants: a rise in digital ordering.įor Sweetgreen, digital business accounted for 67% of its 2021 revenue. Home-grown fast-casual salad chain Sweetgreen is opening its first digital-only pickup location this summer. Business & Finance Click to expand menu.

Sweet greens