Can Sweetgreen Hold Out Against DoorDash?
Sweetgreen’s S1 reveals how hard it is for restaurant chains to compete against delivery aggregators like DoorDash and Uber Eats
Existential Threats
Sweetgreen is a thoughtful company. It prioritizes sourcing produce from local, organic, and regenerative farms. It’s in tune with seasonality and mindful of its carbon footprint. Instead of managers, it has assistant coaches and head coaches. Flooded with sunlight and filled with succulents, its stores are Instagram worthy:
It’s also conscious of how it sells its salads. The company is skeptical of delivery marketplaces like DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats and favors direct channels like its website and app. Jonathan Neman, Sweetgreen’s co-founder and CEO sees delivery marketplaces as an existential threat. On a recent podcast, he noted that:
The question is going to be, how many of those restaurants have direct relationships, versus marketplace relationships? Which is in my opinion, the greatest existential risks facing our industry, reminiscent of…Nike versus Amazon, Disney versus…
