‘Never waste a crisis’: Sweetgreen cofounder on stolen recipes, the cyclospora cyclone and their first-ever chef-in-residence
Source: Fortune ·
Nic Jammet on a lettuce scare, growing up at New York's La Caravelle, Molly Baz's residency and the Hoboken fan whose 25-day challenge went national.
From the source
Sweetgreen doesn’t use iceberg lettuce, and it doesn’t buy lettuce from Mexico, according to cofounder Nic Jammet, but the salad chain still paid for this summer’s cyclospora outbreak anyway. Federal investigators tied the outbreak to iceberg lettuce from central Mexico, but fears about produce hit Sweetgreen regardless. The company cut its full-year outlook in August, projecting same-store sales would fall 7% to 8%, down from its earlier forecast of a 2% to 4% decline. The CDC declared the outbreak over on September 11. “It was a painful summer because that was like the headline for all summer,” Jammet, who is currently Sweetgreen’s chief concept officer, told Fortune. He said he worries the headlines and messaging around this summer’s recalls may have nudged people to believe “the safer thing is actually highly processed food.” He’s even watched farmers till fields of greens back into the ground, he added. The outbreak landed on a chain that was already in a turnaround, as the…