CHICAGO — Diners at Sweetgreen in Willis Tower, get ready to meet the chef of the future: a robot that makes your salad to order.
The California-based chain is launching its automated Infinite Kitchen system this week at the busy Loop restaurant, putting an assembly line of robotic chefs to work preparing bowls of everything from Kale Caesar to Hummus Crunch.
Early rollouts of the technology at nearly a dozen locations nationwide have shown promising results delivering food faster — and perhaps better — by going from farm-to-machine-to-table, according to Nicolas Jammet, a co-founder and chief concept officer at Sweetgreen.
“I think the quality of the bowl, of the food, is actually better because each ingredient is held at the perfect temperature, perfect portion, perfect ratios, the greens are crisper,” Jammet said. “I actually think it’s a more consistent experience.”
The proprietary technology, which looks like something out of “The Jetsons” — sans the flying cars — features a series of machines that dispense and mix salad ingredients in a bowl traveling along an assembly line. Human sous chefs keep the machines filled and finish the salad with everything from a squeeze of lemon, fresh basil or a salmon filet, based on the order.
Chicago has been something of a testing ground for Sweetgreen, with the first automated kitchen opening last year at a new restaurant in west suburban Naperville, Illinois.
One of the busiest Sweetgreen locations in the Chicago area, the retrofitted Willis Tower restaurant has been expanded by 40% with a 1,000-square-foot addition to accommodate the robotic system. The traditional salad line, where diners point at their ingredients and humans serve it up, will remain open side-by-side with the new automated one, Jammet said.
The inaugural Infinite Kitchens have all been fully automated — from ordering to food preparation. Willis Tower is the 11th Sweetgreen restaurant to adopt the technology nationwide and the first to utilize a hybrid approach.
“At our other Infinite Kitchens, it is just the Infinite Kitchen,” Jammet said. “We’re learning a lot here, so we’re just deciding to test this, and we’ll see how it goes.”
Founded in 2007 by three newly minted Georgetown University graduates, Sweetgreen has grown into a national chain with 245 locations in 23 states and its birthplace, Washington, D.C. There are 23 locations in the Chicago area, including the one at Willis Tower, which opened in 2019 and serves a large downtown lunch crowd.
The Sweetgreen premise, from the first small restaurant opened near the Georgetown campus, was to fill a niche that wasn’t there during their college days by creating fresh and healthy fast food. The idea caught on in a big way.
In November 2021, with the restaurant industry still struggling to recover from pandemic disruption, Sweetgreen went public with a splashy initial public offering that raised $364 million and valued the company at $5.5 billion after the first day of trading. The company’s stock price fell back to Earth in the ensuing months, but regained traction this year, in part driven by the Infinite Kitchen rollout, lifting its market cap back to about $4.1 billion as of Friday.
Two months before the IPO, Sweetgreen bought Boston-based Spyce for an undisclosed price, acquiring the startup’s innovative robotic kitchen technology, which could be used to prepare the growing fast casual chain’s salads without human hands in the mix.
In May 2023, Sweetgreen launched its first Infinite Kitchen in Naperville, and has since installed 11 automated systems nationwide, including at a new restaurant inside the CNA building at 151 N. Franklin St. in late October and the expanded Willis Tower location, which debuted its robotic salad assembly line Monday.
Sweetgreen is also retrofitting its Wall Street restaurant in New York, which is slated to be the 12th Infinite Kitchen location to open by year’s end.
The chain’s robotic salad chef was named one of Time magazine’s best inventions of 2023. While still only available in 5% of its locations, its broader rollout could be integral to the future of Sweetgreen, and perhaps the restaurant industry at large.
The advantages to the automated kitchen start with cost savings. During its third quarter earnings call in November, Sweetgreen said it has seen a 7% labor savings across its Infinite Kitchen locations.
Sweetgreen, which is projecting revenue between $675 million and $680 million this year, reported a net loss of $61 million through the first nine months, according to financial filings.
It costs between $450,000 and $550,000 to install an Infinite Kitchen system at a restaurant, a capital expense the company believes it will bring down as it scales up.
Next year, Sweetgreen plans to accelerate the rollout of its automated system, with more than half of its new stores using the format, as well as some additional conversions, Jammet said. Within five years, all new restaurants will likely be built with the technology, he said.
“It’s a more productive, efficient labor model,” Jammet said. “In new restaurants, the number of team members you have to hire is less.”
At the same time, Jammet said no one has been laid off at the Willis Tower restaurant with the opening of the automated kitchen, and employees who previously assembled salads have been “redeployed” to hospitality positions at the front of the house, he said.
How the new robot crew handles the lunchtime rush this week, however, remains to be seen.
Chicago office buildings are averaging about 53% of pre-pandemic occupancy levels, according to the latest weekly report by Kastle Systems. That has meant less lunchtime traffic for many restaurants in downtown Chicago.
But Jammet said traffic has been improving and the Willis Tower restaurant is very busy on most weekdays. That site handles about 25,000 visitors a day, with long lines common during peak office lunch hours.
If the automated kitchen does its job, traffic may move a little faster this week.
While robots may be making the salads at Sweetgreen, every bowl still has a human touch — at least for now. People are cooking chicken, steak and salmon, stocking the machines with salad ingredients and finishing the bowls with toppings before giving them to customers.
Ultimately, the collaboration between man and machine may be no less than “reimagining the whole fast-food experience,” Jammet said, where robots don a chef’s hat and people wear a smile.
“We ask our team members to be fast, friendly and accurate on our front line, which is really hard to do,” Jammet said. “So in this new model, the Infinite Kitchen gets to be fast and accurate, and our team members get to be really focused on the friendly part.”
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