Across cultures: Health and nutrition Look at the headline of the article below. What kind of food do you think they sell? Read the article and underline key facts about the history and business concept of the company. Reading 20 a b The three friends behind a $1 bn healthy fast-food firm The three college friends, Nicolas Jammet, Jonathan Neman and Nathaniel Ru couldn’t find healthy and affordable meals to buy in their neighbourhood of Washington DC, so they decided to solve the problem by opening their own restaurant – the US salad bowl restaurant chain Sweetgreen. Within thirteen years their business was estimated to be worth more than $1 bn. Looking back on their time as business students at Washington’s Georgetown University, Nicolas Jammet says that he, Jonathan Neman, and fellow co-founder Nathaniel Ru, had ‘nowhere to eat’. “The most delicious, accessible and popular food was generally the least healthy,” says Nicolas. “We couldn’t understand why we didn’t have other options.” The company offers different salad bowls, filled fresh to order. Despite none of them having any experience of running restaurants, and all of them having yet to graduate, in 2006 the then 22-year-olds started developing their business plan in their college dormitory. Their idea was to set up a fast-food restaurant that only sold bowls of salad, both cold and warm ones such as oven-roasted vegetables. And instead of buying their produce from supermarkets or whole-salers, they would source directly from local farmers to ensure everything was as fresh as possible. After they had graduated, the three friends raised $300,000 from friends and family and opened the first Sweetgreen restaurant in an abandoned pub in the Georgetown area of the US capital. “We just kind of opened the doors,” says Nicolas, whose job title is chief concept officer. “We had hired a few students, but we hadn’t trained them that well. “The first day was pretty slow, but it felt very busy because we were testing our system and were moving very slowly. We got busier every day after that.” Jonathan, who is the chief executive, says that to begin with they had no plans to open more than the one restaurant. “We didn’t think it would turn into a career,” he says. “We just saw it as a way to solve a problem because there was such a need for healthy food. We thought we would open one restaurant and then do something else.” But as the first branch grew in popularity, with lines of customers queuing down the street to obtain a nutritious and healthy lunch, the three friends realised they had created a business that was scalable. So they decided to focus all their attention on Sweetgreen, and open more branches. This required investment though, and initially it wasn’t easy to get. “For many years it was very hard to convince people to invest in Sweetgreen,” says Jonathan. “We had no track record, we were just kids from college.” However, Sweetgreen’s healthy fast food did eventually convince high-profile entrepreneurs including Whole Foods boss Walter Robb, billioaire investor Steve Case, and French chef Daniel Boulud. After initially adding other outlets in Washington, by 2019 Sweetgreen had 90 branches across the US. With its headquarters having moved from Washington to Los Angeles in 2016, investment in the business now totals $365 m, and it has more than 3,500 employees. Nicolas says that as the company continues to expand, it is committed to buying produce only from American farmers, despite this meaning that there will be certain months and years when some fruits and vegetables are unavailable. “We are at the mercy of Mother Nature,” he says. “One of our most popular salads is the peach salad. But one year the US peach crop didn’t grow because of bad weather. At this point we could have bought peaches from South America and made our money, but we took a step back and thought, we buy our peaches because they are in season, and because they come from a particular region of the US, and from a particular farmer. So we asked him, what else do you have for us? He said he had blueberries and raspberries, and we decided to make a berry salad instead.” Look at the text again. Match the highlighted expressions with the definitions. 1 easy to reach or to get 2 containing substances that your body needs 3 not pre-prepared or stored for long 4 made according to what the customer wants 5 get products straight from the producer 6 ripe and ready to be consumed at this particular time c 57 Language skills Extras Explore 5 Money matters Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv
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