No, your restaurant system is not a technology company. https://lnkd.in/gnKgb9e3 Herb Greenberg tells us an amusing story, about eating lunch with John A. Gordon at sweetgreen in San Diego. "We've been getting together for lunch at least once a year, usually at this same burgeoning neighborhood strip center in San Diego, to chat restaurants – which John eats, breathes, and sleeps. He knows everybody... and if there are bodies buried, he knows where to find them. We chose this Sweetgreen because it opened just a few weeks ago and we both wanted to check it out... What's more, John said this specific center – which I take for granted since i’m there almost every day – would rank as one of the top 100 non-superpower suburban malls in the country… in large part because it’s surrounded by very high surrounding average per capita household income. That makes it a perfect location for the likes of Sweetgreen, which went public a little less than two years ago... It did so at the peak of the market's insanity in 2021, getting a high valuation after positioning itself as a tech company that happens to sell salad. Pretty soon, people realized Sweetgreen was really little more than a salad chain that used technology – and an unprofitable one, at that, with slowing sales."
"Before going public, the company has been a darling of private investors. Sweetgreen raised $156 million in January from Durable Capital Partners, after some?$350 million in fundraising?in the year before that." And the public was let in on the "secret". Joe, you ever tempted to invest in a restaurant IPO? https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/sweetgreen-raises-364m-its-ipo
Yes, the pandemic didn't alter the supply and demand formula. Technomic, Inc. managing principal Joe Pawlak told the?Wall Street Journal's Spencer Jakab a few months ago... Even before the pandemic, we had too many seats chasing too few butts." And oddly, "?Spyce, the robot-powered bowl concept?with an electric delivery fleet" don't help...