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Sweetgreen, the farm-to-table organic salad and frozen yogurt shop, today confirmed the opening of the chain’s 12th location in the Golden Triangle at 1901 L Street NW in Washington, D.C., near the intersection of 19th Street.
Nic Jammet, one of Sweetgreen’s founding partners, says, “a lot of experience and learning went into this location’s design.”
After opening 11 other restaurants since 2007, the Sweetgreen design team placed even greater emphasis on consumer traffic, ordering, and check-out at the L Street location.
“Today’s lunch hour is more like 22 minutes,” Jammet says. “We recognize this location is surrounded by offices, and that increased efficiency and improved flow for faster ordering and payment was critical.”
To that end, the L Street restaurant’s design includes prominent half walls that guide customers into line, while simultaneously dividing space and framing a seating area.
“Both the ordering line and the adjacent seating areas are well-defined and privatized, but still incredibly comfortable,” says Jammet, who notes that the design also keeps the entry area open and orderly. “The last thing any new restaurant wants to do is look like there’s a bottleneck at the front door.”
The checkout area includes four registers for quick and easy check-out.
“In some of our earlier stores, we had a single register,” Jammet says, “but as Sweetgreen’s popularity has increased, we’re prepared for some serious lunchtime crowds on L Street.”
Each Sweetgreen location’s design is specific not just to the shape and size of the space, but to the neighborhood. The L Street shop’s design is cleaner and more open than other locations, with an emphasis on white walls to showcase the space’s 15 foot ceilings and reclaimed wood details that resemble a farmers market.
Sweetgreen’s salad bars, offering local and organic ingredients, have become one of the D.C.-metro area’s most popular lunch venues. The L Street property is Sweetgreen’s first in a predominantly commercial area, and Jammet expects strong lunchtime activity that will continue to increase the chain’s popularity in the region.
At every location, Sweetgreen makes an operation-wide effort to leave a gentle footprint on the planet. By using compostable packaging, design details and furniture made from reclaimed materials, and wind energy offset credits to power the stores, Sweetgreen continually aims to raise the bar in sustainability business practices.
