Sweetgreen, an organic, farm-to-table salad chain founded in Washington, D.C., announced the successful results of its recently launched rewards app, developed and launched three months ago with technology company LevelUp.  

In an effort to connect with and provide benefits to its guests and the community, the company reached out to LevelUp to develop a customized rewards app that provides guests with a fast and easy way to pay with their phones, unlock loyalty rewards, and give back to local charities.  

Representing the first white-label app from LevelUp, sweetgreen rewards has allowed guests to earn dollars that can be redeemed at any of sweetgreen’s 17 locations and offers various perks that can be unlocked over time, including 1 percent of dollars spent donated to local charities that promote healthy eating in schools.

Sweetgreen rewards is aligned with the company’s “win-win-win” philosophy—to create solutions where the company wins, the customer wins, and the community wins.

In the 10 weeks since the program launched, sweetgreen rewards represents 18 percent of total transaction volume, which ranks above MasterCard or American Express, and is head-to-head with cash. One out of every five guests has been using sweetgreen rewards.

The app is four seconds faster than credit cards and 20 seconds faster than cash, saving customers time at checkout.

Sweetgreen rewards is ranked 4.8 stars in the App Store and 4.7 stars in Google Play. At launch, the iPhone app was ranked seventh in the food and drink app category.

Twelve percent of sweetgreen rewards users were referred by other sweetgreen rewards users.

“At sweetgreen, we are always looking for ways to connect with our guests, offer them the most outstanding experience in our stores, and to give back to our communities. Our sweetgreen rewards app has enabled us to do this in countless ways,” says Nathaniel Ru, sweetgreen CEO and cofounder.  

“Guests now have faster checkout times, rewards they can use at all sweetgreen locations, and the ability to give back to their community and local schools,” he adds. “It’s been amazing to see one out of every five of our guests pay with the new app—and that’s just in the first three months of launching. We’re excited to partner and continue to innovate with LevelUp on this new technology, and look forward to building additional features in the future.”

Sweetgreen created this rewards app using LevelUp’s technology. As the first white-label app built on LevelUp’s payment infrastructure, sweetgreen rewards looks and feels like sweetgreen, with everything on the back end (including loyalty tracking, customer analytics, engagement tools, and security) powered by LevelUp.

“Sweetgreen is a tech-savvy brand that understands the real value of LevelUp White-Label: the ability to take what customers think is awesome about your brand and extend it through a mobile payment experience,” says Seth Priebatsch of LevelUp. “With near five-star app store ratings and 18 percent of transactions coming from the app, it’s pretty obvious sweetgreen guests love using an app with sweetgreen’s core values baked right in.”