Walk into a Sweetgreen location at lunch and you’ll often see enough customers to make you wonder if Taylor Swift tickets are up for grabs. So who wouldn’t want their brand sold alongside that kale caesar? We spoke with co-founder Nicolas Jammet this week, who explained why the chain is approaching adding brands like Hu Kitchen and Olipop and if you might see Sweetgreen products stocked in a retailer one day. 

What role do CPG products (both external brands and your own) play at Sweetgreen? 

Our supply chain has always been so important for us, working with like minded growers and food partners. Now that we’ve started expanding our offerings and thinking about things like desserts, snacks and expanding our beverages, it's important for us to carry that same mentality to those partners and just have some fun with it. 

You tested Meati as an LTO. Can we expect to see other plant-based meat options? 

Until Meati, we never really found something that fit our ethos of being unprocessed, and that had clean macros, made you feel good and was nutritionally dense. For us, we’re not about less meat or more meat, it's about whole, clean ingredients and a lot of the options on the market don't fit that. But you’ll see some protein work over the next year or two.

Will we ever see Sweetgreen branded products in retail? 

Our brand is strong enough where I think we could leverage it to go outside the four walls. It's definitely something we know that we have the ability to do. But today we're very focused on store growth and profitability.

As it prepares to spin out its snack business (and plant-based meats, but that’s another story) into new company Kellanova, The Kellogg Company is debuting Harvest Blends Pringles. Though the chip company is calling out “the goodness” and “wholesome[ness]” of the multigrain and sweet potato chips, the question remains if consumers will buy into the premise and health halo effect ... or be willing to accept some black beans in a top performing salty snack. But if Kellogg wants to see Kellanova hit supernova status on the public market, investing on innovation gambles such as Harvest Blends may be the way forward. 

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Whole-cut, plant-based salmon maker Plantish announced it has rebranded as Oshi, a name stemming from the word ‘ocean.’ According to the Israeli startup, the name change marks a "significant milestone" for the company as it prepares for a U.S. launch later this year. Oshi has also announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Coop, a European retailer, to distribute its salmon filets starting in 2025. Last year, Oshi raised $12.5 million in a seed round led by State of Mind Ventures, which the company claims to be the largest seed round to date for an alternative seafood brand. In total, Oshi has raised $14.5 million to support its operations. The renaming news comes after plant-based seafood dollar sales increased by 15% and unit sales grew 5% in 2022, outpacing plant-based meat sales, according to a report by the Good Food Institute.

Facing sagging demand for alt-meats, Meatless Farm appears to have cut much of its workforce, according to social media posts from several former employees and reports by BBC News and The Telegraph. As stated in its LinkedIn profile, the company employs somewhere between 51 and 200 people, though it's unclear how many have been laid off. Former global website manager Rob Stanworth, who had been with the company for nearly five years, wrote in a LinkedIn post, “We’ve antagonized and challenged the norms, all in search of a more sustainable way of living for the next generation. The food…if you could compare it now to what it was when we were frying burgers in a loft space whilst covering up smoke alarms…the progress has been huge. Alas, it’s just not meant to be.” 

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Salad fans, romaine calm. After spending 40 years serving up salad’s equivalent of icing on the cake, Brianna’s Fine Salad Dressings may be strategizing a future that goes deeper into the bowl. Last week the Texas-based company acquired cheese crisp and crostini maker John Wm. Macy’s for an undisclosed sum, only a month after Brianna’s launched its first non-liquid line: seasoned croutons and expanded into marinades. While Brianna’s hasn’t responded to requests for comment, the potential for in-house manufacturing synergies seems like an obvious driver behind this deal.

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Last week The Kraft Heinz Company debuted The United States of Saucemerica Collection: fifty state-inspired condiment packet designs (think Idaho French Fries). Collect as many as you can and gain a chance to win $500,000 worth of prizes. Besides appealing to a millennial nostalgia for the McDonald’s Monopoly game, the debut is part of a deliberate effort by Kraft to build up the Heinz brand and help it stand out from the sea of red in the condiment aisle. According to a study by Ibotta last year, while Heinz accounted for 54% of ketchup purchases among Ibotta users in 2021, 31% of those same shoppers bought private label ketchup. In addition to LTO HEINZ Sauce Drops and a Coke Freestyle-esque sauce dispenser, two weeks ago HEINZ announced a “It Has to be Heinz,” campaign, the brand’s first global creative “brand platform” in over 150 years.  

• Hear Sweetgreen co-founder Nicolas Jammet discuss a range of topics, from a potential retail launch to his take on the future of alt-meat
• How (and why?) Brianna's Salad Dressing is breaking out of the category with a new product