Has Sweetgreen hit bottom?
Wraps to the rescue, after years of drifting?
Hello hello! It’s Dan Frommer. It’s The New Consumer. What’s on your mind?
I’ve been deep in the weeds this week, finishing up my next Consumer Trends report with Coefficient Capital, our annual food- and grocery-focused slide deck timed to the Expo West conference. Stay tuned for that next week — and say hi if you’re at the show.
Presented by Whatnot
The Live Shopping Update — Live commerce is redefining how consumers discover and shop, and beauty is emerging as one of its biggest breakout categories.
On Whatnot, beauty sales surged 791% in 2025, now representing one of the platform’s fastest-growing verticals. But what’s fueling this momentum? Real-time discovery and exclusivity, with buyers having access to deals on some of the most popular products on the market. From brands like Dior, Chloé, K18, and more, inventory also includes coveted limited-edition products, driving more excitement and engagement than traditional channels.
Today, buyers are watching more than 570,000 hours of beauty shows weekly and purchasing nearly 4,000 beauty items per hour – a pace comparable to stocking a mid-sized beauty retailer every afternoon.
For sellers, the live commerce opportunity is transformative. Joy Nahmani of Danya Beach, Florida (@beautyfinds) grew her account to 300,000+ followers in under a year, becoming the platform’s most-followed beauty channel. She now runs 3-4 shows per day and has sold 500,000+ units, with live selling now accounting for the majority of her revenue.
What’s happening isn’t just the rise of another digital storefront, but a broader retail evolution where shopping is interactive, community-driven, and built around live moments. Beauty is proving especially well-suited to this format, where sellers can easily combine product education and entertainment. Live commerce will no doubt transform how this industry meaningfully connects with consumers in 2026 and beyond.
Sweetgreen is a company where the product, brand, ambition, and operations have never really worked in concert.
Now the salad chain is in a real rut, as shown by its fourth quarter results, released on Thursday.
In Q4 of 2025, its same-store sales declined 11.5% year over year. Worse, its “traffic and mix” — the number of people eating Sweetgreen, and how much they ordered — declined 13.3%. (This was offset by 1.8% in price increases.) This January was also bad, with comp sales down 11.8%, due in part to bad winter weather. Shares are down more than 75% over the past year, and around 90% since its market debut in late 2021.
CHART OF THE DAY
This shouldn’t be happening. We are a nation that’s obsessed with health, wellness, and looks — or at least thinks it is. Sweetgreen, which is best known for its salads and healthy grain bowls, should be winning, not shrinking.
In our latest Consumer Trends survey of more than 3,000 US consumers, two thirds of Gen. Z and Millennials said they agreed that “being healthy and fit is one of today’s biggest status symbols.” And as GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy become more widespread for weight loss — including less invasive pills entering the market — Sweetgreen was supposed to be the fast-casual chain that benefitted the most.
More than a decade ago, when Sweetgreen first expanded to New York, it was really something special: A higher-end, fast-casual take on the deli salad, with great dressings and superb aesthetics that were easily worth the premium. For a while, it was on the forefront of food culture and synonymous with the aspirational desk salad.
But as it tried to scale across the country — and impress investors after going public — quality declined and innovation stalled. The pandemic reprogrammed its core customer base of coastal-elite knowledge workers, which was an added level of difficulty for every restaurant group. But it seems to have been especially tough for Sweetgreen.
After that early optimism faded, it hasn’t been able to figure out its next great product. Instead, it has fallen out of fashion, as shown by the traffic and mix stats.
The reason is simple yet complex: Sweetgreen isn’t as good as it was, and isn’t as good as it could be.
It knows this, and promises that it’s trying to fix this — with co-founder and CEO Jonathan Neman itemizing at least three new change-management projects on its earnings call, each with its own corporate codename. It’s a little sad, and a little corny, for what was once the cool salad brand. But this is the work.
Its latest COO, Jason Cochran, joined last year and seems to have agency: Neman said about two thirds of Sweetgreens are now hitting “great” performance goals; six months ago, two thirds were below standard.
