On this episode from our “Reinventing Customer Experience” podcast, ZS Principal Arun Shastri and Associate Principal Gopi Vikranth chat with Daniel Shlossman, senior vice president of digital and growth for Sweetgreen, about the restaurant chain’s customer experience journey, how the company has nurtured customer trust during the COVID-19 pandemic, and much more.
On this episode from our “Reinventing Customer Experience” podcast, ZS Principal Arun Shastri and Associate Principal Gopi Vikranth chat with Daniel Shlossman, senior vice president of digital and growth for Sweetgreen, about the restaurant chain’s customer experience journey, how the company has nurtured customer trust during the COVID-19 pandemic, and much more.
Gopi Vikranth:
Hello and welcome. This is Gopi Vikranth and I lead personalization and customer experience analytics at ZS.
Arun Shastri:
And I’m Arun Shastri. I lead the artificial intelligence practice at ZS.
Gopi Vikranth:
We both work at ZS where we use our industry expertise, cutting edge analytics and technology to create real world solutions for our clients. In this executive series, we will be talking to leaders about how they’re reimagining customer experiences at their organizations and the role personalization plays to drive customer loyalty. Arun and I are quite passionate about this topic as it is one that our clients often wrestle with and as consumers, we are constantly reimagining on how businesses can do a better job of engaging us. Joining us today is Daniel Shlossman. Daniel is SVP of digital and growth at Sweetgreen leading their marketing and digital channels. Sweetgreen is a destination for simple seasonal, healthy food, and it is one of the fastest growing restaurant companies in the U.S. with a focus on healthy food and has always been ahead of the curve in using technology to enhance their customer experience. It is becoming a lifestyle brand for a new generation of consumers who care deeply about their food, where it comes from and its nutritional value.
Arun Shastri:
It’s a pleasure to talk to you, Daniel. Daniel has a very rich background in marketing and operations and quite a diverse background. He has worked with the National Football League, Uber, and then most recently at Sweetgreen. And given these diverse experiences across these different industries, one thing is common if you look at Daniel’s background and that is that he has always put data at the forefront in building the best possible customer experiences. And interestingly, we learned through our preliminary conversations with Daniel that many years back and in one of his first jobs, he helped build the NFL Fantasy Football platform and business. And of course, as you all know, Fantasy Football has become extremely popular in the year since, and Daniel has actually played an integral part in its growth from the beginning. I can’t wait to hear from you, Daniel. Welcome.
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
Thanks. Thanks for the kind introduction, Arun and Gopi. It’s great to be here with you. Yeah, it’s funny to think back kind of 12 plus years ago when I started at the NFL. I was really fortunate to be part of something at the beginning, really building a business from the ground up and it taught me a lot of skills that I kind of carried forward in my career, including here to Sweetgreen. You mentioned the data piece. At its core, Fantasy Football was pretty old-school at that point, stats and data and spreadsheets, but we saw the opportunity to create a better customer experience to connect fans closer to the game that they loved, with video, with imagery and access on the go on their phones. We kind of tapped into that opportunity. We saw the same principles of providing kind of a personalized experience that a customer wants to see today really resonates still with me really no matter what product or company.
Arun Shastri:
Yep. And from the National Football League to food tech. Pretty cool. Daniel, how has your philosophy and approach to consumer engagement and marketing evolved over the last decade?
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
Yeah. To be honest, it hasn’t changed all that much. There’s really still a hyper-focus on building and marketing to the customer in a very, very personal way, in a way that I guess you could say, too, that really matters to them. That’s how you break through and that’s how you build that connection with a customer. My background is really a balance, as you mentioned, of product, of marketing, of operations, but specifically on product and marketing, it’s about making that emotional connection with a customer. If you do that, they’ll engage with you with your product or products and that connection is that much stronger than it simply being transactional in nature. It really is one thing that Sweetgreen does so well. Our customers connect with our brand, with our focus on sustainability, our mission, our values, and we try to have these things carry through in the product experience, as well, and also in our marketing touch points. Data is a very, very critical part of both on the qualitative and quantitative sides. With the right data and understanding of our customer and how they’re interacting with our products, we can iterate and build even better.
Arun Shastri:
So the pandemic of course has hit many businesses hard and Sweetgreen clearly has been impacted quite hard as well, too. You’ve had to adapt in the pandemic and then lots of other events that followed as well, too, and every... It seems like you’ve done a good job of pivoting. How have you approached how you reimagine customer experiences and how are you leveraging digital to support this reimagination?
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
Yeah. It’s a great question. Obviously, COVID and the pandemic have had significant impact on a lot of industries, restaurants, certainly so. I like to kind of say Sweetgreen was in a fortunate position in that we were already very heavily digitally invested and our customers did already connect with us in a significant way from a digital perspective. So going back kind of to pre-pandemic, we had five ordering channels live and our business really was thriving, so I’ll walk through kind of each of those and can get into kind of some of the evolution. So number one, we had our line business. If you walked into a Sweetgreen and ordered and walked through and customized your bowl with one of our team members, realistically, many of our restaurants had lines out the door at peak hours and this was one of the biggest things that changed for us.
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
Additionally, that we did have the digital components that were a big piece of our business. Our “order ahead and pick up” business, this has historically been our growth channel and it’s something that a lot of restaurants have really invested in over the last year. They’ve had to. It kind of became table stakes in the industry. We were fortunately a pioneer in kind of this part of the business. Thanks to our custom digital app and web experiences, and that people could order with the digital experience, through the Sweetgreen app, customize whatever they wanted and then very easily stop into a restaurant, pick it up off of that pickup shelf.
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
We also had our Outpost business that we had launched, started piloting and launched in 2018. This was a B2B focused channel. It’s actually a product and I can certainly get into more of this later, but that I was kind of the first employee on and was able to see from kind of the beginnings to what had grown into by far our fastest growing channel kind of heading into early 2020, and it was really an evolution of our pickup shelf. Our pickup business was “Let’s make it convenient for you to experience and interact with Sweetgreen. Order on the app, come in, pick it up,” and it makes that, that kind of experience even more seamless. Well, Outpost took it a step further and we challenged ourselves and said, “How can we make the pickup business better? Well, let’s put that pickup shelf where the customer is.” And so we did that initially through offices and scaled that very, very significantly to a thousand plus locations as we were entering early 2020.
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
We also had just launched what we call internally our native delivery business in early 2020 through the Sweetgreen app and website. So this was actually quite unique at the time, other than let’s say in the non-pizza restaurant world in having the ability to order delivery through that restaurant brand’s native application or native ordering experience. We really focus on owning that full customer experience, and if you wanted to order delivery or pickup or come into the store, we have a digital option for you in any of those. No matter if you want your meal on-premise or off-premise. So we had launched that and it was something we were able to really lean into. And then we also... Of course, we’re available on various delivery marketplaces.
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
So the pandemic arrived, we had this kind of heading in, but we really leaned into those digital components. As the line really moved to zero or close to zero with stay-at-home orders and things like that, we really put the safety of our employees and our customers first and we adapted. We adapted our pickup business. For Outpost, our offices closed, but we adapted that business and focused more on how we could give back through it, and also on some new opportunities in residential, with hospitals, et cetera. And delivery became our most important channel overnight and we doubled down there and made a lot of experience improvements to that to make it work over the last year during the pandemic, and it’s things that we’re going to continue to build off of for the future.
Arun Shastri:
There was digital in many of the five things that you laid out. All of them had a component, in some cases, engaging with you digitally. Were you doing... Did you find yourself doing more to engage your customers more proactively rather than just through the ordering of the food? I order, come and pick up or order for delivery. Were you doing other things after the pandemic that you found yourself adding value to the customer?
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
Yeah, certainly. I mean, look. I touched on kind of meeting our customer where they are and how important and how that kind of brought about Outpost as a channel for us. I think, something that we, again, challenged ourselves in the pandemic was we needed to reach people and reach our customers maybe in different places and at different times. We previously could rely on folks popping out of their office at lunch and visiting our stores, and so our marketing philosophy had to shift a bit. It had to really increase on the digital side to put Sweetgreen at the forefront for folks as their consideration set may be working from home and things like that, and that’s where a channel like delivery became such an important move for us.
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
We did improve the customer experience as part of that. So one feature specifically is we launched Notifications. Previously, you could order on the Sweetgreen app and say, “I want my salad at noon,” and you’d stop by at noon and there it is on the shelf. We actually added a feature when the bowl is ready and being placed on the shelf, you could get a push notification or text message that told you, and that was really important in pandemic, but also is great for setting customer expectations long-term, as well, because if that bowl is ready at 11:55, and you’re waiting outside the store, you can pop in and get it. And if it... It just allows us to kind of make that experience more seamless as we have so many people moving, let’s say, out of more of the analog world to the digital world for us with picking up their items.
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
We’ve also... I can mention a few other things we’ve launched and piloted, various things like curbside delivery, something that’s enabled through digital technology. We launched a whole new menu category of plates and marketed that in a very specific way because of that kind of varied use case. We’ve explored expansion of other formats. I mentioned on Outpost in terms of not just in office, but also how do we expand it to the home and things like that over the last year, as well. And then we also had a feature called Collections that we released as well in 2020, which was really focused on enabling an enhanced customization, bringing kind of curated selections of content or of our food to folks based on themes or chefs or things like that.
Gopi Vikranth:
So Daniel, that’s very interesting, but what does personalization mean at Sweetgreen? You mentioned earlier, you want to build an emotional connection with the customer. How is this different from what other FNB organizations are doing? And what’s unique about what Sweetgreen is trying to do about personalization at a customer level?
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
Sure. Personalization has really always been a part of Sweetgreen. If you look at our core, we’re a restaurant that allows full customization of every part of your order, but it really is more than that. We think about personalization through the lens of how a new generation of eaters really care about their food, where it comes from and how it’s sourced, really now more than ever, and we see that as a big trend and something that we’ve been focused on since the founding of the company. We’ve had collaborations over the years. We had a collaboration with David Chang in early 2020 focused on kelp. We’ve also partnered with many other chefs, as well. We had a collection, as I mentioned earlier, an “Eat Like a Chef” collection that enabled us to, again, collect people maybe and personalize what they were wanting to order, how they were wanting to interact with Sweetgreen closer to very specific chef-curated bowls and salads. We’re also always kind of considering the next evolution. We started with salads to warm bowls, to whatever is next, and we’re always looking at the data and whether that’s talking to our customers or seeing the actual ordering history of our customers to understand where those trends are moving so that we can really connect closer to our customers.
Gopi Vikranth:
Do you see personalization playing a very large role in unlocking customer growth at Sweetgreen? Between personalization and not having that, what’s the kind of impact that you think it will have on customer growth?
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
Yeah. I think for any company, it should have an impact on customer growth. I, again, go back to kind of the history of Sweetgreen. The focus on personalization has really historically led us connect really closely with our customers. When we open up a new restaurant, it is not just a restaurant. It is a restaurant for that local community, and we partner with local artists and things like that to make that restaurant feel really, truly a part of the community, and we feel like that creates that personal connection with the customer. But it ultimately, in a lot of ways, comes down to the food, the ingredients themselves. You choose what you want to eat. Sweetgreen enables you to do that, but we’re kind of giving you a great canvas to play with. And the more data that we understand about our customers and about what you, as an individual customer, are ordering, it’s going to enable us to speak better to you and to bubble up or feature maybe something that makes a lot of sense for you on your next order. So yes, we think if we can create that closer and closer connection with our customer and with our brand, we’re going to be able to drive growth for the company. It’s what’s driven us so far and we think will certainly be a big impact on the future.
Gopi Vikranth:
And AI and machine learning are on everyone’s mind today as they look at building these one-on-one relationships with customers at scale. So how are you looking at applying data science or AI to scale personalization at Sweetgreen, Daniel?
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
Yeah. It all starts with good, clean data is really the most important thing. That’s going to be unlocked here. And then you can really think through AI and machine learning to build more of that one-to-one connection. As we’re talking about digitization and people’s comfort level with ordering, everything on e-commerce platforms, it really is super-important to have rich first-party data. And as I was speaking about earlier, we’re in a fortunate position to have a number of owned digital channels. You can use the Sweetgreen app or the Sweetgreen website and you can order delivery, or you can order for pickup, or you can order Outpost if your company offers that, or you can even come into our store and scan to pay. And so we really understand in that kind of full end-to-end how our customers are behaving and interacting with Sweetgreen.
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
And so once you have that data, understanding how to make sense of it is where AI and machine learning really comes into play. So obviously we’re engaging with you with ZS in helping us to figure out some of those nuggets. And I’d say we’re in the early stages here, but we believe that we’re going to be able to drive really insightful and meaningful touchpoints so that we can customize and personalize that experience further for our customers. A few examples, now we’re really using it primarily from a messaging standpoint at this moment, things like how do we message people, the channels that we want to reach them on, what is their preference that way, but maybe also sending reminders on a bowl or ingredient based on the data we have that we think that they may like and may encourage them to interact with our brand further.
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
Down the line, we can provide the right recommendations based on their taste profile. We might see, “Hey, you like to order the guacamole green salad. We think that this other salad actually makes a lot of sense for you, too, based on what we understand from our customers’ opinions.” And then, the real long-term is how we eventually bring that all into the digital experience, where it feels truly seamless and where ultimately each customer’s individual experience with Sweetgreen with our app maybe feels a little bit differently than the person standing next to them. And if you can achieve that, you can really unlock a true one-to-one personalized experience and it’s going to come with thinking about AI and machine learning. It’s really this combination of art and science that I think we’re set up really well to do down the line.
Gopi Vikranth:
Yeah. Yeah. And Daniel, if I may summarize this, the way you’re thinking about this is that, you’re going to scale this one-on-one personalized experience to millions of customers and they will be able to get the same experience and feel of a local chef, their favorite chef, customizing something for them specifically but that happens digitally for every single customer and millions and millions of customers. Is that the right way to think about this? And the ingredients that go into it, what do you really care about and what can be that next dish that you’ll really, really like, so it’s almost like having a personal chef for each and every one of those millions of customers.
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
Yeah. I think it’s a great vision. It’s certainly something we’ve talked about. I think we’re set up well to be able to do that because of how you build a meal at Sweetgreen, and we have a fantastic core menu that you can start with, but there are lots of tweaks that you can make to make it your Sweetgreen, as well. And so how you’re describing it, I think that makes sense.
Arun Shastri:
Daniel, I live in Washington DC, very close to Georgetown and I often walk past your very first store, and I know that your founders were Georgetown University students. If you were to reflect from ever since you’ve been with the organization, do you think that... In what ways do you think has the approach to personalization and customer experiences, in fact, just solidified or evolved since the formation of the company?
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
Yeah. I mean, look. It was really something... I’ve been with Sweetgreen for three years now. It was really something that meant a lot to me as I was speaking with our co-founders and when I ultimately joined the company, is that a personal experience, a personal connection with a customer, it was something that they thought about years back. It was always kind of... We have a thing internally called the “giving the sweet touch” and making sure that each customer kind of feels that individual experience when they’re ordering that bowl. It may be something that’s as simple as a smile when you’re going through the line and ordering, and it may be something that’s a lot more advanced in understanding these are the types of things that you order so we eventually want to recommend, “Hey, here’s something else that you’re going to absolutely love and absolutely crave on our menu.” So I do believe that it is something that, that personalized touch, if you will, has always been a part of Sweetgreen. It’s certainly, in the three years that I’ve been at the company, something that’s on the forefront and that we talk about a lot.
Arun Shastri:
Fabulous. And Daniel, I have a question for you. As you reflect on your experiences, both at Sweetgreen and from an Outpost perspective and your most recent responsibilities, as you’ve seen the evolution, as you’ve brought in different marketing technology and you’ve brought in greater sophistication in capture of data and machine learning and AI that you talked about to bring about these personalized experiences, what are some lessons that you have learned? If you were to give other listeners advice, what would you suggest that they should focus on? What are some things that you would want them to watch out for? Any insights on that?
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
Yeah. I mean, look. I think you should always be looking to learn. You really have to continue to evolve and learn from experts, and I think it’s what’s really important is not just in your industry, but across industries. It’s something else that really meant a lot to me when I was first interviewing at Sweetgreen. The company valued that I didn’t come from a restaurant background. They had seen I had been successful in building on the gaming and fantasy side. They saw how those skills translated to a totally new industry at Uber, and they were ultimately really confident that combining my background with some incredible restaurant industry expertise that we already had in house, that it would be really, really powerful. And so I think that’s probably the main piece is always be willing to explore and learn and keep an open mind to really be able to push forward whatever you’re trying to do.
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
We really derive a lot of inspiration and learning from other direct-to-consumer companies and of course from big tech organizations that are maybe able to accelerate at a really rapid pace. Someone’s always going to be doing something new and innovative and you should just be really open to learning and adapting based on that, and it’s something that really meant a lot to me when I joined the company is something that is absolutely part of our every day. And, really look—this is simple, but above all else, focus on creating a seamless customer experience. Focus on simplicity, on delivering to the customer what they want at the right time. There’s a reason that product market fit is so critical for early stage startups. When you achieve that and you focus on that, you can be successful even in a micro way.
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
The same goes though, for iterating on the customer experience. You should always think big, but you shouldn’t forget about the core simple things that matter the most, and in order to further along and improve your core, you really need to focus on testing and iteration. A/B testing, piloting things, that’s very, very critical. Even small changes in the customer experience can actually make a big difference, either positively or negatively, and you really need to test into things to get them right. It’s a big tenet of what we do at Sweetgreen. We have a clear vision of what our customer journey is and how we want it to evolve even further, but we really approach that evolution in a very nimble and iterative way and it’s, I think, a really important thing for people to keep in mind, no matter what type of product that you’re building.
Arun Shastri:
Daniel as SVP of digital, as digital being a critical part here, and growth, but digital. Digital has allowed many firms to punch above their weight. Is that a statement that you would agree with and in what ways do you think digital has actually enabled Sweetgreen to punch above their weight? Because look, you’ve had enormous growth. I suppose you want... Part of that could be actually attributed to your ability to be nimble and to be leveraging digital and to be a bit more agile. Would you agree?
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
Yeah. I mean, look. Digitally enabled companies and companies that do it really, really well, they have the opportunity to be at the forefront of their customer’s minds much more so than a brand or a company that maybe doesn’t make themselves available digitally, and I’ll take it even a step further. What’s really incredibly important is for you also to connect directly to your consumer. And so, as I think about that for us, it again comes back to no matter how you want to order Sweetgreen, you can do it through our experience. It’s why we put so much attention into delivery. It’s why we created and innovated and built Outpost from the ground up. It’s why we didn’t just stay with, “Hey, we have a great restaurant, a great food and a great experience for you to come in and have,” but we want to make it even easier for you to experience Sweetgreen.
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
And so it’s something where Sweetgreen took advantage of digital in many ways to, again, like as you said, maybe punch out of our weight class a little bit, and that started well before my time here at Sweetgreen. It started with creating the Sweetgreen app, but that evolution continues as we think about what’s next and how are we going to meet our customer where they are a year from now, so that we can be iterating in a continuous manner. So absolutely there are lots of examples of companies doing this out there. It’s part of the reason I joined Sweetgreen as I saw it as a company that was doing that within a restaurant. And you said it earlier, you called it food tech and that’s how I saw Sweetgreen.
Gopi Vikranth:
So Daniel on that line of thought, flash-forward and imagine the consumer industry five years from now, and let’s say the data and the technology will evolve there. What are your top three predictions about how customer experience and personalization will change?
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
That’s a big question. I will say the thing that won’t change, I think it’s important to start with, is that the best customer experiences are going to lead to the best outcomes, and that’s both for the customer, but also for companies alike. In terms of kind of three predictions or things that are really critical in the future, in that future world, I guess number one, translating that clear data into a frictionless experience is really going to become the most important factor. Right now, for a lot of companies can’t really do this at all because they don’t have that clean data, but long-term, you’re saying in a world that you would, you need to be able to actually translate it. Having the data isn’t going to be enough.
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
And so specific to restaurants, I think it’s actually an important area to look. The digitization of the restaurant industry has already been in motion and COVID really expedited that process by, frankly, a number of years. In the future, I see a situation where guests will open up their app. Their app will understand past order history, what they might want next based on when they’re coming into the experience, say lunch or dinner, that’s going to just become par for the course. And so you really have to think about how you connect all those dots to the ultimate outcome that’s right for the customer, and if you do that, it’ll be right for the company.
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
I guess, additionally, direct relationships with customers are going to become even more critical. I know it’s something I kind of mentioned already, but the best brands will have established and they will continue to own the relationship with their customer and have this data directly with their customer. That really becomes a force enabler for them. We talk about it at Sweetgreen as intimacy at scale. It’s really the little things that the brand does to connect to customers to establish that relationship and really further that connection between customer and company.
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
And number three, I think meeting the customer where they are will be even more critical. Ultimately, if data is free flowing and clean, convenience kind of can become that next force multiplier. I use that Outpost business kind of example earlier, but really, we had a great product in our pickup business, but we challenged ourselves to do it better and that’s how we came up with Outpost. And I remember when we were first launching it, we would get responses from folks of, “Oh, it sounds like you’re just doing delivery,” but the difference was in how we approached it and how we thought about how we can make it even better for you as a customer and really, truly meet you where you are. And so in the future, that’s going to be a really big thing you just have to continue to think about and evolve with.
Gopi Vikranth:
So if I were to just reflect back for the last few minutes and summarize, Daniel, here are a couple of themes that are coming up in organization. One is building an emotional connection with the customer is really, really important. The second is invest into having a direct to customer relationship and nurturing that relationship through other technologies and investments that are necessary. In your case, owning the delivery last mile experience is a key component. Third is how do you scale these personalized experiences to your customers so that you are able to build that intimate connection with each of them, through giving them different experiences, that’s becoming key. And fourth is be always open to learn from other industries and see what they might be doing, which is interesting, and bring it to your own industry, and the best way to do that is to do a lot of tests and learn and try out these things and see which ones are going to be giving that slightly different but very impactful customer experience. And then I think that’s the core themes that are coming up during your conversation. Did I miss anything, Daniel?
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
No. I think that’s right. And if you can do all of those things, I think you’re going to be really successful as a company, as a person, and ultimately your customers are just going to feel that much more connected to you. So, yeah, I think that’s right.
Arun Shastri:
Thank you very much for joining us today, Daniel. I think simple, seasonal, healthy food takes consistent effort and being able to tackle complex situations as in when they come, and I think that’s one of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned from our conversation today. So thank you for joining us.
Daniel Shlossman (Sweetgreen):
Thank you, Arun. Thank you, Gopi. This is great.
Gopi Vikranth:
Thank you, Daniel.