Robot salad making: Customers can watch machine make meals at Naperville’s new Sweetgreen restaurant
Sweetgreen opened its new downtown Naperville location with something no other restaurant in the healthy fast-food chain offers: robot salad making.
Dubbed an “Infinite Kitchen,” orders can be placed at computer kiosks and are filled as customers watch the massive machine do the work.
“This is a really important opening for us. It’s our first Sweetgreen automated Infinite Kitchen,” said Nicholas Jammet, Sweetgreen co-founder and chief concept officer, who attended the 223 S. Main St. store’s grand opening Wednesday.
Once an order is placed, an earth-friendly bowl travels in a wire basket along a conveyor system where greens, dressing and vegetables, grains and toppings are evenly dispersed, tossed and sent to a finishing station. There, a Sweetgreen worker adds the final touches, such as a sprinkle of herbs or a scoop of avocado, before placing on the lid.
It takes less than five minutes from the time the order is placed to the point where it’s ready to be picked up at the window.
As a pilot restaurant, Sweetgreen will be testing and learning, Jammet said
“And we’re super grateful to be part of the community,” he said.
The restaurant specializes in healthy alternatives to fast food, with menu items including such things as the chicken + chipotle pepper bowl, crispy rice bowl, kale Caesar salad and the guacamole green salad.
While the robot dispenser crafts the meals, employees are still needed to prep the vegetables, grains and meats and load them into the machine.
The Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce said 25 full-time employees have been hired to staff the Main Street location.
The new technology is designed to enhance the customer experience and food quality, with a focus on fresh ingredients, fast service and friendly hospitality, according to Sweetgreen.
To create the Infinite Kitchen, the salad chain in 2021 purchased kitchen robotics startup Spyce and spent the last year and a half fine-tuning and adapting the technology to test with customers and team members.
“We believe that automation will enable us to elevate the quality and integrity of our food while also providing a faster and more convenient experience for our customers and a better, more dynamic job for our team members,” CEO and co-founder Jonathan Neman said in a news release.
Integration of the Infinite Kitchen into the system means the restaurant can unlock efficiencies that will enable the chain to grow more quickly, he said.
Sweetgreen isn’t the first restaurant in Naperville to use technology to prepare food.
In 2021, Nala Robotics opened a robotic kitchen in the food court at the Mall of India on Route 59, which is used by multiple restaurants and ghost kitchens.
Sweetgreen was launched in 2007 in Washington, D.C., by three new college graduates who wanted to provide a simple, healthy and seasonal alternative to fast food. Fifteen years later, there are restaurants throughout the United States, including 19 other Illinois locations in Chicago, Deerfield, Evanston, Northbrook, Oak Brook, Oak Park and Schaumburg.
“This is the 20th location in the Chicagoland area, but it’s soon to be the number one location,” Mayor Scott Wehrli said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday.
Sweetgreen comes with “an amazing product that our folks are going to love here in this community,” he said.
Downtown Naperville already is home to more than 80 places to grab a meal, beverage or snack.
Wehrli said it’s hoped Sweetgreen has the “same amazing experience that so many of our restaurants and hospitality professionals have enjoyed for so many years that put Naperville on the map for being one of the greatest places to enjoy a great restaurant experience.”
On Wednesday, customers lined the sidewalk along Main Street to snap up the free totes, hats, floral bouquets, seedlings and samples being handed out as part of the opening.
Christina Caton Kitchel, past board chair for the chamber, said her challenge in finding parking spot downtown was testament to the community’s anticipation of the new business.
“I am super excited for healthy, quick lunches because as you can tell, we’re generally on the go,” Kitchel said.
As part of its mission to build healthier communities, the chain was donating a meal to Naperville-based hunger relief agency Loaves & Fishes Community Services for every salad it sold on opening day.
Sweetgreen is open from 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, and customers can dine inside or on the outdoor patio.
Multiple options are available for ordering meals, including placing an order ahead of time online at order.sweetgreen.com or through the mobile app or by visiting the restaurant and using the self-service kiosks or ordering through the restaurant’s host.
