Salad Chain That Thought It Was a Tech Firm Looks Wilted

“I was an overnight success all right, but 30 years is a long, long night.” 

When Ray Kroc founded McDonald’s, he had no more than a high-school education and grease under his fingernails. He took a winding path to eventual fast-food riches in middle age. It is a sharp contrast with the three men who co-founded Sweetgreen Inc. They met in an entrepreneurship class at Georgetown University, raised hundreds of millions of dollars in venture-capital funding and were all named to a Forbes “30 Under 30” list. The salad chain was valued at nearly $6 billion a day after its 2021 initial public offering.