The good stuff: Top earnings stories that aren’t just $

Quarterly results are great, but I prefer the character. Here’s more about what’s actually happening at DoorDash, Uber Eats, Yelp, and other forward-thinking restaurant tech brands.

a Sweetgreen in LA / photo credit: Mario Tama / Getty Images

Sweetgreen is still riding high on its robots, which are showing up inside more restaurants.

Sweetgreen is realizing its robotic dreams, continuing to build new locations outfitted with its proprietary front-of-house salad-building bot and retrofitting others. CEO Jonathan Neman says the chain remains on track to reach its goal of opening seven new robotic restaurants and converting two to three additional spaces this year. 

The chain recently added its ‘infinite kitchen’ bot to a location in Manhattan, and all signs point to good news. “Since reopening, we are seeing some of the highest throughput levels we have seen at the store. While less than a month in operation, we are pleased with the performance of the restaurant,” Neman said. (Investors seem to be, too; the company’s stock is up close to 200 percent this year.)

Sweetgreen’s top exec seems wowed by his restaurants’ tech. “If you go and experience it, it’s pretty amazing,” Neman said on the chain’s most recent earnings call. “I mean, we’re delivering food in under three-and-a-half minutes. If you had gone to that store before at peak, you would have waited in line —10 minutes to 15 minutes — and then once you started your order, probably another three minutes until you get your food. You can now pretty much walk in.”

On one hand, the speed and efficiency (or, “throughput” in operational jargon) of a robotic assist seems perfectly suited to New York City life. On the other, as detailed in a recent edition of

The Supersonic

(from web3 loyalty company Blackbird), it could represent a more… unwelcome sign of the times. 

“I was Uptown the other day and it was just a lot of bros getting to-go salads in compostable bowls. Those compostable brown bowls, like stuffing salad in their face for lunch,” Matt Hranek writes. “Man, that really bums me out. It’s the hamster wheel of New York that drives me crazy.”

So goes the push-pull of automation in restaurants, captured well by another recent headline, this one in the New York Times: “Do robots love their customers? Automated restaurants face human issues.” Sweetgreen’s automation is thriving, so for better or worse, those compostable brown bowls are here to stay.

Toast wants more non-restaurant customers.