Sweetgreen wants to serve healthy fast food “at scale for the next generation.”

Three college students launched sweetgreen to offer a solution to a very unpalatable dilemma – eat food that was slow, expensive, and fresh—or fast, cheap, and unhealthy. The result was a fast casual salad chain that used fresh, organic produce and has grown to over 130 restaurants. Sweetgreen announced Tuesday its acquisition of Spyce, a startup with a similar vision for serving healthy and fresh food – only more automated. (Businesswire)

sweetgreen: Healthy, fast and automated

Boston-based Spyce was founded in 2015 by MIT students working out of a basement to reinvent the fast food model. Six years later that effort evolved into two successful restaurants that feature Infinite Kitchen – a cutting edge, automated culinary tool designed to balance the core elements of cooking technique, measurement, and timing to bring out the most in every ingredient.

Though the value of the transaction was not disclosed, it is expected to close in Q3 of 2021.

“Spyce and sweetgreen have a shared purpose,” said Jonathan Neman, co-founder and CEO of sweetgreen in a statement. “We built sweetgreen to connect more people to real food and create healthy fast food at scale for the next generation, and Spyce has built state-of-the-art technology that perfectly aligns with that vision. By joining forces with their best-in-class team, we will be able to elevate our team member experience, provide a more consistent customer experience and bring real food to more communities.”

Spyce: Branching out nationally

“Our team will work closely with sweetgreen to scope, manufacture and ultimately implement these technologies in sweetgreen stores, giving them a little bit of the magic of Spyce,” the founders said in a blog.

Spyce: Infinite Kitchen

“We are moving from a company that serves a few communities in the Boston area, to a company that has a national footprint. And we’re going from newcomers to being part of a leading brand that shares our same mission.”

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