Sweetgreen, the fast-casual restaurant chain known for its colorful salad and grain bowls, opened a mobile order pickup stand inside NYU’s Stern School of Business. This marks a new addition to sweetgreen’s Outpost program in New York City, an initiative that delivers fresh food to schools, companies and other institutions.
The chain has nearby locations on Astor Place, Bleecker Street and University Place, which are often filled with hurried students in need of a quick bite between classes. The sweetgreen Outpost at NYU Stern provides a solution to students in a rush: order ahead on the sweetgreen mobile app and get meals delivered straight to campus. Students can find their orders on the cubby shelves outside of Room 1-70 in the Henry Kaufman Management Center.
“We have 1,400 to 1,500 part-time MBA students who attend classes at night,” Neil Rader, Stern’s chief operating officer and one the Stern sweetgreen Outpost’s lead organizers, said in an interview with WSN. “So the time between 5 and 6 p.m. when they’re running from work, trying to get into their class is really precious to them. So being able to just pop by the shelves and pick up their salad is a game changer.”
Rader also led last year’s efforts in reopening the Matto Espresso at NYU Stern, a popular discount coffee chain. Though famous for affordable drinks and pastries under $3, Matto also offered salads in the first few weeks of launching.
“Matto had tried to have a couple of salads in their offerings, and they hardly sold any,” said Rader. “We thought that was odd at first, but it seems like the students and faculty who go there generally go for snacks and coffee. So sweetgreen seemed like a perfect complement because we know how popular they are.”
While not as budget-friendly as Matto’s menu, sweetgreen’s staple bowls make nourishing and hearty meals. Sweetgreen’s mobile app menu includes four protein plates, seven grain bowls, eight salads, a “Create Your Own” meal option and a variety of sides and drinks.
Hot Honey Chicken — one of the chain’s most popular picks — is a sweet-and-spicy protein plate filled with herbed quinoa, warm roasted sweet potatoes, herb-roasted chicken and hot honey mustard sauce. The sauce thoroughly coats each piece of chicken, allowing bits of quinoa to stick to the chicken and creating the most delectable bite every time. For a lighter option, the Italian Chopped salad is a perfect combination of acidity from the red wine vinaigrette, saltiness from the salami and tartness from the spicy banana peppers.
Sweetgreen and Matto may just be the beginning of Stern’s food-related ventures, depending on their success.
“Now with Matto, we feel really good,” Rader said. “They’re fulfilling exactly what students need, and we want to watch sweetgreen carefully as well. We have talked about maybe having two different stands, sweetgreen and someone else, but we’re not ready to pull that trigger yet.”
The Stern sweetgreen Outpost does not accept meal swipes or dining dollars and is open Monday through Friday. Place an order on the sweetgreen mobile app by 10:45 a.m. for pickup between 12 and 12:15 p.m. and by 4:15 p.m. for pickup between 5:30 and 5:45 p.m.
Contact Andrea Lui at [email protected].
