By Jordan Valinsky, CNN
New York (CNN) — Sweetgreen is hoping to lure back cash-strapped desk workers who have grown tired of its salads with sandwiches.
The chain will begin selling chicken wraps — four versions priced under $15 — on Wednesday, marking Sweetgreen’s latest effort to revive sales and shake the perception that it’s gotten too expensive.
The permanent menu addition comes at a time when Sweetgreen is struggling. Its stock lost 80% of its value last year, and the California-based chain reported an 11.5% drop in same-store sales during its most recent quarter.
That decline is partially attributed to menu fatigue, since “even our best customers aren’t eating bowls or salads every day of the week,” said Sweetgreen cofounder Nicolas Jammet.
Younger consumers for some time have been cutting back on pricey lunch bowls. Instead, they’ve been packing lunches or gravitating toward fast food chains offering deep discounts.
Adding wraps “allows us to meet our existing customers’ wants and, more excitingly, introduces Sweetgreen to new customers,” Jammet told CNN. Plus, keeping the price point under $15 “was designed to feel approachable and worth coming back to.”
Visits to its nearly 300 locations fell 13% at the end of last year, the company previously reported.
It’s playing catchup: Competitors like Chopt and Just Salad have been selling wraps for years. Cava, a fast-growing Mediterranean rival, also sells pita wraps and recently raised its full-year sales forecast.
Robert Byrne, senior director of consumer research for Technomic, explained that wraps let Sweetgreen to compete with its rivals.
“Other fast-casual sandwich chains already perform very well with consumers in terms of healthy perceptions,” Byrne told CNN.
Fries flop
Sweetgreen’s attempt at a permanent menu expansion fell flat last year.
The addition of ripple fries, billed as a healthier version of the fast-food staple, lasted five months before being axed. Sweetgreen had to air-fry the potatoes every 20 to 30 minutes, which slowed operations, according to the company.
Sweetgreen tested wraps at roughly 70 locations across New York, Los Angeles and the Midwest, Jammet said. It figured out the best slicing angle, the correct ratio of ingredients and, most importantly, how to fit wraps into the kitchen’s workflow.
For example, restaurants didn’t have to drastically change their setups besides adding tortilla presses at the beginning of the prep line and a space for wrapping at the end.
“Our team members have gone through probably hundreds of thousands of reps of wrapping and making sure they get it right” during the testing, Jammet said.
Wrap prices vary by city, ranging from $11 to $15. They are the chain’s latest lower-priced offering, like $10 specials, to attract cost-conscious consumers.
Visits to Sweetgreen has been rated “consistently negative” by customers over the past six months, with March traffic declining 7.6%, according to a Placer.ai report. By comparison, Cava’s traffic grew 6.8% in the same month.
The addition of wraps “certainly could be a positive way to find incremental traffic given the success of fast-casual competitors such as Jersey Mike’s and Cava,” said Technomic’s Byrne.
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