Sweetgreen opening automated location in California’s Fashion Island

Adding to its Orange County locations, Sweetgreen is opening Tuesday at Fashion Island in Newport Beach, California.

“Since we opened in Orange County last year the warm welcome from the community has been amazing,” Jonathan Neman, CEO and co-founder of Sweetgreen, said in a company press release. “We can’t wait to offer guests their favorite Sweetgreen dishes like our iconic Harvest Bowl and Miso Glazed Salmon Plate when they visit Fashion Island.”

Sweetgreen’s opening in Newport Beach comes on the heels of introducing grass-fed and pasture-raised Caramelized Garlic Steak to its menu.

Sweetgreen Newport Beach will be the second location in Orange County to feature the restaurant brand’s Infinite Kitchen technology, first introduced on the West Coast in Huntington Beach in late 2023. Leveraging automation technology, the Infinite Kitchen takes on the process of assembling meals, but team members start and finish each order.

“The core foundations of the IK were the same,” Timothy Noonan, Sweetgreen’s vice president of operations strategy and concept design, told CNBC. “What we focused on is making it operationally easy to interact with as a team member — to stock, to clean, to maintain. There were also some tweaks to protect food quality.”

The Infinite Kitchen, which resembles bulk food dispensers that hold nearly all of the ingredients for bowls and salads, assembles each bowl, starting with dressing on the bottom. Greens and grains come next, followed by the rest of the selected toppings. At each stop, the bowls rotate slightly, allowing the ingredients to go in an empty spot. The final automated step is mixing the salads or bowls. A worker adds herbs, avocado and fish.

Also, customers may also order from one of five tablets set up in the middle of the store or may use the mobile app instead of waiting in line.

Based in Los Angeles, Sweetgreen has scaled to over 225 locations.