Sweetgreen
Fast casual salad chain · 301+ locations · NYC, DC, LA, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Austin, and 14+ states
Sweetgreen has been publicly traded since 2021, with Goldman Sachs and Point72 among its institutional investors. Unusually, the co-founders still control the company through a dual-class voting structure: Wall Street money, founder votes.
The Big Picture
Sweetgreen is publicly traded with institutional money from Goldman Sachs and Point72 — but the co-founders still control the votes through a dual-class share structure, which makes it a genuinely unusual case. The farm sourcing transparency is real and above peer average; the labor record is mixed, with an automation program cutting headcount and an unresolved discrimination lawsuit filed in 2023. Sweetgreen ultimately answers to its co-founders, not Wall Street — and for now, that's the best you can say about accountability at a 300-plus-location chain.
The Dirty Details
Ownership
D1 CapitalHedge Fund
D1 Capital Partners is Dan Sundheim's New York investment firm, founded in 2018, managing tens of billions across public stocks and late-stage private companies, SpaceX among its largest private holdings. It typically takes non-controlling growth stakes, as it did in the two restaurant brands on Ferret.
Assets under management: ~$31B (2025)
See all D1 Capital companies on FerretWhat do these scores mean? Learn more.
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Company data last updated July 2026
How does one person build and research all this? They don't: here's how it actually works. Verdicts are our opinions, based on the public sources cited above as of July 2026. Spotted something off? or learn more.