Sweetgreen to Buy Robotic Restaurant Spyce

This investment in automation allows sweetgreen to improve customer and employee experience while furthering their mission of connecting more people to real food.

Anna Wolfe

8/24/2021

Sweetgreen plans to buy Spyce, the Boston-based restaurant powered by automation.

“Spyce and sweetgreen have a shared purpose,” said Jonathan Neman, co-founder and CEO of sweetgreen. “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.”

Sweetgreen is determining when and where they will introduce Spyce’s technology into its restaurants. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in Q3. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Hungry for Innovation

HT has followed Spyce since the 4 MIT grads, who were seeking healthy and affordable fast-casual food, introduced Spyce’s original concept in May 2018. The point of difference: a robotic kitchen with 7 cooking woks that could cook a meal to order in 3 minutes or less. The concept raised $21 million in September 2018.

Then in November 2020, with off-prem in mind, Spyce relaunched its concept and debuted a new robotic kitchen.

MURTEC attendees got the scoop on the Spyce kitchen concept. Watch this 15-minute session that includes a behinds the scenes tour.

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Spyce's infinite kitchen includes a plancha that can personalize meals and prepare hundreds of meals per hour.

Sweetgreen said using the technology will not only increase throughput but also give team members the ability to focus more on preparation and hospitality. Interested team members will be able to develop technology-facing skills to operate and maintain Spyce technology.

Customers experience will improve. Orders will be more consistent and the technology will empower sweetgreen to expand its menu.

“As operators in the healthy, fast casual space, sweetgreen has long been the brand that we have most admired,” Michael Farid, co-founder and CEO of Spyce. “We’re excited to come on board to join another inspiring, founder-led company, and to work together to blaze the trail for the future of this industry.”