这家公司靠卖沙拉成为独角兽，秘诀是区块链

在波士顿以南30英里的沃德浆果农场（Ward’s Berry Farm）， 5月第一天的破晓时分，阴冷多云，细雨蒙蒙，雨伞非但没有帮助，反而让人讨厌。今天不适合种西红柿。“西红柿真的不喜欢经常低于50度的环境。”农场主吉姆·沃德说。此君的体质比他种的西红柿更强壮。沃德身穿一件法兰绒衬衫，卷着袖子，没穿外套；红润的脸颊是他可能感冒的唯一迹象。但农场工作人员正在即兴发挥。当幼苗从温暖的温室进入潮湿寒冷的地面时，员工们给它们盖上“棚布”—— 一种可生物降解的防水布。“下面有堆肥，可以给我们一点热量。”他说。“盖上棚布后，你会惊讶地发现，幼苗的长势非常喜人。”

在堆肥下面，西红柿苗过得很舒适，但它们真的没有选择。今天必须栽种。只有这样，这些西红柿才能够赶在7月进入波士顿地区，成为众多Sweetgreen客户的餐盘美味：一旦客户通过这家沙拉连锁店的电邮通讯或智能手机应用（或者，如果他们了解季节性生长常识的话）获知，西红柿刚好成熟到顶点，他们就会蜂拥而至，争相品尝那鲜美多汁的小球体。为了帮助沃德让这些西红柿变得更加美味（尽管他深谙此道，因为他已经种了三十多年西红柿），这片占地一英亩土地的中央还藏着一种秘密武器：一个安装在棒球棒形状的木桩之上，非常明亮的橙色六边形。这个装置的内部装有Wi-Fi驱动的传感器，每隔15分钟测量十几种可能影响西红柿生长的因素，比如气温、湿度、光照、降水和风速，等等。“棒球棒”延伸到土壤中36英寸。在那里，传感器测量土壤温度和湿度，以及磷、钾、pH和氮的水平。这些数据被上传到云端和一个区块链上——这一系列数据使得西红柿从幼苗到沙拉盘的整个过程都很容易被追踪到。从那里，你可以随时通过“食物区块链”初创公司Ripe.io开发的智能手机应用程序访问这些信息。

At Ward’s Berry Farm, 30 miles south of Boston, the first day of May dawns cloudy and cold, with a spitting drizzle that renders an umbrella more annoying than helpful. It’s a bad day to plant tomatoes. “Tomatoes really don’t prefer to be below 50 degrees very often,” says Jim Ward, the farm’s proprietor, who has a hardier constitution than his plants: He’s wearing a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up and no jacket; his ruddy cheeks are the only indication that he might be cold. But Ward’s crew is improvising, putting “row cover,” a biodegradable tarp, over the seedlings as they go from the warmth of the greenhouse into the damp chill of the ground. “There’s compost down there that will give us a little heat,” he says. “You’d be surprised, when you trap it in with the row cover, it’s pretty nice down there.”

Good for the tomato plants, cozy under all that compost, but they don’t really have a choice. They have to go into the ground today so that come July, the fruits will be ready for the thousands of Sweetgreen customers in the Boston area who will bite down on the juicy little orbs, once informed—through the salad chain’s email newsletter or smartphone app (or, if they know anything about produce seasonality, common sense)—that the tomatoes are at their peak of ripeness. And to help Ward make these tomatoes extra tasty—though he knows what he’s doing, as he’s been farming for more than three decades—there’s something of a secret weapon lodged in the center of the one-acre patch: a bright orange hexagon that sits atop a baseball bat–shape stake. Inside the contraption are Wi-Fi-enabled sensors that, every 15 minutes, measure more than a dozen factors that could be affecting the tomatoes: like air temperature, humidity, light, precipitation, wind speed. The bat-shape portion extends 36 inches into the soil, where sensors measure soil temperature and moisture as well as levels of phosphorus, potassium, pH, and nitrogen. That data gets uploaded to the cloud and onto a blockchain—a sequence of data that makes the tomatoes easily traceable throughout their journey from fledging plant to salad bowl. From there, the information can be accessed, at any time, from a smartphone app developed by “blockchain of food” startup Ripe.io.

对沃德来说，拥有这些即时数据是一种启示。“我做了一辈子农民，我所获得的关于氮的任何数据，都是通过采集土壤样本，发送出去，然后等待好几周才获得的。但到那时候，通常已经来不及做任何事情了。”他说。“现在，我可以在第一时间拥有这些数据。它改变了一切。”

这是沃德与Sweetgreen和Ripe.io合作的第二年——用行话来说，就是把他的西红柿放在区块链上。Sweetgreen是一家拥有95家餐厅的沙拉连锁店，已经成为注重健康的城市午餐者的宠儿。迄今为止，该公司已经为20个农场安装了传感器。它承担技术成本（就沃德的例子而言，大约是几百美元），农民们根据自己的意愿使用数据。沃德表示，这项技术使他能够在氮水平下降，农田需要干预时立即采取行动，而它所提供的反馈可能会改变他今后施肥的方式。（再见，新鲜鸡粪！）这些数据也对他长期持有的一些务农理念提出质疑，比如，采摘后立即品尝时，西红柿的味道最好（事实证明，口感最好的时间是在3到5天后）。另一方面，这些数据证实了他的其他观点（“晚上当温度降到50度以下时，味道就会下降，我对此毫无办法”）。

当然，技术也有其局限性。沃德抬头看了看云朵，耸了耸肩。“主要成分是阳光。这是你们决定的事情之一。”他向四位从洛杉矶总部赶来视察农田的Sweetgreen员工做了个手势。“这是我无法控制的事情之一。”

“我们会做到的！”其中一位欢声说道。

For Ward, having that instantaneous data at his fingertips is a revelation. “For my whole life as a farmer, any data I ever got about nitrogen, which is something you need in the highest quantity, was gathered by taking a soil sample, sending it out, and waiting a few weeks for the results. By which point it was usually too late to do anything,” he says. “To have it in real time, it changes everything.”

This is the second year Ward has partnered with Sweetgreen and Ripe.io to, as the lingo goes, put his tomatoes on the blockchain. Sweetgreen, a 95-restaurant salad chain that’s become a darling of health-conscious urban lunchers, has installed the sensors in 20 farms to date. It fronts the tech cost—a few hundred dollars in Ward’s case—and the farmers use the data as they see fit. Ward says the technology has enabled him to take immediate action when, say, nitrogen levels are flagging and the patch needs an intervention, and it provides feedback that may change the way he fertilizes going forward. (Bye-bye, fresh chicken poop!) The data has also challenged some of his long-held farmer’s wisdom, like the idea that tomatoes taste best immediately after they’re picked (turns out, they actually peak three to five days later), and confirmed other beliefs (“Despite anything I can do, when the temperature drops below 50 degrees at night, the flavor drops off”).

Of course, technology has its limits. Ward looks up at the clouds and shrugs. “The main ingredient is sunlight. That’s one of the things you guys determined,” he gestures to the four Sweetgreen employees who have traveled from the company’s Los Angeles headquarters to check in on the farm, “and that’s one of the things I can’t control.”

“We’ll get there!” one of them chirps.

从大多数迹象来看，沙拉的概念起源于古罗马，从那时起，它基本上就成了一道辅助菜——在主餐（通常是一块肉）到来之前，作为开场的一道菜。沙拉很少被当作主菜来吃，它通常伴随着一种殉道感：“我就要一份沙拉。”长期以来，沙拉一直都有很多形式，从绿色叶菜到蛋黄酱和米白色，不一而足。但近年来，随着像Sweetgreen这样的餐厅不断崛起，沙拉已经变得越来越美味。焦糖大褐菇代替了生蘑菇，时髦的羽衣甘蓝代替了冰激凌，烤芝麻豆腐代替了……以前的沙拉店提供豆腐吗？

但沙拉从来都不性感。它没有卡乐星汉堡（Carl’s Jr.）经历过的那种闪耀时刻——名媛帕丽斯·希尔顿曾经坐在一辆宾利轿车的引擎盖上吃卡乐星汉堡——也没有从一片热气腾腾的比萨上撕下一小块马苏里拉奶酪时那种油脂四溢，令人垂涎的“色情”场景。也许这就是Sweetgreen及其竞争对手倾向于回避“沙拉”一词，而更愿意选择“蔬菜套餐”和“真正的食物”这类术语的原因所在。但是，无论它们提供的产品是多叶的、松脆的、烤熟的还是温暖的，当前这一代绿色蔬菜十字军拥有同一个目标：把蔬菜变成人们渴望的东西。

尼克·贾梅特是Sweetgreen的三位联合创始人之一。他说：“当你对味道进行优化时，它会产生那种让人们对这种产品产生渴望的粘度。”他和内特·茹、乔纳森·尼曼现在都是34岁，他们在乔治敦大学读本科时相识，于2007年创办了这家连锁店。（这三位同时跻身《财富》2019年“全球40位40岁以下商界精英”榜单）“我们不能对人们说，请吃我们的食物吧，因为它很健康。”贾梅特说。“这根本行不通。你想吃这种食物，是因为你喜欢吃，是因为它让你身体感觉良好，是因为你渴望实际的体验。”

让人感觉良好的食物是一个蓬勃发展的行业。据食品业追踪公司Technomic估算，美国沙拉店在2018年的销售额超过6.86亿美元，较2014年的3亿美元大幅增长。2018年，Sweetgreen以1.582亿美元的销售额引领行业，其沙拉盘的平均售价为12美元。（Sweetgreen拒绝就销售额发表评论，本文中提到的其他沙拉生产商也是如此。）位列前茅的生产商还包括Chopt（它出售切碎的沙拉，2018年的销售额估计为9810万美元）、Tender Greens（该公司从Gramercy Tavern等高档餐厅挖来了多位高级厨师，2018年的销售额估计为9420万美元），以及Dig Inn（该公司还经营一个兼做农产品实验室的农场，2018年的销售额估计为3780万美元）。“它们都走上了一条通往纯粹的道路。”市场研究公司NPD Group的食品行业分析师大卫·波塔拉廷这样说道。“消费者想要的是真正的、正宗的、经过最低限度加工的食品。这些公司正在满足消费者的需求，并使之变得方便。”

不过，尽管沙拉市场在增长，但绿色蔬菜仍然无法与汉堡和薯条相媲美。以麦当劳为例，其2018年在美国的销售额接近80亿美元，是美国最大的14家沙拉店销售额总和的10倍以上。在这种背景下，也许并不奇怪的是，尽管人们说他们非常在意吃健康的、本地的食品，但在全国餐馆协会（National Restaurant Association）最近进行的一项调查中，大多数受访者的消费习惯并不像他们所说的那样。“我们看到，越来越多的消费者开始讨论本地的、有机的、非转基因的、食草的、散养的食物。但他们不一定理解这些术语的意思。”波塔拉廷说。

第二大挑战是，美国人外出下馆子的兴趣持续走低。NPD Group的数据显示，去年美国人平均在餐馆就餐185次，低于2008年的209次。如果这一趋势像预期那样继续下去，沙拉餐厅需要从其他类型的餐馆偷取更多“胃的份额”。

第三个问题是，对于任何企业，特别是对于那些销售易腐烂、易受细菌侵害的商品的企业来说，增长会带来大问题。亚伦·艾伦供职的咨询公司与全球400多家最大连锁餐厅的一半以上合作过。他说：“‘新鲜’是餐饮服务中最具吸引力的词，但在全国范围内推广新鲜食材，是一项巨大的挑战。”举个例子：多年来，Chipotle一直致力于为大众提供更加健康，注重食材的墨西哥食品，但在2015年和2016年，多州爆发的大肠杆菌疫情几乎让这一努力化为乌有。艾伦说，还有一种可能性是，在急于扩张的过程中，像Sweetgreen这样一个独特的、专注于当地市场的品牌可能会失去一些最初让它与众不同的特质。

By most indications, the concept of salad originated in ancient Rome, and since then, it’s been largely an ancillary dish, an opening act to sit through before the main event (often, a slab of meat) arrives. On the rare occasions that salad is eaten as an entrée, it’s typically accompanied by a sense of martyrdom: “I’ll just have a salad.” Salads have long come in myriad forms, from leafy and green to mayonnaise-y and off-white, but in recent years, thanks largely to shops like Sweetgreen, they’ve become increasingly gourmet. Caramelized portobellos instead of raw button mushrooms, trendy kale instead of iceberg, roasted sesame tofu instead of … did the salad shops of yore even offer tofu?

But salads have never been sexy. They haven’t had their Carl’s Jr. moment—Paris Hilton gnawing on them on the hood of a Bentley—or that money shot of mozzarella stretching from a slice of steaming-hot pizza, the pools of grease so lubricious they’re practically pornographic. Perhaps that’s why Sweetgreen and its competitors tend to shun the “S-word”—“vegetable-forward meals” and “real food” are their terms of choice. But whether the produce they serve is leafy and crunchy or roasted and warm, the goal of the current generation of greens crusaders is the same: Turn vegetables into objects of desire.

“When you optimize for flavor, it creates that stickiness, that craveability. It’s what gets people to desire the product,” says Nic Jammet, one of Sweetgreen’s three cofounders. He and Nate Ru and Jonathan Neman—the trio are all 34 years old—met as Georgetown University undergrads and launched the chain in 2007. (The trio are among those featured on Fortune's 2019 40 Under 40 list.) “We can’t tell people to eat our food because it’s healthy,” says Jammet. “That’s never going to work. You should want to eat this because you enjoy it, because it physically makes you feel good, because you desire the actual experience.”

Feel-good food is a booming business. Food-industry tracking firm Technomic estimates that American salad shops saw sales of more than $686 million in 2018, up from $300 million in 2014. Sweetgreen, whose bowls cost an average of $12 each, is leading the sector with 2018 sales of $158.2 million, according to Technomic. (Sweetgreen declined to comment on sales, as did the rest of the salad makers mentioned in this story.) Also near the front of the pack: Chopt, which slings finely minced salads (2018 sales were an estimated $98.1 million); Tender Greens, which scoops up executive chefs from fine-dining haunts like Gramercy Tavern ($94.2 million); and Dig Inn, which operates a farm that also serves as a produce-innovation lab ($37.8 million). “It’s all about this path to purity,” says David Portalatin, food-industry analyst for the NPD Group, a market research firm. “Consumers want foods that are real, authentic, minimally processed. These companies are meeting those needs for consumers and making it convenient.”

But while the salad market is growing, greens are still no match for burgers and fries. Consider McDonald’s, whose 2018 U.S. sales were nearly $8 billion—or more than 10 times the annual sales of America’s top 14 salad shops combined. In that context, it’s perhaps unsurprising that, despite people saying they care about things like eating healthfully and locally, as a majority of respondents did in a recent National Restaurant Association survey, their spending habits don’t always line up. “We see consumers increasingly talking about local, organic, non-GMO, grass-fed, cage-free,” says Portalatin. “They don’t necessarily understand what these terms mean.”

America’s flagging appetite for eating out presents a second challenge. According to the NPD Group, the average American ate at a restaurant 185 times last year, down from 209 times in 2008. If that trend continues—as it’s expected to do—the salad slingers will need to steal more “share of stomach” from other types of eateries if they want to expand.

The third prong in this fork of foils: Growth creates significant problems for any business, but especially for one that peddles perishable, bacteria-vulnerable goods. “ ‘Fresh’ is the most bankable word in food service, but there’s a huge challenge in scaling fresh ingredients at national levels,’ ” says Aaron Allen, a consultant whose firm has worked with more than half of the world’s 400 largest restaurant chains. Case in point: Chipotle, whose quest to bring healthier, ingredient-centric Mexican food to the masses was nearly derailed by a multistate E. coli outbreak in 2015 and 2016. There’s also the possibility that, in the rush to expand, a unique, locally focused brand like Sweetgreen loses some of the quirks that made it special in the first place, says Allen.

去年11月，Sweetgreen宣布获得2亿美元新融资，其估值由此超过10亿美元。到今年年底，该公司的餐厅总数预计将增长到110家，同时新增约120家“前哨店”，即一些安置在合作办公场所和办公室的货架，上面会定期补充在线订购的沙拉。今年6月，Sweetgreen宣布了首笔收购交易，收购对象是Galley Foods，一家位于华盛顿特区、专门提供新鲜晚餐的送餐服务商。这笔交易预计将为Sweetgreen带来更多的技术和物流支持，并且有可能最终帮助这家连锁企业将其吸引力扩展到午餐时间之外。但是，尽管这家成立12年的公司像野草一样成长，但创始人知道，单靠抢占地盘是无法取胜的。（顺便说一句，Sweetgreen正在对野草重新利用：贾梅特目前专注于创建马齿苋食谱，后者是一种口感香醇的食谱，叶子呈泪滴状。）

现在，让我们一起走进区块链世界。虽然这项技术经常与比特币及其同类产品联系在一起，但从本质上讲，区块链可以永久性地记录有时间戳的、不可替代的信息。这些信息由多台电脑共同维护，可以用来追踪金钱、身份——没错，还有食物。因此，尽管在午餐的语境下提到“区块链”，或许让人觉得像是滥用科技流行语，但能够提供一个未经过滤的窗口，从而让你准确了解你即将放入嘴中的东西，有可能满足消费者的实际需求。当然，我们可以选择追踪蔬菜的最佳味道，也可以精确地找出问题所在，比如大肠杆菌爆发的源头。在拥有这种能见度之后，这家公司就可以发展壮大，同时不会损害它对所有小事情和本地元素的专注。正如贾梅特所说，“如果我们能够为基础设施构建实时追踪的能力，我们就不仅可以扩大规模，还能够继续与不同规模的农场合作，这样我们就可以找到10个其他的吉姆·沃德”——即Sweetgreen认识并信任的农民。

尽管该公司仍然处于让沙拉爱好者直接观察其供应链的早期阶段，但这正是联合创始人的下一个目标。Sweetgreen计划建立沙拉版的达美乐比萨（Domino’s）追踪系统——在这个系统中，有一个进度条记录订单从装配线下线到出货的过程。“不是‘约翰在煎你的比萨。马上就来！’我们的追踪器会说：‘嘿，你喜欢西红柿甘蓝凯撒沙拉。我们知道这一点，因为你以前订过。这些西红柿是两个月前用这种种子种下的，当时下了很多雨，正因如此，它们超级甜。在接下来的两天，它们会很好吃的，现在就点吧！’”贾梅特说。

与此同时，Sweetgreen依靠其电子邮件通讯（平均每月发送6封）让粉丝们随时了解当地西兰花叶子和有机胡萝卜的最新情况，并把客户介绍给几十名提供这些沙拉配菜的小农户。今年4月，它的“Open Source”电邮通讯充满诗意地描述了阿图罗·桑切斯在加州沃特森维尔的福罗特牧场（Faurot Ranch）种植的甜菜。桑切斯“1983年从墨西哥越境而来，现在是一位自豪的美国公民，也是牧场的共同所有人，他正在努力将自己的传统农田完全有机化。”

饥肠辘辘的上班族真的想要满满一收件箱的沙拉信件吗？Sweetgreen的联合创始人内特·茹认为是这样。他说：“我们的消费者想更深入一层地了解食物来自于哪里，种植这些蔬菜的农民，或土壤健康。而我们的客户真的很善于理解这些信息。”他补充说，该连锁店最近对7000多名顾客进行的一系列调查就是明证。该调查证实，土壤健康显然是客户首要考虑的因素。

贾梅特说：“这就是为什么我们如此努力地围绕koginut传递信息。”他所指的是Sweetgreen与名厨丹·巴伯合作开发的新一代南瓜。去年秋天，作为口碑营销的一部分，Sweetgreen向忠实顾客邮寄了100个排球大小的赤褐色南瓜，这种南瓜“有一个内置的成熟度显示器，可以实时显示口味最佳时间。”（换句话说，做好被采摘的准备时，它会改变颜色，就像许多生长的东西一样。）“我们想创造主要消费品牌经常创造的那种兴奋感，‘让我们为蔬菜造势，让它产生一双耐克鞋经常造成的那种轰动效应，因为从长远来看，蔬菜更重要。’”贾梅特说。“我们想把这种食物与幸福感、快乐联系起来，就像必胜客（Pizza Hut）和麦当劳（McDonald’s）等品牌多年来所做的那样。”

为此，该公司推出了一项新的顾客满意度指标，要求顾客给他们吃的每一份Sweetgreen沙拉评分。“就像Uber或Lyft一样，”联合创始人尼曼表示。“想象一下，如果你能够将这些评分与农场联系起来，并根据味道来判断哪些原料获得更高的评级，你就会开始明白：特定的农场和原料能否提升顾客的幸福感？”

In November, Sweetgreen announced $200 million in new funding, which boosted its valuation to more than $1 billion. The company is expected to grow to 110 restaurants by the end of the year and operates an additional 120 or so “outposts,” shelves in co-­working spaces and offices regularly replenished with salads ordered online. In June, Sweetgreen announced its first acquisition, Galley Foods, a Washington, D.C.–based meal-delivery service specializing in fresh dinners. The deal is expected to provide Sweetgreen with additional tech and logistics expertise—and could eventually help the chain extend its allure beyond the lunch hour. But while the 12-year-old company is growing like a weed (which, by the way, it repurposes: Jammet is currently fixated on recipes for purslane, a meaty weed with teardrop-shape leaves), the founders know they can’t win by land grab alone.

Enter blockchain. While the technology is often associated with Bitcoin and its ilk, at its core, a blockchain can offer a permanent record of time-stamped, unfungible information that is maintained across several computers and can be used to track money, identity, and, yes, food. So while in the context of lunch, invoking “blockchain” may feel like tech buzzword overkill, the ability to offer that unfiltered window into what exactly you’re about to put in your mouth has the potential to fill an actual consumer need. There’s the option to track vegetables for peak flavor, certainly, but also the ability to pinpoint problems—like the source of an E. coli outbreak. And with that visibility comes the power to grow without compromising the company’s devotion to all things small and local. As Jammet puts it, “If we can build real-time traceability and tracking into the infrastructure, it allows us to completely scale but keep working with farms of different sizes, so we can find 10 other Jim Wards”—i.e., farmers Sweetgreen knows and trusts.

While the company is still in the early stages of letting salad fans in on a direct view into its supply chain, that’s where the cofounders want to go next. Sweetgreen plans to build its own version of Domino’s pizza tracker, in which a progress bar chronicles an order’s journey down the assembly line and out the door. “Instead of ‘John’s flipping your pizza. It’s on its way!’ our tracker will say, ‘Hey, you like the tomato kale caesar. We know because you’ve ordered it before. These tomatoes were planted two months ago with this kind of seed, there was a lot of rain, and because of that, they’re super sweet. They’re great for the next two days, order now!’ ” says Jammet.

In the meantime, Sweetgreen is relying on its email newsletters—it sends an average of six per month—to keep devotees apprised of the latest on its local broccoli leaves and organic carrots and to introduce customers to the dozens of small farmers who provide those salad fixings. In April, its “Open Source” newsletter waxed poetic about the beets grown on Faurot Ranch in Watsonville, Calif., by Arturo Sanchez, “who crossed the border in 1983 from Mexico” and is now “a proud U.S. citizen and ranch co-owner, working to convert his fields from conventional to completely organic.”

Do hungry office workers really want an inbox full of salad missives? Sweetgreen cofounder Nate Ru thinks so. “Our consumers want to double-click one layer deeper into where the food’s coming from, or the farmer that’s involved, or soil health,” which is “something our customers are getting savvy about,” he says. As evidence, he points to a recent series of surveys the chain conducted with more than 7,000 customers, which returned results affirming that, yes, soil health is apparently top of mind.

“That’s why we went so hard with the messaging around the koginut,” says Jammet, referring to the new breed of squash Sweetgreen developed with chef Dan Barber. Last fall, Sweetgreen mailed 100 of the auburn volleyball-size squashes to loyal customers as part of a ploy to generate buzz around the gourd, which features a “built-in ripeness indicator for peak flavor.” (In other words, it changes color when ready to be picked, like many things that grow.) “We wanted to create the same kind of excitement that’s created around major consumer brands, like, ‘Let’s create as much hype for a vegetable as a Nike shoe because the vegetable is more important in the long run,’ ” says Jammet. “We want to connect this food to happiness, to joy, the way that brands like Pizza Hut and McDonald’s have done for years.”

To that end, the company is launching a new customer satisfaction metric that will ask customers to rate every Sweetgreen salad they eat. “Like Uber or Lyft,” says cofounder ­Neman. “Imagine being able to correlate that to the farms and to which ingredients get higher ratings based on flavor. You’re able to start to understand: Do certain farms and ingredients create happier customers?”

Sweetgreen让蔬菜变得既可追溯又时髦，就这方面而言，它或许垄断了市场。但消费者也关心便利性。虽然Sweetgreen是全美店铺分布最广的沙拉连锁店，但它并非无处不在。比如，在人口密度较低的美国中部，当地农产品或许更难采购，人们可能不太愿意花12美元买一碗生菜。这就是Daily Harvest的切入点，该公司采用一种完全不同的方式来兜售以蔬菜为中心的生活方式。Daily Harvest的创始人雷切尔·德罗里提供纯素食，以速冻蔬菜为特色的订阅式套餐。这些套餐包装在单独的杯子里（其价格从6.99美元到7.75美元不等），直接发给客户，而客户往往会在微波炉中将其加热。因此，尽管她和她的竞争对手Sweetgreen团队一致认为，农产品应该更容易获得，但德罗里不认为按订单制作的沙拉能够达到这个标准。

“在一个主要的城市地区，外卖公司Postmates仍然需要一个小时来递送我的沙拉。”她斜靠在Daily Harvest位于曼哈顿市中心总部的会议桌上说。“如果你不是住在大城市，当你离开家或办公室，开车去某个地方的时候，就忘了它吧。”

我必须得同意她的观点。在我们见面之前，我饿了，当时还有15分钟的空余时间，我尝试着从附近的一家Sweetgreen店点一份沙拉。我使用手机应用程序定制了一份含有芦笋和甜豌豆的“春季布拉塔碗”。我想，我会像一阵风似地走到移动取餐柜台，拿起我的14美元沙拉，狼吞虎咽地吃下，以平息肚子的不满。然后，我到了付款界面，看到沙拉至少要45分钟才能够做好。德罗里会意地点头认可我的故事，并向我提供Daily Harvest的花椰菜米饭和泡菜碗，这是一种不含谷物的泡菜炒饭，除了发酵的纳伯卷心菜和切得很细的花椰菜，还包括甘蓝、胡萝卜、葱和掌状红皮藻（一种富含蛋白质和矿物质的海藻）。4分钟后，我不再饿肚子了。

Sweetgreen may have cornered the market on making vegetables traceable and trendy, but customers also care about convenience. And while Sweetgreen boasts the largest national footprint of any salad chain, it’s not everywhere—namely, in the center of the country, where population density thins, local produce can be harder to source, and people may be less willing to pay $12 for a bowl of lettuce. This is where Daily Harvest, a company that takes a very different approach to selling the veggie-centric lifestyle, comes in. Daily Harvest founder Rachel Drori offers vegan, subscription-based meals featuring vegetables that are flash-frozen, packaged in individual serving cups (prices range from $6.99 to $7.75), and shipped directly to customers, who typically heat the bowls up in the microwave. So while she and her competitors on team Sweetgreen agree that produce should be more accessible, Drori does not believe a made-to-order salad can hit that mark.

“In a major urban area, it still takes Postmates an hour to deliver my salad,” she says, leaning into a conference table in Daily Harvest’s downtown Manhattan headquarters. “And if you don’t live in a major urban area, by the time you leave your home or office and drive somewhere, forget it.”

I have to agree with her. Prior to our meeting, hungry and with 15 minutes to spare, I attempted to order a salad from a nearby Sweetgreen. I used the app to customize a “spring burrata bowl” with asparagus and sugar snap peas, thinking I’d breeze by the mobile pickup counter, grab my $14 salad, and scarf down enough of it to quell the growls. Then I got to the payment screen and saw that the salad wouldn’t be ready for 45 minutes (at least). Drori nods knowingly through my story and offers me Daily Harvest’s cauliflower rice and kimchi bowl, a grain-free spin on kimchi fried rice that, in addition to fermented napa cabbage and finely diced cauliflower, includes kale, carrots, green onions, and dulse (a protein- and mineral-rich seaweed). Four minutes later, I am hangry no more.

Sweetgreen迎合的是那些为了获得一份适合发在Instagram的沙拉，愿意付出价格和时间溢价的都市人。德罗里指出，她的目标市场受众则是那些有这样的想法，但做不到这一点的人，“他们也想去农贸市场购买食材来制作美味佳肴，但做不到这一点，因为他们没有时间。”

Daily Harvest与世界各地的农民合作，为他们提供液氮隧道式速冻设备，在收获后几小时内将作物冷冻起来。这一过程被称为单体速冻（IQF），它能够使Daily Harvest避开构成传统冷冻食品的防腐剂。与Sweetgreen一样，该公司也在努力优化农业生产环节，不过其战略有所不同。德罗里说：“我们可以说：‘把你今年不准备用的东西给我们，让我们一起测试一下。’”一位农民正在寻找从芹菜中获得更多产量的方法，她说：“现在我们拥有唯一的芹菜根冷冻供应链。”

在2014年创办Daily Harvest之前，德罗里曾经先后供职于四季酒店（Four Seasons）、美国运通（American Express）和吉尔特集团（Gilt Groupe）。彼时，她厌倦了时常推迟午餐，等到下午3店才在休息室狂吃生日蛋糕的生活。自那以后，她筹集了4300万美元资金，并在全国各地积聚了10万多名订户，其中一些人生活在Sweetgreen等公司没有提供服务的农村“食物沙漠”。她说，订户的细目列表形象地反映了美国人口的布局，即城市、农村和郊区，而在这三个地区，Daily Harvest的客户群都在增长。

“在阿肯色州郊区，你买不到海带面条。”德罗里说。“我们为那些听说过海带面条，但无法品尝的人提供服务，因为即使在亚马逊上购买，他们也要花60美元买一袋，但不知道该怎么吃。”

While Sweetgreen caters to an urbanite willing to pay a price and time premium for an Instagram-worthy salad, Drori describes her company’s market as “those who want to but can’t—those who want to go to the farmers’ market and meal prep and make these delicious dishes but can’t because they don’t have time.”

Daily Harvest works with farmers around the world, arming them with nitrogen tunnels that freeze produce within hours of harvest. The process is called individual quick freezing, or IQF, and it enables Daily Harvest to eschew the preservative bombs that constitute traditional frozen meals. Like Sweetgreen, the company is trying to optimize farming, though its strategy is different. “We’re able to say, ‘Give us what you’re not going to use this year, and let’s test something together,’ ” says Drori. One farmer was looking for a way to get more yield from his celery crop, she says: “Now we have the only frozen supply chain for celery root.”

Drori worked for the Four Seasons, American Express, and Gilt Groupe before starting Daily Harvest in 2014, fed up with the routine of postponing lunch and bingeing on break-room birthday cake at 3 p.m. She’s since raised $43 million in funding and ships to more than 100,000 subscribers nationwide, some of whom live in rural “food deserts” not served by Sweetgreen and its ilk. She says the breakdown of subscribers closely mirrors the U.S. population in terms of urban vs. rural vs. suburban, and that Daily Harvest’s customer base is growing in all three areas.

“You can’t buy kelp noodles in suburban Arkansas,” says Drori. “We’re serving people who’ve heard of kelp noodles, but they can’t try them because, even if they buy them on Amazon, they’re going to spend $60 on a bag and not know what to do with them.”

与Sweetgreen类似，前投资银行家亚当·埃斯金于2011年创建的Dig Inn经营城市餐厅（28家，主要分布在纽约和波士顿），但它与Daily Harvest一样专注于熟食。埃斯金估计，Dig Inn今年的蔬菜销量将达到900万磅，绿叶蔬菜只占“很小的比例，西兰花、花椰菜和甜土豆的比例要高得多。”

大约20万磅蔬菜来自于Dig Inn自己的农场，它位于纽约州切斯特的“黑土区”，占地16英亩。埃斯金称这个农场是他的“农业实验室”。 “我们可以测试不同的种子，不同的品种：我们正在测试新型南瓜、辣椒、甜菜和雪豆。”他说。这是一个“臭鼬工厂”，但它的实验对象是农作物。这是埃斯金致力于改变蔬菜种植和消费方式的体现。“我们对如何在未来几十年重建食品体系，并产生影响的愿景只有一个词：蔬菜。如果更多的人能吃到更多的蔬菜，我们都会过得更好。”

如果有一件事是这些竞争对手能够达成共识的，那就是他们的理念：为更多的人提供更多的蔬菜。尽管区块链、单体速冻和农业实验室或许将在一定程度上决定哪一种以蔬菜为中心的未来生活方式版本将胜出，但终极裁决者仍然是食客的味蕾。就连Sweetgreen的联合创始人尼曼也承认，这意味着“在沙拉之外创造相关性”。他说，菜单扩展是该连锁店的首要任务，“今天，我们已经有一半的食物是热的。去年我们还测试了各种口味。”比如花椰菜炸薯球。

在沃德农场，吉姆·沃德让周围的人传看一张照片：那是五年前农场为Sweetgreen的粉丝们举办的一场聚餐，彼时的土壤还远远没有安装区块链传感器。餐桌上有酒，有面包，并非只有沙拉。（财富中文网）

本文另一版本登载于《财富》杂志2019年7月刊，标题为《Sweetgreen：这些沙拉爱好者能够最终说服美国人吃蔬菜吗？》。

译者：任文科

Dig Inn, founded in 2011 by former investment banker Adam Eskin, is similar to Sweetgreen in that it operates urban restaurants (28, mostly in New York and Boston) but shares Daily Harvest’s focus on cooked produce. Eskin estimates that Dig Inn will sell up to 9 million pounds of vegetables this year, with leafy greens representing “a very small percentage. A much larger percentage is broccoli, cauliflower, sweet potatoes.”

About 200,000 pounds of vegetables come from Dig Inn’s own farm, a 16-acre plot of land in the “black dirt region” of Chester, N.Y. Eskin calls the farm his “agricultural lab.” “We can test different seeds, different varietals: We’re testing new types of squash, peppers, beets, snow peas,” he says. A skunkworks, but for produce. It’s an embodiment of Eskin’s commitment to change how vegetables are grown and consumed. “Our vision of how to rebuild the food system and have an impact over the next few decades is one word: vegetables,” he says. “If more of us had greater access to vegetables, we’d all be better off.”

If there’s one thing these competitors can agree on, it’s probably that ethos: more vegetables, for more people. And while the blockchain, IQF, and ag experimentation may play a role in which version of the veg-centric future wins out, the ultimate arbiter remains eaters’ taste buds. Even Sweetgreen’s Neman will allow that means “creating relevance beyond just salad.” Menu expansion is a top priority for the chain, he says: “Today, already, half of our food is warm. Last year we tested sides,” like broccoli tater tots.

Back at Ward’s, the farmer passes around a photo of a sit-down dinner the farm hosted for Sweetgreen fans five years ago, long before there were blockchain sensors in the soil. There was wine, there was bread—there was more than just salad.

A version of this article appears in the July 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline “Sweetgreen: Can These Salad Evangelists Persuade America to Finally Eat its Vegetables?”