Today's guest on The CMO Podcast is Nathaniel Ru, Co-founder and Chief Brand Officer of sweetgreen, the fast-casual restaurant chain that serves creative, healthy salads. Fueled by the movement to reimagine fast food for a new era, sweetgreen's core values guide their actions and they aim to empower their customers, team members and partners to be a positive force on the food system.

In 2007, Nathaniel founded the company in Washington, D.C., with two classmates from Georgetown University. Sixteen years later, the three are still running the company today–now with about 200 restaurants and 5000 associates. In 2021, sweetgreen went public, with a market cap of roughly $1 billion at the time of this recording. 

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Nathaniel is the son of immigrant, entrepreneurial parents: his mother has Mexican heritage, and his father is Chinese. Within three months of graduating from Georgetown University, he and his co-founders had opened the first Sweetgreen on M street in Georgetown.

On this episode, Nathaniel and Jim talk about how brands can work to make the overall customer experience better through technology and automation. Over the course of his career at sweetgreen, Nathaniel has learned how to build a brand with strong customer loyalty and facilitate a fantastic internal culture at the company.

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