Sweetgreen shares closed 76% higher — at $49.50 each — on their first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The salad restaurant chain almost doubled its valuation during its public debut. Shares opened at $52 each after the IPO was priced at $28.
The company has been expanding beyond urban areas into suburban communities. It also has a growing online order presence.
"We built out a lot of core technologies that allows us to meet our customer," co-founder and CEO Jonathan Neman told Yahoo Finance Live.
Neman says more automation will go further into the restaurant business to improve operations, but robots will not replace humans.
"We believe humans will always be part of the Sweetgreen experience," Neman said. "We just believe in continuing to invest in technology to enable them to do their job in a better way"
The Los Angeles_based company, founded in 2007, is not profitable yet as it continues to invest in technology and expand its footprint. Sales through the first 39 weeks of this year came in at $243 million. The company posted an operating loss of $87 million.
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