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In 2007, three students from Georgetown University in Washington D.C. realized there was no healthy place to eat in D.C.

Nicolas Jammet, Nathaniel Ru and Jonathan Neman wrote a business plan, rented a small tavern and started selling salads with locally sourced ingredients. With help from friends, family, and a couple of early investors including restaurateur Joseph Bastianich (under whom Jammet once interned) and Honest Tea founder Seth Goldman (where Nic's twin brother is the director of field marketing), Sweetgreen was born.

For Sweetgreen, their business model wasn't about being a place to eat, rather more about connecting with people through good food, music and causes. They've got 12,000 Twitter followers, 11,000 Instagram followers, and nearly 20,000 likes on Facebook. Social media is where they share a healthy dose of salad porn, music and artists, health and fitness tips, as well as cool projects from other sustainable brands.

Their goal isn't necessarily to sell salads, but to inspire customers to live a life of passion and healthfulness, in which salads hopefully play a role.

Hear the team talk about how they built their now 21-store farm-to-table experience below: