The desk lunch is on hold

So Sweetgreen is now testing a hybrid approach, where companies can have an Outpost kiosk in their office, but it can also offer, as Jammet describes, “a new, extensive suite of Outpost solutions,” including subsidized or employer-paid meals for remote employees, delivered to their homes.

The assembly-line ordering system was useful in the early days of fast-casual: It comfortably introduced people to the concept, helped show that the food behind the glass was real and high quality, and captured attention when a line stretched out the door.

It’s a bit of a different situation for fast-casual chains operating at scale, where the delivery networks sit somewhere on the spectrum between “necessary evil” and “incremental growth driver.”

A lot of what you hear and read about the big delivery networks — DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats, etc. — is that they’re a terrible economic deal for restaurants. It’s an especially tough tradeoff for neighborhood restaurants and startups, which don’t have much leverage or much profit margin to spare.

That’s a different business than dropping off bulk salad orders at office buildings, but it might also prove to be a bigger idea.

Restaurants also want more people to order digitally — ideally through the company’s own app or website — because it gives them more customer data and an opportunity to build a deeper relationship over time.