U.S. fast-casual salad chain Sweetgreen has announced a second funding round to raise $200 million, mentioning blockchain among its key development areas, according to a press release published Tuesday, Nov. 13.
Throughout the first round, closed late October, the company managed to raise $200 million, becoming valued at over $1 billion. During the second round led by major asset management company Fidelity Investments, the salad chain aims to raise an equal amount.
The сapital raised, in particular, will enable Sweetgreen to focus on technology and supply chain development, the release states, with blockchain mentioned as the “most viable solution available” to increase transparency in food supply chains. Sweetgreen, which owns 90 restaurants in the U.S., is planning to use decentralized solutions to track food from its supplier to the counter.
Blockchain is widely used in agriculture, especially in food supply chains. A recent report titled, “Blockchain: Agriculture Market Forecast until 2023,” estimates that the blockchain sector in the agriculature industry will grow from its current worth of $60.8 million to $429.7 million in the next five years.
As the evidence of these claims, the world’s four largest agriculture companies, known as ABCD, have recently partnered to digitize international grain trading by using blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI). The technologies will be initially used to automate grain and oilseed post-trade execution processes, with further plans to extend the experiment to shipping, storage, and customer experience areas.
Moreover, supermarket networks also use blockchain to track food. Albert Heijn, the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands, revealed in September that it is using blockchain to make its orange juice production history transparent.