The announcement of the food lineup at this year’s Sweetlife festival was given nearly as much fanfare as the music lineup. But such is the reality for Sweetlife, a music, food, and green living festival in suburban Washington, D.C.
Now in its sixth year, Sweetlife is an outgrowth of the salad shop Sweetgreen, a restaurant chain co-founded by Nicolas Jammet. As college students at Georgetown, Jammet and partners Nathaniel Ru and Jonathan Neman created the healthy, affordable salad concept near the start of the mainstreaming of local and sustainable food philosophy. They then translated the ethos of the restaurants into a two-day festival that now draws more than 23,000 people.
This year’s festival, which took place in May at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Maryland, featured a millennial-friendly music lineup of Kendrick Lamar, Bleachers, the Weeknd, and Charli XCX, among others. Unlike many music festivals, concessions are not an afterthought at Sweetlife. Its food roster featured seven chefs, nine food trucks, and eight breweries, as well as 18 vendors including Momofuku Milk Bar, José Andrés’s Think Food Group, and Blue Hill Farm. And for the first time, Sweetlife took over all of the venue’s concessions stands. The move allowed planners to eliminate soft drinks from the menu (with exceptions at some bars for mixed drinks). Instead, festivalgoers imbibed Honest Tea, Stumptown Coffee, and Sweetgreen’s own house-made, seasonal beverages. Fans could also fill their own reusable water bottles at free water stations throughout the grounds.
As Sweetgreen has grown—it has expanded beyond the D.C. area to New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and soon California—it now has the potential to draw more festivalgoers to Sweetlife or perhaps creating a demand for versions of the festival across the country.
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