Sweetgreen Opening First Virginia Location

Sweetgreen, the chain of popular local custom salad shops, will open its first Northern Virginia location at the Reston Town Center next month.

Sweetgreen co-owner Nicolas Jammet said the owners chose Reston over other Northern Virginia locations such as Tysons Corner and Clarendon because they were drawn to the "great energy" of Reston.

"There is a great community feel in Reston," said Jammet. 'We found it to be a progressive place with a lot of young professionals who would appreciate our concept."

The Reston location, 11935 Democracy Dr., behind Jackson's Mighty Fine Food & Lucky Lounge and across Democracy Drive from Mon Ami Gabi, will be sweetgreen's sixth location. Jammet, along with two fellow Georgetown grads, opened the first restaurant in Georgetown in 2007.  Locations in Bethesda, Capitol Hill, Logan Circle and Dupont Circle soon followed.

The counter-service restaurant is one of a handful in the area to earn certification  from the Green Restaurant Association. Utensils and containers are made from recycled materials, as are materials used in the restaurants' interior.

The menu features a wide variety of salad ingredients, and the owners try to buy local whenever possible. The other speciality at sweetgreen is frozen yogurt, so Sweetgreen will become another option (joining Iceberry and YogenFruz) at RTC.

Sweetgreen's frozen yogurt was recently voted the best in D.C. by Washingtonian magazine and the best in Maryland by Bethesda magazine.

Sweetgreen also operates the sweetflow mobile, an environmentally conscious truck that cruises around town selling wraps, salads, frozen yogurt and quinoa oatmeal.

The truck will be in Reston often, Jammet says.

"We will bring it to the pools," he said. "We can come to your neighborhood or a party. Just tweet us @Sweetflowmobile and we can come to where you are."

Want to work at Sweetgreen? There will be a career fair at the Town Center location Thursday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.