The three friends behind a $1bn healthy fast-food firm

The BBC's weekly The Boss series profiles different business leaders from around the world. This week we speak to Nicolas Jammet and Jonathan Neman, co-founders of US salad bowl restaurant chain Sweetgreen.

When three college friends couldn't find healthy and affordable meals to buy in their neighbourhood of Washington DC they decided to solve the problem by opening their own restaurant.

Thirteen years later, their business, Sweetgreen, is estimated to be worth more than $1bn (£780m).

Looking back on their time as business students at Washington's Georgetown University, Nicolas Jammet says that he, Jonathan Neman, and fellow co-founder Nathaniel Ru, had "nowhere to eat".

"The most delicious, accessible and popular food was generally the least healthy," says Nicolas.

"We couldn't understand why we didn't have other options."

"We just kind of opened the doors," says Nicolas, whose job title is chief conceptofficer. "We had hired a few students, but we  hadn't trained them that well.

"The first day was pretty slow, but it felt very busy because we were testing our system, and were moving very slowly. We got busier every day after that."

Jonathan, who is the chief executive, says that to begin with they had no plans to open more than the one restaurant. "We didn't think it would turn into a career," he says.

"We just saw it as a way to solve a problem, because there was such a need for healthy food. We thought we would open one restaurant and then do something else."

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So they decided to focus all their attention on Sweetgreen, and open more branches. This required investment though, and it initially wasn't very forthcoming.

"For many years it was very hard to convince people to invest in Sweetgreen," says Jonathan. "We had no track record, we were just kids from college.

"We had no resumé (CV) to back us, and when people think about restaurants, they think about how most of them fail in the first year."

However, Sweetgreen's healthy fast food eventually seduced high-profile entrepreneurs including Whole Foods boss Walter Robb, billionaire investor Steve Case, and French chef Daniel Boulud.

After initially adding other outlets in Washington, Sweetgreen now has 90 branches across the US, and 20 more planned to open this year. With its headquarters having moved from Washington to Los Angeles in 2016, investment in the business now totals $365m (£285m), and it has more than 3,500 employees.

While the company won't reveal its annual turnover figure, Aaron Allen, an American restaurant consultant, says it is now estimated at about $120m.