Sweetgreen moving headquarters to L.A.

Sweetgreen, a salad chain founded in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood nine years ago, is moving its headquarters to Los Angeles as it prepares to expand along the West Coast.

“We’re taking the company to the next level, from a regional company to a national one,” said co-founder Nicolas Jammet, 30. “California is the key to our future growth.”

The Los Angeles office is slated to open by the end of March with 30 employees. The District of Columbia office, meanwhile, is set to shrink to 15 employees from 45. The company said it will not be laying off employees as a result of the relocation.

The move comes less than a year after Sweetgreen opened its first West Coast eatery just south of West Hollywood. Since then, it has opened two more outposts in the L.A. area — one in Santa Monica and one in Hollywood — and it plans to use its new headquarters as a jumping-off point to open more restaurants in the region.

“We are not going to be a company with one megaspaceship headquarters,” Jammet said. “The goal is to spread our leadership so we can be as close to the community and our customers as possible.”

The company, which has become a darling among investors, has raised $95 million in venture capital funding to date. Its most recent round of funding brought in $35 million from T. Rowe Price in July.

Jammet and his co-founders, Jonathan Neman and Nathaniel Ru, opened their first Sweetgreen in August 2007, three months after graduating from Georgetown University. In the years since, the company has grown to 39 locations.

“We know that our success in California is the key to our growth nationally, just like being in D.C. all these years helped us unlock the East Coast,” Jammet said.