When Sweetgreen acquired robot restaurant startup Spyce in August, one of the outstanding questions was whether the new owners would continue to operate the standalone Spyce restaurants. Finally, it looks like we now have an answer.
According to a post today by Spyce on their Facebook page, the company’s original location at Downtown Crossing in Boston will close at the end of this week.
From the post:
To our DTX Family:
Since our recent Sweetgreen acquisition, we’ve been working hard each day on our mission to scale healthy food and bring the magic of Spyce to more communities. In the next chapter of this long journey, we’ll be closing our DTX location after evening services on 10/22 to focus on developing technology for sweetgreen restaurants.
Downtown Crossing will always be a special place to us! We opened our door back in 2018 as a few fresh-faced college grads with an out-there dream to make healthy food more accessible through automation. We were different! But you gave us a shot and for that, we owe you so much.
With the closure of the downtown Boston restaurant, it’s worth speculating how much time remains for the remaining Spyce location. While I wouldn’t be surprised if Sweetgreen closed it as well, I can also see the company continuing to operate the Harvard located restaurant as a test-lab for potential new technology.
In the announcement about the acquisition, Sweetgreen said it was evaluating where and how it would integrate Spyce’s technology into its restaurants. It looks like that process is starting. The company indicates in the post that the existing team will be offered positions at the Harvard Square location or in a Sweetgreen location.
As for myself, I’m a bit bummed that we’ll be saying goodbye to this standalone Spyce location. I visited there with my son in 2018, and it was one of the highlights of our trip.
As a patron of both I can say that Spyce had better flavors, better service, better catering to keto/low carb diets, and never was an ingredient left out (as happens at Sweetgreen when ordering using the app). It also felt a lot safer to eat there with a gluten allergy, since there was no human element, and no breadcrumbs being carried across other items’ bins. I will miss Spyce and I will miss The Odyssey, and I hope Sweetgreen incorporates what was good about the former.