Part of a series about small businesses in America.
When it comes to job creation, politicians talk about small businesses as the engines of the U.S. economy. It's been a familiar refrain among politicians from both major parties for years.
'Not Just A Restaurant'
Economists say such job growth is all about new firms — startups — but not all of them. Most startups will actually fail. The second most likely outcome is that they'll start small and stay small. Just a tiny fraction start small and then grow fast, creating an outsized share of new jobs. One such company is Sweetgreen, which dishes out fast, fresh organic salads in compostable bowls at 20 locations on the East Coast.
Pedro Ceron manages the restaurant near Capitol Hill. He's worked for the company for a little more than a year and is one of about 570 people now employed by Sweetgreen. Six years ago, it was just a little shack of a shop in D.C.'s Georgetown neighborhood, says co-founder Nicolas Jammet.
"It was 560 square feet and most people told us that you couldn't open a restaurant in that space or that size, but we were college seniors and we wanted to do it, so we did it," Jammet says.
“ [Government] loan programs, I would say, would be better targeted towards young businesses than small businesses per se.