After raising $200 million in a Series H funding round last November, the culty salad chain Sweetgreen became the first-ever restaurant unicorn. Cold-pressed upstart Joe & the Juice is reportedly plotting a $1.5 billion IPO later this year. Now kale-scarfing, ginger-quaffing consumers have VCs salivating over salad. A new batch of food- focused investment firms like the Kitchen Fund and Enlightened Hospitality Investments (run by Shake Shack titan Danny Meyer) are pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into fast-casual startups--or, as they say, "early-stage scalable restaurant concepts"--powered by AI and data-mining apps. These food platforms incorporate technology as a base ingredient.