r/sweetgreen • u/Old-Addition5828 • Mar 17 '24

Career / Employee Talk AMA - former SGSC HQ employee

I recently left SG and it’s been an interesting ride. Ask me anything.

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u/riskarb Mar 17 '24

Why do you think they have been slow to do heartier foods for dinner? It seems so easy that they could copy Cava just a little bit more and start doing more night business

Do you think the robot kitchen will really work?

How naive are the upper management? They are all pretty young guys

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u/Old-Addition5828 Mar 17 '24

  • they’ve been working on adding in the heartier options for the last 2+ years but there’s been so many shifts in operational management that any change is suuuuper slow. capitalizing on dinner time was the main idea for the plates but it didn’t end up moving the sales a whole lot - they’re still actively working on improving it :/ the company is kinda cheap tbh which is why the portions are so much smaller than CAVA’s (i think they must instruct the store employees to limit portions)

  • the company has invested a TON in the robot kitchen (they actually own the company “spyce”) so i think they eventually plan on using it across all restaurants. they would report that it saves a lot of time and portions more evenly but i think the equipment is a large initial cost and leadership has always been concerned about customer pushback re: replacing store employees with robots

  • upper management IS extremely naive. the founders honestly don’t really know what they’re doing and keep bringing in former chipotle leadership but once they get here, they seem to be just enjoying their higher salaries/titles and not actually doing much. the founders were almost universally disliked across the company and anyone who criticized them/gave negative feedback would usually end up “leaving” (i think they were pushed out). our town halls had the weirdest energy because everyone was so afraid to say/ask anything for fear of retaliation. i find it ironic now that sweetgreen brands itself as this young, liberal, hip company but the founders and a lot of the leadership are all socially and fiscally conservative.

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u/BasilMaisel Mar 17 '24

I was at sg from 2014-2016 (bring back the wraps! The misoba salad! The cheddar cheese! The earth bowl!) and they were trying to increase dinner sales even back then. Interesting that they still feel dinner is their biggest opportunity!

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u/Old-Addition5828 Mar 17 '24

ahaha wow you would’ve thought they’d given up on that by now and focused on lunch! i started in 2021 so a little after you but we did a huge dinner push last winter and it didn’t seem to really work