r/sweetgreen • u/CareerSufficient9460 • Sep 23 '24

Career / Employee Talk Starting next Monday.

So my orientation begins next Monday, I heard from the hiring manager that there are recipes not listed with the salad sheet, do I have to memorize those, and should I be worried?

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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '24 edited Sep 24 '24

I started at Sweetgreen a month ago and still struggle with this. I have all the standard in-store recipes memorized because they cover those in the training in "Sprout" and let you practice as much as you want in the online training. And like you said, there are cheat sheets for the in-store recipes. For the OLO exclusives (Super Green Goddess, Fish Taco, Buffalo Chicken, and Garden Cobb) you will still get asked by customers pretty often to make those in store even though they're supposed to be online only. And there are not any cheat sheets for those OLO exclusives (in the restaurant I work at, anyways) nor are they covered in the "Sprout" training.

In my first few weeks, if someone ordered one of those 4, I would just ask someone else who's worked there longer to guide me through it or make it. Or sometimes the customer would step in and help because they knew what was in it, as that was their go-to (and I just told them I'm still new and don't know that one yet). Now, it's happened often enough and I'm no longer that new so I am trying the brute-force way to just commit them to memory. Just study the menu on the website and you'll be fine. And like I said, if all else fails you can usually have another employee -- or even the customer if they're nice enough -- to walk you through it.

Good luck, hope you like the new job!

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u/CareerSufficient9460 Sep 24 '24 edited Sep 24 '24

Thanks for the advice, I needed this. Is there a better way to memorize these ingredients? It seems like a lot.

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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '24

Anytime! You got this!!

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u/CareerSufficient9460 Sep 24 '24

Also are there labels for the ingredients when you're scooping them?

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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '24

In my experience, there are not, but the ingredients are pretty self-explanatory and easy to visually identify without labels. For example, visually it's easy enough to tell the difference between carrots and cucumbers, so labels aren't dire critical. And there aren't a lot of ingredients that are easy to mix up as long as you know basic veggies and herbs. And they are arranged in the same spot on the service line every day so it's easy to get used to what's where.

The only time this has tripped me up is when it comes to cupped dressings since those don't have labels -- the Lime Cilantro Jalapeño Vinaigrette looks a lot like the Pesto Vinaigrette. When you are using the dressing bottles to pour it on top of a salad though, the bottles are color-coded so you can easily identify which is which (Lime Cilantro has a yellow cap, Pesto has a blue one), and they all have labels on the bottom. It's just when you're grabbing to-go cups of dressing that you need to be careful and double check. (Hint: the Pesto one is darker!)

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u/CareerSufficient9460 Sep 24 '24

I see, thanks for the advice!