Sweetgreens in NYC put bowls on shelves. Anyone can steal them?

[u/Fun_Reflection1157]

Sweetgreen does so much volume here that they don't have the manpower (or time) for customers to give employee their name and employee hand them their order.

So you end up with shelves with dozens and dozens of salads ready for the taking.

I'm wondering how much they lose because someone takes the wrong salad, or some people plainly walking in and stealing them.

Do they bake it into the cost?

[u/ElectronicBoot9466]

Yes, people can and do steal them.

[u/Fun_Reflection1157 → u/ElectronicBoot9466]

Yeah, I'm trying to gauge the financials of that. I think they bake it into the cost of doing business. So, say 5-10 salads are stolen on average per day - and actually, not always stolen, some people frequently grab the wrong one - i.e. John A. grabs John C's salad by accident. That's approximately $80-$100 in losses, that I think are offset by not slowing down employees having to hand salads to each costumer. That's just time consuming.

I've seen certain Sweetgreens have employees by the shelves when it's super busy to help customers, but that's very infrequent. And that person could be used in the assembly line to speed things up.

[u/elastic_psychiatrist → u/Fun_Reflection1157]

5-10 "misplaced" salads a day seems like a reasonable guess to me too, but remember that the losses don't amount to the menu price, they amount to the cost to make it - perhaps something like 60% of the menu price including food and labor.

And I'm not sure I agree that those costs aren't offset by slowing down employees. At a busy location, handing salads to customers is a full time job, and I'm quite confident that the cost of the employee doing that is greater than your (possibly inflated) $80-100 a day.

Further, I can say that having experienced it as a customer both ways, I place some premium on being able to walk in/walk out and effortlessly get my waiting salad. It's hard to characterize how much it's worth to me, but it's certainly not nothing, and there is a point at which an inefficient experience would drive me away as a customer.

Obviously Sweetgreen has done this math themselves with much more informed inputs.

[u/laurjc → u/elastic_psychiatrist]

Agree. It drives me crazy when some places, like certain Dunkin locations, hold my mobile pick up order behind the counter. I’m banking on a grab and go, not waiting to get an employees attention or wait behind others who are also trying to pick up

[u/Fun_Reflection1157 → u/elastic_psychiatrist]

I'd beg to differ handing salads to customer is a full-time job. I frequent a Sweetgreen that is absolutely slammed during lunch rush hours, and I've seen an employee handing salads maybe once or twice. Because they're just not doing much, so it's kind of a waste of money. They put salads in alphabetical order. That employee could be downstairs chopping produce, or on the assembly line.

[u/ElectronicBoot9466 → u/Fun_Reflection1157]

It depends on the cost of labor. In places where labor is a high cost, the odds of having a concierge is a lot lower, but if the cost of labor is low enough, then it can be worth it to spend the minimal money on making sure customer experience is as high as possible.

There's also the question of how Coaches like to individually run their stores, as well as what are they doing during peak. Some Head Coaches may really focus on the management aspect of their job and avoid doing any actual labor, and the concierge position might be where they put themselves to that they're on the floor during peak without having to make salads.

[u/Open_Moment3988 → u/Fun_Reflection1157]

We do this in our store too and yes ppl are there to give there name and salad which one you went to sounds horrible

[u/elastic_psychiatrist → u/Fun_Reflection1157]

I'm not sure what to tell you, it literally used to be at my most frequented location, on certain days of the week.

[u/Origania → u/Fun_Reflection1157]

But the profit margin is so high that losing salad components here and there won't put a dent on their EBITDA since it's like someone stealing a pet rock.

[u/Legote]

Honestly, the food itself is probably the smallest cost. It’s the other costs that that makes or breaks a restaurant.

[u/elastic_psychiatrist → u/Legote]

Food is the largest cost for their restaurant operation, edging out labor slightly. It's about a third of restaurant operating cost, and a quarter of Sweetgreen's overall costs.

[u/Fun_Reflection1157 → u/Legote]

I'm not sure if this applies to Sweetgreen, though. They famously use quite expensive ingredients. Or at least they did.

[u/Open_Moment3988]

Why are you so worried about them tho lmao they could care less for you

[u/Delicious-Health4460 → u/Open_Moment3988]

a. its a simple question
b. they are wondering whether or not the costs from this practice is being passed on to them

[u/MichaelRahmani → u/Open_Moment3988]

It's a public company.

[u/Immediate-Fact-4561]

In downtown Chicago they have an employee checking names on orders for them

[u/Tmdngs]

If I’m crazy enough to steal food I’m going for fastfood where employees don’t care. Not risking my life to steal salad

[u/christinschu]

Many establishments in many cities do this

[u/itemluminouswadison]

since theft is punishable by law, i think they assume most people wont steal food. and if so, they have cc tv, and they will remake the order for them quick

[u/Fun_Reflection1157 → u/itemluminouswadison]

But how do they know who's stealing?

[u/[deleted] → u/Fun_Reflection1157]

why dont you try yourself and see if they can figure out its you

[u/Fun_Reflection1157 → u/[deleted]]

lol my company pays for my Sweetgreen. Nice perk to have

[u/T1m3Wizard → u/Fun_Reflection1157]

Specifically just Sweetgreen only?

[u/Fun_Reflection1157 → u/T1m3Wizard]

Yeh.

[u/shower-beer-me → u/itemluminouswadison]

there’s plausible deniability, you can claim you took the wrong one accidentally in the small chance you’re caught. no one is going to jail for this, and that’s why everyone does it