What ever happened to buying lettuce (even the fancy stuff, ie arugula), veg (pick yr poison), maybe some cheese, at the—ahem—grocery store, putting it in a bag/old yogurt container/Tupperware each morning and taking it to work? Honestly I skipped past the rest after seeing that someone spent $300/month $16 EACH?!) on daily salad. I can’t even…
I love how you use the graphs to give your writing a compelling structure that makes it easy to follow.
My experience with Sweetgreen was initially excitement (healthy fast food!), dampened by the reality that I had just paid $18 for a salad I could probably make at home in 10-15 minutes. It's like getting food at the airport; it always seems like a good idea, until you are eating and realized it wasn't worth it.
this is insanely in-depth but i am left with many questions. first, what are you ordering at chopt? i should give it a try soon. also, i think chopt saw a resurgence last year because of their wraps which quickly made its way around social media. i personally prefer sweetgreen's menu much more than chopt's but i also don't go as frequently as you do... so i'm pretty satisfied every time i go.
i visited the hudson yards location a few weeks ago for work and it was abysmal and overrun with so many people coming downstairs to grab their lunch from the office. they also were out of almost half the ingredients... yet again more of a reason to try out chopt. i do think the volume and traffic (like you mentioned) probably allows chopt to provide better satisfaction to each customer.
I ordered from the sweet green at Hudson Yards during a non busy time of day and they still forgot one of the main ingredients of my order. By the time I noticed it was too late to go all the way back there 👎🏾 I used to go frequently a few years ago when i worked from home but the prices have turned me off.
Love this! Speaking of salad, check out the mustard green, date and sicilian almond salad recipe I adapted from hit NYC eatery Misipasta for easy home cooking!
I just buy bagged salads in the grocery store and keep a bowl and bottle of dressing at work. I bring a bagged salad in to work, empty it into the bowl, put on some dressing and maybe some crunchy chickpea snacks, and it's a $3.00 chopped salad lunch. Easy peasy. But first, I take a walk to get myself away from my desk, and maybe get an iced coffee for after my tasty salad lunch.
This made me really happy to read. Perfect level of a niche subject and nerdy amounts of data. I live in LA and I notice the teens like açaí and smoothie bowls.
I’m cackling. I used to go to NYC quarterly for work offsites and found out that the thing to do was order a salad from Sweetgreen. You can imagine how stupid I felt scrambling to figure out my options while standing at the front of that lunch line. I’ve never felt so guilty for patronizing a new restaurant. There were dozens of people with salad-requiring-and-enabled jobs breathing down my neck, wondering what kind of idiot didn’t know about the greens and grains options. I understand now that they were spurned salad loyalists, being strung along by this brand that made it difficult for new customers and daily users alike.
Hahaha - precisely the experience. I can’t even imagine the stress of ordering from the line there and not through the app. It makes you feel like a literal “human resource.”
As a sweetgreener since 2015, it’s true they have slid on the “perks.” They used to have tiers, including one with free swag and concierge support(?). But they do have Sweetpass+, $10/month gets you $3 off one salad per day. Also, for what it’s worth, Sweetgreen helped me go vegetarian, then vegan. A vegan salad at SG with $3 off is $9 +tax. In 2025.
Feel like I’m falling straight into Jia Tolentino’s 2019 clutches talking about Salad Economics here. My only counter is that it was Michael Gregor’s 2015 “How Not To Die” that started things for me. And I don’t live in NY; we don’t have a Chop’t.
That's awesome that it helped with going vegan! The Sweetpass thing is nice but still didn't *feel* like i was being rewarded (even though the economics would've made sense). Idk.
And Chopt is expanding a bunch it seems like so maybe you'll get to try!
I went to Sweetgreen once and was dismayed that they tossed the salad with tongs, in the salad box. It took her forever and pieces were falling out. It took her like one minute to toss the salad.
In the 90s, there was a cheap fast lunch chain called Lee’s in San Francisco and when you ordered a salad, everything went into a large stainless steel bowl, and at the end, the salad was easily tossed for 5 seconds and transferred into the salad box to go.
I never went back to Sweetgreen and am still wondering how a salad chain couldn’t get the tossing of the salad right.
This is so interesting to me! I’m in Atlanta, and there is a Sweetgreen a 5 minute walk from my office. I order and it’s ready within 10-15 minutes, always waiting for me. I’ve never noticed an error with my order, but yeah they’re expensive. I will say their fries are terrible and their seed oils section is capitalism capitalizing on bad science, but I’ll likely only stop eating there when it’s no longer convenient to my actual location
I’ve followed the same pattern, though I’m a Just Salad convert instead of Chop’t. Back in the day, pre-pandemic & pre-IPO, Sweetgreen had a decent loyalty program. I still have my swag (beanie, socks, and totebag) from hitting a mid-tier status level (I think it came with a x% off every $yy spend too). And when you hit the top level, I believe you could choose between 2 GA tickets or 1 VIP ticket to their music festival, which had a wild lineup for the time, or a “sweetgreen party” for 10 friends.
Shout out to the hedge fund guy who I found out was cheating on me THREE DAYS before the crisis, who bet the company farm that Lehman would get a bailout. Thus, his hedge fund closed and he was out of a job and out of a visa and that was when the German word schadenfreude entered my lexicon!
Sweetgreen used to be great!! I'm talking back in 2014, 2015 - you would get rewards for using the app ($10 off for every $100 spent, I think?), and I went so often that I was selected to be in a test group where I got a free salad every month in exchange for my thoughts. I went recently and it didn't hit the way it used to: it's too expensive, they were out of many ingredients, and it really feels like they've lost the plot with their new sides and stuff. RIP my love affair with Sweetgreen.
What ever happened to buying lettuce (even the fancy stuff, ie arugula), veg (pick yr poison), maybe some cheese, at the—ahem—grocery store, putting it in a bag/old yogurt container/Tupperware each morning and taking it to work? Honestly I skipped past the rest after seeing that someone spent $300/month $16 EACH?!) on daily salad. I can’t even…
This is probably the correct lesson I should be learning from this
Cigarettes are cheaper.
You’re telling me the thing that kills you is cheaper than the thing that feeds you? Wild.
I love how you use the graphs to give your writing a compelling structure that makes it easy to follow.
My experience with Sweetgreen was initially excitement (healthy fast food!), dampened by the reality that I had just paid $18 for a salad I could probably make at home in 10-15 minutes. It's like getting food at the airport; it always seems like a good idea, until you are eating and realized it wasn't worth it.
thanks so much!! really appreciate that -- this one was rather tough to structure, i felt like i spent a lot of time thinking about how it could flow
And yeah, i think that's right. My main takeaway from writing this is that I should be an adult and just pack my lunch
this is insanely in-depth but i am left with many questions. first, what are you ordering at chopt? i should give it a try soon. also, i think chopt saw a resurgence last year because of their wraps which quickly made its way around social media. i personally prefer sweetgreen's menu much more than chopt's but i also don't go as frequently as you do... so i'm pretty satisfied every time i go.
i visited the hudson yards location a few weeks ago for work and it was abysmal and overrun with so many people coming downstairs to grab their lunch from the office. they also were out of almost half the ingredients... yet again more of a reason to try out chopt. i do think the volume and traffic (like you mentioned) probably allows chopt to provide better satisfaction to each customer.
Yeah it’s interesting how there definitely does seem to be such a thing as growing “too fast” where it hurts you in the long run!
I get a custom bowl that’s very boring, basically kale and chicken and goat cheese and vinaigrette. I’m eating it as I type this haha
I ordered from the sweet green at Hudson Yards during a non busy time of day and they still forgot one of the main ingredients of my order. By the time I noticed it was too late to go all the way back there 👎🏾 I used to go frequently a few years ago when i worked from home but the prices have turned me off.
Sorta related…. What else is on that Mt. Rushmore of books that should be on a 26-yo guy’s shelf? lol
Omg arriving back here via NY mag newsletter… Joe you’re killing it
whoa cool! i didnt know thanks for sharing!
Here’s a link if you haven’t seen (hopefully this works) — https://link.nymag.com/view/66058dad68be0bf9d90b07ecn6mor.1e0n/87f53218
Thank you :)
Love this! Speaking of salad, check out the mustard green, date and sicilian almond salad recipe I adapted from hit NYC eatery Misipasta for easy home cooking!
check it out:
https://thesecretingredient.substack.com/p/get-misipastas-arugula-date-and-sicilian
I just buy bagged salads in the grocery store and keep a bowl and bottle of dressing at work. I bring a bagged salad in to work, empty it into the bowl, put on some dressing and maybe some crunchy chickpea snacks, and it's a $3.00 chopped salad lunch. Easy peasy. But first, I take a walk to get myself away from my desk, and maybe get an iced coffee for after my tasty salad lunch.
That is good inspiration. I usually feel like i want chicken but i could probably figure out how to do that
This made me really happy to read. Perfect level of a niche subject and nerdy amounts of data. I live in LA and I notice the teens like açaí and smoothie bowls.
Thanks so much Robyn! I really like Açai too but rarely treat myself to one. Next time i go to LA i will seek out a good one
I’m cackling. I used to go to NYC quarterly for work offsites and found out that the thing to do was order a salad from Sweetgreen. You can imagine how stupid I felt scrambling to figure out my options while standing at the front of that lunch line. I’ve never felt so guilty for patronizing a new restaurant. There were dozens of people with salad-requiring-and-enabled jobs breathing down my neck, wondering what kind of idiot didn’t know about the greens and grains options. I understand now that they were spurned salad loyalists, being strung along by this brand that made it difficult for new customers and daily users alike.
Hahaha - precisely the experience. I can’t even imagine the stress of ordering from the line there and not through the app. It makes you feel like a literal “human resource.”
As a sweetgreener since 2015, it’s true they have slid on the “perks.” They used to have tiers, including one with free swag and concierge support(?). But they do have Sweetpass+, $10/month gets you $3 off one salad per day. Also, for what it’s worth, Sweetgreen helped me go vegetarian, then vegan. A vegan salad at SG with $3 off is $9 +tax. In 2025.
Feel like I’m falling straight into Jia Tolentino’s 2019 clutches talking about Salad Economics here. My only counter is that it was Michael Gregor’s 2015 “How Not To Die” that started things for me. And I don’t live in NY; we don’t have a Chop’t.
That's awesome that it helped with going vegan! The Sweetpass thing is nice but still didn't *feel* like i was being rewarded (even though the economics would've made sense). Idk.
And Chopt is expanding a bunch it seems like so maybe you'll get to try!
Thanks for the note :)
Real talent to make a blog about "health" lunch options gripping....
such a nice compliment! thank you :)
I went to Sweetgreen once and was dismayed that they tossed the salad with tongs, in the salad box. It took her forever and pieces were falling out. It took her like one minute to toss the salad.
In the 90s, there was a cheap fast lunch chain called Lee’s in San Francisco and when you ordered a salad, everything went into a large stainless steel bowl, and at the end, the salad was easily tossed for 5 seconds and transferred into the salad box to go.
I never went back to Sweetgreen and am still wondering how a salad chain couldn’t get the tossing of the salad right.
That does seem really suboptimal! I unfortunately have never really seen them make it since I have always picked it up. It’s alienating
This is so interesting to me! I’m in Atlanta, and there is a Sweetgreen a 5 minute walk from my office. I order and it’s ready within 10-15 minutes, always waiting for me. I’ve never noticed an error with my order, but yeah they’re expensive. I will say their fries are terrible and their seed oils section is capitalism capitalizing on bad science, but I’ll likely only stop eating there when it’s no longer convenient to my actual location
Ooh okay good enjoy it while it lasts!!!
I’ve followed the same pattern, though I’m a Just Salad convert instead of Chop’t. Back in the day, pre-pandemic & pre-IPO, Sweetgreen had a decent loyalty program. I still have my swag (beanie, socks, and totebag) from hitting a mid-tier status level (I think it came with a x% off every $yy spend too). And when you hit the top level, I believe you could choose between 2 GA tickets or 1 VIP ticket to their music festival, which had a wild lineup for the time, or a “sweetgreen party” for 10 friends.
They had a music festival??? Ugh I hate interest rates
I’ll forever regret missing Avicii’s headline set at Sweetlife 2012
Shout out to the hedge fund guy who I found out was cheating on me THREE DAYS before the crisis, who bet the company farm that Lehman would get a bailout. Thus, his hedge fund closed and he was out of a job and out of a visa and that was when the German word schadenfreude entered my lexicon!
this rocks!!!
Sweetgreen used to be great!! I'm talking back in 2014, 2015 - you would get rewards for using the app ($10 off for every $100 spent, I think?), and I went so often that I was selected to be in a test group where I got a free salad every month in exchange for my thoughts. I went recently and it didn't hit the way it used to: it's too expensive, they were out of many ingredients, and it really feels like they've lost the plot with their new sides and stuff. RIP my love affair with Sweetgreen.
I have heard such good things about it back then! It is too bad I think it is just really hard to scale