Sweetgreen: a rant
+ catch me out in SF + LA this week!
Dear Friends,
Welcome back to The Crunchwrap! This week, we’re talking about Sweetgreen economics, olive oil cake, and some great in-person and virtual events that I’ve got coming up soon.
For new subscribers: Hey, I’m Adam Chandler. I’m a New York-based journalist and the author of 99% Perspiration (2025) and Drive-Thru Dreams (2019), a History Channel contributor, and the driving force behind this free-but-erratic Taco Bell-themed newsletter. I welcome you and your kind comments.
First Crunch
I’m currently drinking a Pepsi Zero on a JetBlue flight from JFK to San Francisco and so when I tell you that I’m intimately familiar with what marketplace mediocrity is, I hope you’ll straighten up.
And look, I know there are many things to write about right now – the fact that our new attorney general used to get paid $115,000 a month to lobby for Qatar is one thing I’ve been weirdly fixating on lately – but listen, I can’t spend this long flight that way. The wifi isn’t working and everyone on this plane is walking the aisle scowling like it’s a Sunday at Trader Joe’s and they are out of their Hatch-salted plantain snaps. Also, I’m trapped in a window seat and don’t want to watch A Complete Unknown or A Real Pain or Moana 2 again. And so instead, I’ve decided to use this time to break my silence (finally) about something important: Sweetgreen. Yes, the salad chain that not nearly enough people are punching down at in their precious spare time.
I’ve been a bit obsessed with the Sweetgreen story since they emerged from the fast-casual scrum of the 2010s with their $16 grain bowls and salads and promise of seasonal, farm-friendly sourcing. Sweetgreen, you may know, quickly became a status symbol for lunchers with disposable income and not enough time and good sense. In her book Trick Mirror, Jia Tolentino describes the average Sweetgreen as “less like a place to eat and more like a refueling station…” designed for people whose “purpose in life [is] to send emails for 16 hours a day with a brief break to snort down a bowl of nutrients that ward off the unhealthfulness of urban professional living.”
So let’s start there. Sweetgreen is uncool, okay? But unlike their Kale Chicken Caesar, there is actually meat to the matter. Among its sins, for example, Sweetgreen was one of the first major chains to go cashless (which they announced as a virtuous, forward-thinking move). Eventually, they had to walk the policy back because not accepting cash isn’t just illegal in some places, it’s also classist, especially if you’re constantly harping in your marketing copy and investor decks about how healthy food needs to be more accessible.
Sweetgreen, like many branded-as-enlightened fast-casual outfits before, was destined to outlive its integrity. And like many before it, it went public and it hasn’t been profitable ever since. As a result, the company just keeps pulling and pulling at the threads of its virtue shawl. Last fall, to the genuine disappointment of its fans who bought into the environmental plank of its mission, Sweetgreen announced that it would start serving steak in order to attract a wider customer base. And this past month, they finally said ah screw it and added fries to their menus. To give them brand cover, Sweetgreen’s Ripple Fries are air-fried in avocado oil. With their garlic aioli, they clock in at nearly 500 calories.
While it’s well known that beef and fries are enjoyed perhaps definitely too much at The Crunchwrap HQ, what I’m generally huffy about is the Sweetgreen trajectory. That like a salmon moving upstream to return to its home, fast-casual concerns eventually become the fast-food companies that they came of age bashing. Chipotle, the first wave of anti-fast-food, fast-casual brands, famously hired away Taco Bell’s CEO to turn their fortunes around after their multiple foodborne illness scandals and reversed course by introducing drive-thru windows. Shake Shack, the small Danny Meyer darling, now has combo meals, national ubiquity, corny marketing gimmicks, and overtly bad politics by association. And Sweetgreen now has bad fries.
Catch Me
April 3, San Francisco: Tomorrow evening, I’ll be at Book Passage (5:30 pm, Ferry Building) talking about my new book, life, and technology with The Washington Post’s own Lisa Bonos. In addition to sharing a birthday, Lisa and I also went on a gap-year program abroad together right before college and so this event really is an aww-shucks milestone that our nerdy striving teenage selves would approve of.
April 7, Los Angeles: On Monday, I’ll be at Book Soup (7:00 PM) with Rina Raphael, a talented journalist whose book The Gospel of Wellness deftly dissects a lot of important trends around self-care, lifestyle peddlers and hucksters, and capitalist-minded manifesters, all of which pair really nicely with 99% Perspiration.
April 15, Smithsonian (virtual): In case you missed my Abbott & Costello reenactment/fun virtual event with Kathy Gilsinan last month (here is a YouTube link), I have another digital event in two weeks that is my first real solo presentation of my book and its research. It’s open to the public, but also a paid event, so I won’t be coasting by solely on recycled jokes for once.
Nu, What Else?
Last week, I got to talk to Friend of the Crunch Alexis Madrigal on KQED’s Forum. This was a lot of fun, in part because the show takes live calls from local listeners and, honestly, they never disappoint. (NB: Alexis has a new book called The Pacific Circuit about how glory and agonies of the modern economy can be seen through the life of Oakland that I’m excited to start next.)
Elsewhere, Osi Atikpoh and I talked about the myths we grew up with on the A Song Called Life podcast and I joined Mike Baranowski of The Politics Guys to talk, well, politics.
I am reasonably excited that 99% Perspiration made Book Page’s list of recommended books to read for fans of Apple TV’s dystopian work saga Severance. (A list that also somehow included Haruki Murakami?!)
Lastly and most importantly, this past weekend, I made this olive oil cake from the Times. It’s pretty quick and doesn’t require you to sift anything, which is usually to exact recipe step that makes me give up and order delivery.
That’s it for this week. Thanks as always for your support and for indulging my enthusiasms/anti-enthusiasms. I’ll see you out there, California; I hope not sporadically.
Love,
Adam