sweetgreen - Healthy Salads, Bowls and Plates — Restaurant in Los Angeles

Today I found myself craving a good salad. Not as a side dish but rather the primary part of my dinner. I had been meaning to try Sweetgreen for quite sometime now but I keep forgetting to do so. No time like the present since I am having salad cravings and salads are their specialty. Due to the now long running pandemic I do not want to linger in one place for to long so I ordered through Uber Eats and picked up my order because why not take a nice walk and get a little exercise by picking up your order yourself. I ordered the "Garden Cobb" salad with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing on the side. The app offered a large variety of toppings to choose from. Some of them came standard for this particular salad while others were additional options with varrying added costs. You could also remove any of the standard toppings if you did not want one or more of them on your salad. One of the standard toppings was Almonds and I am not really fond of Almonds so I did request that they not include that one topping. All of the ingredients were fresh sand of good quality and for the most part the salad was good. There were a few not so good things about it though. One of the additional toppings I ordered was Red Onions. It was an additional 50 cents for that topping. 50 cents is reasonable for some chopped red onion but unfortunately there was only 3 small pieces in my whole salad. 50 cents is a bit over priced for only 3 small pieces of red onion. One normally associates roasted chicken with a Cobb salad but chicken was not one of the standard ingredients. Roasted chicken was one of the additional cost toppings though. The additional cost was $3 for what I assumed (because of the cost) would be 1 chicken breast roasted and chopped. If this was 1 chicken breast, then it was a very small chicken. Their menu did not specifically state that you would be getting a full chicken breast but for $3 it would not have killed them to give me more than the very small amount of chicken I got. The chicken I did get was also slightly over cooked and it was pretty dry for that reason. The balsamic vinaigrette dressing also has a slight chemical smell to it and you cooked taste that smell as well. I did not get sick or needed to be rushed to a hospital so that smell and taste were probably a natural part of the balsamic vinaigrette dressing they were using. It was a little bit off puting to me though. Overall, I paid over $21 for this salad. It was okay but not without some issues. For $21 I don't think it is unreasonable to expect less issues and...

I’m a loyal, daily Sweetgreen customer (which can be verified from my rewards app), and I’ve always loved your food — especially the Autumn Harvest Bowl. But lately, things have really gone downhill.

A few days ago at the Hollywood location, they were out of the cold sweet potato — one of the key reasons I love that salad. The thinly sliced, chilled sweet potato gives it so much of its flavor and texture, so being offered warm, chunky sweet potato “at no extra cost” honestly threw me off. It’s not really a fair swap when it changes the entire bowl.

They were also out of bread — again. This has become a regular issue, and many times I have been given stale/dry bread. The day before, they were running low on wild rice and Brussels sprouts, and the staff had to scrape the bottom of the container just to fill the scoop. This happens not just at the Hollywood store, but at West Hollywood too, so it’s clearly not a one-time thing.

As someone who literally goes every day, it’s frustrating to see how inconsistent the experience has become. The staff should really be mindful of how much customers are paying — nearly $20 a salad — and take a little more care with portions. Too often it feels rushed, with scoops barely filled and ingredients thrown together without much attention.

I actually reached out to Sweetgreen directly before posting this, just to give them a chance to respond or make things right. But they didn’t even acknowledge my message, let alone offer a reply or compensation.

It’s disappointing, because I truly love Sweetgreen and want to keep supporting it. But the lack of consistency, care, and response has made me start rethinking my...

Racially Based Portion Sizes: I have been going to this location for almost a year now and I am not going to mince words about what I have observed:

The Hispanic women working the line hookup Hispanic customers, giving them 2-3x more portions, and the way they "pay" for this is to cheat the next customer in line giving them 1/2 portions. It's not just me, I have observed them cheating over Asian and black customers too, (just anyone non-Hispanic.)

The last straw for me was when I was there on Saturday I watched the Hispanic worker giving a Hispanic customer the most outrageous bowl I have ever seen at Sweetgreen. I mean, the bowls aren't even this big in the commercials, it was towering six inches above the brim. And NO she did not pay for extra portions. Then I see the same worker totally rip off this gym-bro who ordered a double-protein bowl. His bowl was so chincy, it appeared empty. And to top it off he had a Sweetgreen pass, meaning he's a loyal customer! I won't go into all the times I have had this happen, or stood back in line hoping a different worker would serve us.

To be clear, the men at this location give you a fair portion regardless of race, Black, White, Hispanic etc.

I know the manager is going to reply saying they would never do this and they strive for quality, blah, blah, blah. But I know the real truth, and I'm just letting everyone else know.

So if this doesn't bother you, come to the location, and if you happen to be Hispanic, also come to this location for lots...