Bourgeois “food platform” Sweetgreen feels, always, like what would happen if lunch became an app. What is it like to be one of the employees of this weird techie food bowl factory?
I am going to say this based upon purely anecdotal evidence, to be taken for what it’s worth: I have been in Sweetgreen probably a dozen times, and never have I seen a place with a more noticeable contrast between the overwhelmingly brown-skinned work force and the overwhelmingly young, white, affluent clientele. It creeps me out. Is this a true, profound dynamic of the company, or just my own impression? I would love for Sweetgreen employees to tell me!
Sweetgreen, a large conveyor line to feed bowls of expensive vegetables to upwardly mobile office workers, touts a set of “Core Values” (in faux-breezy all-lowercase lettering) including “keep it real: cultivate authentic food and relationships” and “win, win, win: create solutions where the company wins, the customer wins, the community wins.”
Do the employees of Sweetgreen win, too? I don’t know. I do know that Sweetgreen is not unionized, and online reports say the company pays most workers less than $15 an hour. Of course, only the employees themselves can tell us for sure.
Do you now work or have you recently worked at Sweetgreen? Please email me and tell me what it’s like. What is the job like? What is the pay like? What are the working conditions like? What are the racial dynamics like? What are the interactions with customers and management like? Given the fact that Sweetgreen could be a billion-dollar company whose branding is centered in part on social conscience, it would surely be enlightening to know how it treats its workers.
Email me, at [email protected], and ask your coworkers to email me as well. Thank you.