sweetgreen Reviews

3.4

40% would recommend to a friend

(967 total reviews)
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Jonathan Neman

34% approve of CEO

40% positive business outlook

sweetgreen has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 967 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The sweetgreen employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Restaurants and food service industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

967 reviews
1.0
1 Mar 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Probably the pro that everyone raves about is the "free" food. Just think of how sick you will get of eating the same food everyday.

Cons

Oh where to even begin! First of all, I'm so glad I got to leave this toxic place. My entire well being and life has improved the minute I walked out. Let's start with the C-level management. As all problems do, it starts at the top. The "guys" decided one day to grow up and instead of being co-founder, and co-CEOs, to become a group of C something else. I'm almost certain there was some sort of raffle to decide that. The CEO, is the master of sound bites, he has no clear strategy. His "Steve Jobs" wanna be attitude would make you pull your hair out. However , if you are part of the cult that drinks the kool aid, you will find him fascinating. He doesn't run the company, he reacts to what happens in it. The CMO is likely the smartest one, but oddly enough decided to uproot his legacy brand team, that made sweetgreen what it is today and move them to LA from New York City. Needless to say, they all quit and he had to replace and double the size of the marketing team to make up for it. The CPO, or CCO, or C-whatever-O is exactly that, meh, whatever. Can't really tell what he does, probably pulled the short straw at the time of C-level picks. Newly appointed COO, is the exact opposite replacement of the older COO, think the opposite of a strong, opinionated, seasoned woman. CIO, ran away after a few weeks. Smart! Learn from his experience and don't bother joining. Now my fellow Treehouse employees can probably be divided into a few groups: The legacy team, and those are the people who have been with the company since the DC days. They are a dying breed that are either staying because they are part of the "untouchable, do no wrong" group, or they have so much equity and they are dying to get rich one day. The favorites, those are the ones who are close to the C-level folks. They get promoted every year, raises and stocks a couple of times a year, and can never do anything wrong, even if they have no results to show for. The Doomed, those are the opposites of the ones above, work your behind off, get nothing but hand picked problems back. You almost feel bad for them, except that they can just leave. The freshmen, and they are A LOT, due to the high turnover of the organization. They are hopeful for the future, but quickly start to realize that something isn't adding up. The overall culture is to take no responsibility for anything, just appear like you do. Self-awareness is no-existing to the point of being laughable and your chances of growth depend on who your manager is and only a few good ones are around.

2.0
18 June 2020

(corporate) SG Promises a Dream that Ends in a Waking Nightmare

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The company hires smart spirited employees who are not only execllent "culture fits," but also great people. The mission + values are awesome in principal and if not for the absolute

Cons

Sweetgreen is ego-driven and a company that gets off on visions of "transparency," when the reality is much more bleak. Sterile executive meetings garner a culture of "be quiet" that penetrates all the way down to the manager level. Sweetgreen will promise you a beautiful vision "get a job on the intersection of food and tech for a company brimming with capitol, NYT headlines, benefits, and young minds wanting to change the way people eat." The reality is anything but. Lack of organization bites sweetgreen at the deepest level. Leaders are confused, there is no clarity for why decisions have been made, people don't come together or agree. I knew I wanted to leave in the first few weeks of staring and the most intelligent among new-hires stay for a year to snag the equity and then escape. Fatigue runs rampant, leads to frustration. Work-life balance is a laughable dream. Turnover, even at the C-level, is INCREDIBLY high. It's not uncommon for a manger to end up reporting to three or four leaders in one year. Even in a world COVID-related layoffs and a recession on the way, incredible talent would rather be unemployed than work for this company. You don't want to work here. You might think you do, but dip your toes in the undercurrent and you'll be running for the hills.

1.0
20 Nov 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You get a lot of free salads

Cons

Out of touch tech leadership that speaks in platitudes but does nothing to actually make things better, and actually makes things actively worse

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