Rarely a week goes by that Brandon and I don’t make the four block journey to get ourselves some Sweetgreen salads. I’m partial to the Earth Bowl, while Brandon likes to get a Kale Caesar with red onions added.
It’s delicious and healthy, but damn if we don’t hate ourselves when we do it.
Because the spot is kinda jerk off. I take that back. It’s really fucking jerk off. It was funded by like three trust fund Georgetown University dudes, who whenever they tell their scrappy story about being a start up salad spot, neglect to mention the quarter million investment they got from their parents to rent a storefront on the most primo street in all of DC for their first store.
They’re now going nationwide, and if you thought they would get less pompous as they grew and expanded ha ha ha lol oh my god you’d be wrong.
Here they were last year talking to CNN Money.
“Healthy food shouldn’t just be for the top 1%,” Jonathan Neman, one of the co-founders, told CNNMoney.
The average salad at a Sweetgreen runs 11 bucks, so if you are wondering if they are making healthy food that’s only available to the one percent, which is something the say they don’t believe in, the answer is yes, they are.
You wanna hear some more of their hubris? Here’s how they announced they were banning bacon from their chains today.
“Simply put, you can’t be a healthy food business and serve bacon.”
HAHAHA OH MAN. Yes. You can. Yes, you can. I’m not one of those ZZOMNG bacon folks, and frankly, I don’t care if it’s on their menu. I never get it in a salad I order there. But you can have an accoutrement to a salad that is not the healthiest thing in the world without cataclysmically corroding the arteries of your customer.
And you can take it off your menu without masturbating in front of every one of your customers while talking about how great you are.
It’s jack off posturing and nothing more. The Kale Caesar comes with a fucking pound of Parmesan cheese crisps. And more Parmesan cheese. And Caesar Salad dressing.
But it’s all part of their Make America Healthy Again. No fucking joke. That’s the name of it. That’s what the rich salad company named their campaign to stop serving bacon in their stores. From Washingtonian:
The menu change, which starts today, is part of a new campaign on behalf of the business, “Make America Healthy Again.”
“Especially in the midst of a presidential election cycle, we need to be talking about the food system and how it’s connected to public health, climate change and the environment,” reads Sweetgreen’s mission statement. “We need to rethink how we define ‘healthy’ and take action.”
If you added up all the dismissive wanking motions humans have made throughout the entire history of this planet, it wouldn’t be enough to properly give that statement the response it deserves.
Oh, they are also banning Sriracha, too, because it has some added sugars. Fret not, though, they’ve added steelhead trout.
While taking away certain salad components, the chain has added health-minded items like roasted portobello mushrooms and sustainably-raised steelhead trout—a fish with a rich, salmon-like flavor that’s rated a “best choice” by the Monterey Bay Seafood Watch.
The steelhead trout salad costs $14.99 at my local Sweetgreen. What was that you said last year, Jonathon Newan?
“Healthy food shouldn’t just be for the top 1%.”
Oh, right. Duh.