When 30-year-old Sean Gransee would shell out over $15 to order Sweetgreen delivery through its Outpost program – a subsidized corporate delivery service that charges just 94 cents for delivery – he often found himself reaching for a bag of chips after eating his crispy rice bowl.
“It didn’t always fill me up,” Gransee, a software engineer from Chicago, told The Post.
One afternoon last October when he missed the office lunch order, he walked over to pick up a bowl from the chain in person. He was surprised to find a seemingly much larger portion.
“My bowl seemed a bit heavier. I was like, ‘huh are they giving me more [food] when I order in person?’ I did that again the next week, and again my salad felt a bit heavier. I thought it was all in my head, but I wanted to know for sure.”
So, the software engineer got scientific.
He purchased a food scale and weighed his orders: A delivery order clocked in at 373 grams, while the in-person order weighed 492 grams.
“The online order weighed 24% less,” he said.
Gransee also posted an Instagram reel about his surprising salad findings, and commenters were quick to skewer Sweetgreen and note other fast-casual chains where they’d experienced similar issues.
“Chipotle is guilty of this also,” said one.
“I need to order a side of lettuce with my [Cava] salad — they are so stingy with the greens,” said another.
One commenter even claimed to have worked for Cava and confirmed the practice.
“Did this myself tbh (to be honest). There are super strict rules about food portioning but I felt guilty giving such tiny portions to a person face to face and managers would check to go orders to make sure we weren’t over portioning food,” they said.
Another commenter, who claimed to have worked for a fast casual restaurant, offered up a similar explanation.
“The online orders are most likely made with the correct portions per the recipe, because staff have more time to prepare your meal and actually follow recipes. In person, there’s more pressure to quickly make food and someone staring at you so they tend to over portion (giving you more food than what’s in the recipe),” they said.
Gransee’s initial findings inspired him to get even more granular.
He roped in four of his colleagues and had them order their favorite salads online and in person.
To make the experiment as fair as possible, they made sure the salads were in the same containers and had the same amount of dressing.
The weight disparities were immediately apparent.
One colleague discovered his Sweetgreen Shroomami salad purchased online weighed 436 grams compared to 536 grams in person in one instance. In another instance, the same Shroomami weighed up to 606 grams when ordered in person.
“For the crispy rice bowl, the average online order weighed 16% less than the average in-person order,” Gransee wrote in a Medium post about the finding. “For the Shroomi Bowl, the difference was a staggering 20%.”
A Sweetgreen rep told The Post its portions are the same online as they are in-store.
“We are aware of the video and immediately reached out to the customer to address the issue. Our portion standards are the same online as they are in-store, so any discrepancy is unintentional and is being addressed by our Operations team,” the spokeswoman told The Post.
“We know how important it is to provide our guests with a consistent meal they can count on. Feedback like this helps us to learn and improve where we might be missing the mark.”
In a statement, Laurie Schalow, chief corporate affairs officer at Chipotle, told The Post that customers “have the opportunity to completely customize their meal in restaurants by vocalizing their desired portions, or digitally selecting extra, light, normal or on the side when choosing from the list of real ingredients. Chipotle receives an abundance of praise for the incredible value its entrees offer with responsibly sourced ingredients chopped or grilled fresh daily.”
Cava did not return requests for comment.
The bottom line: Gransee urges eaters to order in person if they want more bang for their buck.
“If you want a filling meal from Sweetgreen, ditch the computer and order face-to-face,” he wrote.
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