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Sweetgreen is undoubtedly one of the healthier fast-food options in the U.S., but it’s also one of the most expensive. Salads cost about $16 on average, but the company’s CEO encourages customers to think beyond today’s price of a meal and instead consider the long-term impacts of what you eat.
Consumer confidence is plummeting—and for good reason. Since 2020, prices on goods have jumped more than 23%, and there’s fear surrounding President Donald Trump’s new tariff policies as well as inflation.
But one CEO is imploring consumers to think beyond today’s price of their product, championing the long-term benefits it can bring. Sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman told the New York Times that when you think about the cost of something, you have to sometimes think about the total cost of it.
“There’s the cost to you, but when you eat certain things, what’s the cost to your health? What’s the cost to the environment?” said Neman, who launched the fast-casual salad chain in the mid-2000s while he was a student at Georgetown University. The company went public in late 2021 and now has 250 locations across the U.S.—and aspirations to make the brand the Starbucks of salad.
Neman and his business partners, Nicolas Jammet and Nathaniel Ru, opened their first Sweetgreen near campus in Washington, D.C., in 2007. This was just about three years after the premiere of the documentary Super Size Me, which initiated conversations about the short- and long-term impacts of traditional American fast food.
“We were going to be rejecting the fast food of the previous generation,” Neman told the NYT.
But healthier options inevitably mean a higher cost—and subsequently price for consumers. The average Sweetgreen salad costs about $16, according to Eater, while the average price of a Big Mac meal is about $10.
“People are paying not only for the quality of the taste in the food, but the fact that it’s made by hand, the fact that we pay our farmers and our team members fairly,” Neman told NYT.
However, Sweetgreen uses fresh ingredients from farm and produce partners, and the menu largely consists of vegetables, grains, and proteins—although it recently launched air-fried ripple fries that are about 160 fewer calories than McDonald’s fries. The company also touted in an advertisement the fries have just five ingredients, while competitors include a litany of unrecognizable additives.
“Most companies process their food centrally and ship it out around the country,” Neman told the Wall Street Journal in 2024. “In order to maximize the taste and the freshness, we believe that food should be made closer to where the guests are eating the food.”
Plus, “treating” yourself to Sweetgreen could actually end up being cheaper than buying groceries: Take it from former Fortune reporter Jane Thier. The average monthly cost of groceries for a single person is $504, BLS data shows.
Sweetgreen didn’t immediately respond to Fortune’s request for additional comment.
Although company profits were up to nearly $677 million for fiscal 2024, according to Sweetgreen’s most recent earnings report, it still faced a net loss of about $90 million. Assuming a $16 average price for a salad from Sweetgreen, the company loses about $2.26 per meal, a Sherwood News analysis showed. Some of the highest costs include food, drinks, packaging, labor, and administrative costs, the earnings report shows.
Another major cost for Sweetgreen has been investing in technology to power its pickup services, deliveries, and AI to provide suggestions to customers and maintain its loyalty program.
“Our path to profitability on a net income basis comes from a few levers,” Neman told WSJ. “The first is continuing to grow our footprint. Second is growing sales in existing stores. The third is being very disciplined on our cost structure to make sure the incremental profit we’re making is flowing through the bottom line.”
Sweetgreen will report first-quarter fiscal 2025 earnings on May 8.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
