Staffing

Sweetgreen cutting corporate jobs

Co-Founder and CEO Jonathan Neman told employees last week that

Provided

October 27, 2020

Sweetgreen is reducing 20% of its corporate workforce, according to a letter written last week to employees by co-founder and CEO Jonathan Neman.

"We have moved forward with reorganizing and restructuring our team so we can put our company on a stronger and more focused path to profitable growth," he wrote. "This will mean different things for different people — some roles will evolve, some departments will remain the same and unfortunately, some roles will be eliminated."

He also said that transparency was part of the company's core and pointed out that the restaurant industry has been ben severely impacted by COVID-19. Recent data from Yelp found, for example, that since March, 61% of all restaurant closures were listed as permanent on its platform, and many offices were not returning until next summer.

"In our updated forecast we shared in April, we had expected more employees to return to offices after Labor Day and that we'd see a stronger ramp in economic recovery," he said. "The reality is many of our restaurants in dense urban areas, particularly in NYC, have yet to recover. We expect that this will be the case for the foreseeable future, but the one thing I'm absolutely sure of is that we'll recover as people, as a business and as a community. Over time, we will come out of this stronger with a reinvigorated sense of purpose for connecting people to real food."

What restructuring and reorganization looks like

The leadership team has finalized a roadmap for the next two years that includes accelerating store growth in new communities, reducing menu and operational complexity, investing in and elevating store leadership and enhancing our digital ordering,

"This plan will change how we work," Neman said. "This means that we need to reduce our investment in areas that do not directly support these objectives."

Once the team modeled slower financial recovery for 2021, the first things it looked at reducing were non-headcount-related expenses across the company including leases, consultants, vendors and temp spend.

"After we looked at all these costs, we started looking at headcount and determined how each team supported this new roadmap," he said. "We then determined the appropriate size for each department moving forward. Teams were impacted differently based on how this slower economy will affect our business."

Taking care of employees leaving

To take care of those leaving, the company is providing:

Severance: Employees will receive a minimum of six weeks of severance pay and up to 12 weeks based upon tenure.
Healthcare continuance: Providing company-paid COBRA through year-end.
Employee Assistance Program: Network access for two months to provide critical support from a comprehensive menu of private individual services including mental health webinars, wellness practices, careers resources and personal counseling.
Job Transition & Outplacement Services:Employees will be provided with professional career transition services aided by a personal career coach to help them successfully target and secure a new job.
Alumni Opt-In Program: To provide networking, job search tools and support including alumni calls with members of the People team to help with successful navigation through this transition.

This crisis has forced us to reflect and remember what makes sweetgreen what it is," Neman wrote. "I believe it's our mission — connecting more people to real food. This remains unchanged and will continue to be our North Star.