Animal Welfare

At sweetgreen, we are committed to continuously improving our standards, and that includes farm animal welfare. Our mission, building healthier communities by connecting people to real food, means we aim to be a positive force on our food system by providing our community full transparency throughout every step of our supply chain.

Our egg sourcing standards
We source only cage-free eggs to assure a higher quality of life for all the hens in our supply chain. This means all our mayonnaise and hard-boiled eggs come from cage-free eggs. All eggs we source are compliant with California Proposition 12.

Our chicken sourcing standards
Since we committed to the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC) in 2018, we’ve made significant progress in how we source our chicken and have fulfilled our promises to many of the BCC tenants. Working closely with animal welfare organization Compassion in World Farming, we can proudly announce as of December 31, 2023 we have met 40% of our commitments to five out of the seven tenets of the BCC through sourcing Global Animal Partnership certified Step GAP 2 chicken. The tenets met include stocking density, litter, lighting, enrichments, and third-party auditing. We will be working with leading partners to make progress with stocking density, litter, lighting, enrichments, and third party auditing, and working to increase this percentage to 50% by 2025, 75% by 2026, and 100% by 2027.

What this means:

Chickens have increased space to move around and exhibit natural behaviors
Chickens have at least 3 inches of dry, friable litter allowing these birds to forage,
scratch, and dust bathe. Better litter quality also better protects their leg health.
Chickens have enrichments in their barns to be active and explore their environments
Chickens have a lighting system, including sunlight during the day and continuous
nighttime darkness, which better supports their visual needs and the expression of a wider range of natural behaviors.
We comply with third-party auditing through Global Animal Partnership certification.

As of December 31, 2023, 14% of our chickens are processed in facilities that utilize Controlled Atmosphere Stunning. This modern technique implements a more humane method of processing and creates a calmer environment often sought out by poultry workers. We are working to increase this percentage to 25% by 2026, 50% by 2027, and 100% by 2028.

As of December 31, 2023, none (or 0%) of our farmers are utilizing an approved slower-growing breed with higher welfare outcomes. We are continuously working with our suppliers to explore and incorporate higher welfare breeds across 100% of our network by 2029.Sweetgreen pledges to report annually to demonstrate our increasing progress and commitment to transparency while we work to reach 100% compliance with the Better Chicken Commitment. We are proud to be featured in Compassion in World Farming’s annual ChickenTrack report as we showcase our continued success for chicken welfare.