Root-to-stem cooking is catching on among operators committed to using every part of the vegetable—including the peel, leaves and gnarly ends that usually get tossed in the trash. At Sweetgreen, a health-focused restaurant concept with 31 locations, the trend took the form of a limited-time vegetable-scrap salad on the late-summer menu at its four New York City stores.
Fresh facts
- A portion of the salad’s $8.60 price tag was donated to City Harvest, a New York organization that fights hunger.
- Food scraps that aren’t used in menu items are composted at each Sweetgreen location.
- 31 percent of food in the U.S. goes uneaten—about 133 billion pounds of food every year. - National Resources Defense Fund
- 6 billion pounds of produce are thrown out each year in the U.S. - National Resources Defense Fund
Sweetgreen’s so-called WastED salad was developed in collaboration with Chef Dan Barber of New York City’s Blue Hill restaurant. It is named after a temporary pop-up restaurant Barber launched in March, cooking up $15 plates featuring ingredients that normally would be discarded—fish bones, apple peels, stale bread, bruised bok choy leaves and carrot tops. “For years, we’ve been inspired by Chef Dan’s culinary approach, the change he’s spearheaded and conversation he’s started around agriculture and food,” says Sweetgreen co-founder Nicolas Jammet. “Together, he helped us create a salad that celebrates this idea of food waste and the opportunities in our supply chain to really tackle that.”
During the development process, the Sweetgreen team unearthed the potential of food parts that would normally be considered castoffs, says Jammet. The raw ingredients that ended up in the salad include broccoli leaves, romaine hearts and carrot peels. Kale stems, broccoli stalks, cabbage cores and bread butts—all roasted in anchovy oil to intensify flavor—were tossed in, as well. Shaved Parmesan, arugula, spicy roasted sunflower seeds and pesto vinaigrette complete the recipe.
The salad sold incredibly well, says Jammet, adding that Sweetgreen’s customers are excited about the issue of food waste being brought to life. “We’ve created a lot of really cool content around it, both digitally [on the website] and in our menu ‘newspapers,’” he says. “It’s a really exciting moment for the brand, for us to talk to our customers about something a little more serious in the food world.”
The WastED salad ended its run on Sweetgreen’s menu Sept. 28, but the chain intends to continue its waste-reduction mission, working with vendors to see what ingredients could be recovered back into the supply chain and training employees in more efficient ingredient prep. The New York locations already have incorporated broccoli leaves into the seasonal menu, working with Sweetgreen’s broccoli farmer to maximize that part of the plant that’s usually trashed.