When I reviewed Sweetgreen and Cava last month, I found the most superb thing on the Sweetgreen menu was not a salad.
The item I liked best was the hot honey chicken plate, a hearty meal featuring roasted chicken on a bed of warm quinoa with veggies. Sweetgreen, which generates a majority of its revenue during lunch, first introduced the 'plates' category during the pandemic. They've tested a few of these protein-packed meals over the years.
But, the hot honey chicken has been the only core item on the plates menu for the past few years. That changes on Tuesday when Sweetgreen expands the menu with two new items to beef up its dinner business. The plates range in price from $14 to $16.
Nicolas Jammet, Sweetgreen cofounder and chief concept officer, said for so many years, the chain has been used frequently for its "amazing lunch."
Adding heartier meals, he said, gives "our existing customers some exciting options to eat at different parts of their daily lives when they don't want a salad."
Jammet and Sweetgreen's new head of culinary, Chad Brauze, a former Chipotle corporate chef, gave Insider a sneak peek tasting of the new plate meals at their two-year-old Los Angeles test kitchen.
Besides the new meals, we also tried a third grain the chain is adding to the menu and new toppings such as crispy onions.
Here's a look at the menu updates at Sweetgreen.