Sweetgreen's store visits rose 5.6% through the lettuce scare that cut its sales outlook to a 7-8% fall

At the midpoints, the August revision moved Sweetgreen's full-year same-store forecast from minus 3% to minus 7.5%, a cut of 4.5 percentage points ^[1]. The base was already weak. Same-store sales fell 11.5% in 2025 ^[5], and compounding that with the new midpoint (0.885 times 0.925) puts comparable sales roughly 18% below their 2024 level ^[2].

Placer.ai's traffic figure is harder to square with that forecast. Its window, July 6 to September 11, opens before the outbreak's mid-July start and closes on the day the CDC declared it over ^[7][4]. Visits per location rose 5.6% across it, or rather, Placer.ai estimates they did ^[8]. Chopt's fell 7.7%, leaving two salad chains that faced the same headlines 13.3 points apart ^[3].

Both numbers can be true at once. Same-store sales counts dollars and Placer.ai counts visits, so the damage may sit in spending per visit or in orders a visit count would miss. In that case the traffic data flatters the recovery. Alternatively, the August forecast may have been set at the low point. "It was a painful summer because that was like the headline for all summer," Jammet told Fortune ^[9]. Trainor's upgrade, citing a faster-than-expected recovery, supports that version ^[7]. The third possibility is an easy comparison, since the 5.6% is measured against a 2025 in which same-store sales fell 11.5% ^[5].

I'd give the forecast more weight. It is the company's own projection of dollars, while Placer.ai's figure is an outside estimate of footfall. The counter-case is timing: Sweetgreen cut in August ^[3], and the outbreak ran until September 11 ^[4]. If the next report shows a same-store decline smaller than 7%, or a raised range, the forecast was too cautious and the shares' 28% gain this year was the better judgement ^[6].

Jammet said the company emphasized its supply chain and store execution instead of letting it "get too distracted by the narrative" ^[11]. On the menu, Sweetgreen ran limited-time collaborations with Alice Waters and the tinned-fish brand Fishwife over the summer ^[12], and the three Baz items are on sale through November 9 ^[10]. The collaborations are "bringing back a bit of that drumbeat that, you know, really built the brand," Jammet said ^[13]. The Baz menu arrived after the Placer.ai window closed ^[8][10], so the rebound in that data came before it.

Jammet also said he worries the summer's headlines may have nudged people to believe "the safer thing is actually highly processed food," and that he has watched farmers till fields of greens back into the ground ^[15]. "I feel like we're on the other side of cyclospora, and the world has kind of moved on," he said ^[14].