WHERE THE FISH COMES FROM
Pacific Seafood in Clackamas, Oregon
THE VOLUME 4,500 pounds of steelhead trout per week are shipped to all locations.
THE CHALLENGE Seafood is a particularly big challenge for any conscientious food business: “It’s this big blue ocean that is unregulated,” Jammet says. Sweetgreen first chose farm-raised salmon from Chile, a popular fish that received a “good alternative” rating from California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium, a sustainability advocate. But two years ago, as scrutiny of the seafood industry and its rampant supply and labor problems mounted, Sweetgreen started looking for a domestic source of fish.
THE SOLUTION Pacific Seafood’s farmed steelhead trout is native to the Pacific Northwest and looks a lot like salmon; Monterey Bay considers it a “best choice” for the environment (though some critics caution that farms use too much fish meal to be truly sustainable). Sweetgreen pitched the less-familiar steelhead to customers as “salmon’s sexy, more sustainable cousin.” As Jammet says, “There are all of these regional species that we should be eating.”
THE PAYOFF For 76-year-old Pacific Seafood, which also supplies large grocery chains such as Kroger, Sweetgreen is a smaller but important customer. “They have 70-some restaurants and their growth is aggressive,” says Craig Appleyard, who manages Pacific Seafood’s salmon and steelhead operations. “They’re the future—the kind of company we want to work with.”