A New Era of ... Salad Subscriptions?

Sweetgreen, a chain restaurant headquartered in Los Angeles, is kicking off the new year with a new kind of offer: Starting this week, the chain is selling a "salad subscription" called a Sweetpass that offers members as much as 30% off each purchase.

Founded in 2007 in Washington DC by three college students who wanted to bring healthy foods into an accessible, fast-paced space, Sweetgreen focuses on farm-to-fork produce, healthy living, and giving back to the community. The founders' greatest goal is to create spaces where passion and purpose come together, and they are actively fulfilling that intention with a salad subscription that allows customers to step into their New Year's resolutions.

While a "salad subscription" may not sound enticing to many of us who prefer more savory on-the-run options, the Sweetgreen team is doing an admirable job reading the culture and responding to what they identify as unnamed desires and untapped potential. The ongoing pandemic has brought to the surface a multitude of cultural frustrations -- from access to basic resources to a desire to pull together in more cohesive ways -- and out-of-the-box thinking such as the Sweepass salad subscription are exactly what we need.

How can we be a church that recognizes the longings in the culture around us, centering on the need rather than the irritants, pressing into solutions rather than joining the complainers? What can we offer the community around us that could bring surprise and delight in a time of ongoing challenges, surprising others with a spirit of love and selflessness? How can we be individuals who imagine anew, bringing Gospel hope to a world that is so clearly seeking?

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great powerforus who believe.-- Ephesians 1:18-19

Unfortunately Sweetgreen has not yet made it to the Pacific Northwest, but you can learn more about their inspiring story in this three-minute YouTube video -- The Sweetgreen Story -- and on their website: https://www.sweetgreen.com/mission. How will you bring hope to those around you this week?