
A Heated Moment
Introducing sweetgreen hot sauce, a.k.a. The Heat
We made headlines last year when we revamped our menu and removed Sriracha. In our minds, the choice was a no-brainer — Sriracha has added sugar, and we didn’t make it from scratch. But Sriracha has such a cult following that we got a lot of, well, heat, for removing it. We had tweaked our recipes for items like spicy quinoa and spicy cashew dressing, replacing Sriracha with red chili flakes, but it wasn’t doing the trick. We heard you loud and clear in tweets, emails and in our stores — the dried chiles just weren’t cutting it.
So our chef went to work in his test kitchen to develop a proprietary hot sauce that mimicked the sweet heat of Sriracha, while fitting our food ethos. For us, that meant no added or hidden sugars. Over the years, hidden sugars have permated the entire food system and can contribute to health issues like diabetes. Here at sweetgreen, we’re big on transparency, so we’ve iterated our menu to remove some of those “hidden” sugars from our beverages, our dressings and seasonings.
After months of iterations, we developed a proprietary hot sauce we’re thrilled with, and it’s now at your local sweetgreen, replacing red chili flakes in the Spicy Sabzi and drizzled atop the Curry Chickpea Bowl, a winter seasonal.

Our sweetgreen hot sauce is pretty special. It’s made with Fresno chilies, red pepper, onion, garlic, carrot, tomato paste, chipotle chili powder, nutritional yeast, cumin and apple cider vinegar.
What we love about our hot sauce:
- The flavor is spicy and savory, with slight smokiness and some natural sweetness (thanks to carrots).
- The hot sauce is versatile, pairing well with Asian, Latin and Mediterranean flavors, while most hot sauces tend to work well with a particular cuisine.
- It packs some serious heat — we’d say it’s medium-hot spicy, so give it a taste before you drizzle it on your bowl.
- There are no additives or preservatives and no added sugars — the sugar in it comes from the carrots.
We figure, since it’s the dead of winter, everyone would appreciate a little heat from us. Give it a taste and let us know what you think.
— team sweetgreen
