Sweetgreen Reopens After Health Concerns

Sweetgreen restaurant's Back Bay location has reopened Friday after temporarily closing earlier this week due to failing multiple health inspections.

Sweetgreen has passed a new inspection, reopening at 1:30 p.m. The location has designated a food safety expert on staff.

Karen Kelley, President and CEO of sweetgreen, released the following statement:

Today at 1:30 pm we were pleased to reopen our sweetgreen Back Bay location. Over the past several days we have worked closely with the City of Boston and its Health Department to correct the issues raised by inspectors. We want to assure our customers that this was an isolated incident and that we have taken steps to make sure it does not happen again. The safety of our guests is our top priority, and something we take extremely seriously at sweetgreen. Effective immediately, we have a designated food safety expert on staff in Back Bay and will assign a similar expert to all of our locations. As a young, growing company, we are constantly striving to be the best. We will work tirelessly to maintain the trust of our community in Boston, and we understand that great communities are built one connection at a time.

According to documents obtained by WHDH 7News from city inspectors, the Sweetgreen at 800 Boylston St. failed three inspections this summer, and on Tuesday the city temporarily suspended its operating license.

With each inspection, the number of violations decreased, according to those documents, but not significantly enough. The 20 violations included inadequate hand-washing, food out of temperature, and floor maintenance problems, according to the documents.

The vegetarian chain has been on an expansion kick in Boston of late, with five new restaurants now open or currently in the works. It also has locations in New York and Washington, D.C., with additions planned around the country.

Mike Carraggi contributed to this report

>> Photo of SweetGreen's Bittman salad by Mike Licht via Flickr/Creative Commons