Fast casual salad chain Sweetgreen will begin offering workers five months of paid parental leave to parents, adoptive parents, or foster parents “with new additions to their families.” The company, which was founded in 2007 by three Georgetown University graduates, announced the move in an Instagram post last night.

“We believe it’s our responsibility to lead the way given the U.S. is one of the few countries that does not mandate any paid leave for new parents,” founders Jonathan Neman, Nathaniel Ru and Nicolas Jammet wrote. “This move is rare for our industry and we hope this creates a conversation for other companies to join in.”

A company spokesperson says it will apply to both full- and part-time employees.

Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at Brookings’ Center on Children and Families, told DCist that five months of parental leave is “generous.” And while she sees an increasing number of companies making the choice to offer expanded family or parental leave benefits these days, it’s more of a trend in the tech sector than the service sector. But, “it’s in the service sector where we need it the most,” she says. “The problem has been lack of paid parental leave for moderate and low-wage workers,” rather than white collar employees.

Sweetgreen joins a handful of other restaurant- and service-industry companies that have expanded paid leave benefits. Earlier this year, athletic wear company Lululemon Athletica announced it would offer three months of paid parental leave to full-time employees who have worked at the company for two years, and six months to parents who’ve been with the company five or more years. Last year, Starbucks expanded its policies, giving non-birth parents six weeks of paid leave (new mothers already got 16 weeks and new fathers got 12).

Sawhill thinks Sweetgreen—which operates twelve locations in D.C.—can expect significant workforce benefits as a result of its new policy. “I think that it will be a great recruiting tool as well as a motivating factor in retaining good employees,” she said. “We know from the research that providing paid family leave can reduce turnover, can help with recruiting, and can increase morale and productivity.” In addition to the District, Sweetgreen also operates stores in three states–California, Massachusetts, and New York–that have passed paid family leave laws.

Sweetgreen’s move comes as employers and employees across the District look ahead to the implementation of D.C.’s Universal Paid Leave law, which goes into effect in July 2020 and will offer eight weeks of parental leave, six weeks of leave to care for family members, and two weeks for personal illness. The program is funded by a 0.62 percent payroll tax, and a new government agency will administer the benefits. In other words, funding for an employee’s leave would come out of a citywide pool, rather than directly from their employer.

It’s not clear yet exactly how the two policies will interact. Sawhill points out that while the length of Sweetgreen’s paid leave is significantly more generous, the D.C. law is more expansive, in that it offers benefits to workers taking on caregiving responsibilities beyond parenthood. That could mean that Sweetgreen employees could end up covered by both policies. “I would presume that you could get the benefits that the company provides, and if they don’t provide something, you could turn to your local government policy,” Sawhill speculated.