Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes



Sweet Tomatoes, operating as Souplantation in southern California, is a United States–based chain of all-you-can-eat buffet-style restaurants. The first location opened in 1978 in San Diego, California, where the company was headquartered. The company was incorporated as Garden Fresh Corp. in 1983. The company went public in 1995 but was taken private in 2004. The company, owned by Garden Fresh Restaurant Corporation, temporarily closed its 97 locations in March 2020 in response to government mandates related to the COVID-19 pandemic. On May 7, 2020, the closure was made permanent and the company filed for liquidation. However, one restaurant in Tucson, Arizona reopened after one firm bought the assets of the company, with no word yet on whether other locations will be reopened.

History
The first Souplantation restaurant opened on Mission Gorge Road in San Diego, in 1978. It was the idea of Dennis Jay, who was a bartender at Springfield Wagon Works, a pioneer in salad bars in El Cajon. Dennis's friends, John Turnbull and Scott King, were opening their first Soup and Salad restaurant, The Soup Exchange. Dennis was impressed with the new concept and introduced Steve Hohe, the Springfield Restaurant manager, and Ron Demery, a bail bondsman and friend of John and Scott. Dennis, Steve, and Ron decided to partner to create a parallel concept, the Souplantation. The two concepts grew side by side in a friendly, mutually supportive, yet competitive environment for several years. This restaurant and a second one in Point Loma were purchased in 1983 by Garden Fresh Restaurant Corp, founded by Michael Mack to operate the chain.

The company expanded across the American West and Southwest and also opened locations in several Southeast states, including 23 restaurants in Florida. All of the restaurants were company-owned.

In 2005, an affiliate of the private investment firm Sun Capital Partners purchased Garden Fresh and with it the restaurant chains. In 2007, a Souplantation restaurant in Orange County, California, was linked to an outbreak of E. coli. The restaurant closed temporarily while authorities investigated the outbreak.

In October 2016, Garden Fresh Restaurant Corp, the owner/operator of Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. At the time Garden Fresh was nearly $175 million in debt. In January 2017, the company said it expected to emerge from bankruptcy later that month, following a sale of the company's assets to New York–based private investment firm Cerberus Capital Management L.P. and its partners. Garden Fresh anticipated it would wind up with "between 90 and 104 restaurants" and "significantly less debt". In 2017, Garden Fresh and its restaurant chains were purchased by the New York City–based private investment firm Cerberus Capital Management.

In March 2020, all of the restaurants closed due to state and local government mandated shutdowns as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. On May 7, 2020, the company announced it would be closing all Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes locations permanently amid concerns that new federal guidelines recommending an end to self-serve stations would prevent local health departments from granting permits to restaurants with salad bars and buffets.

Garden Fresh Restaurants, the parent company to both Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes, filed for Chapter 7 liquidation with the United States bankruptcy courts the following week on May 14. At the time of the announcement, the company had 4,400 employees and 97 restaurants.

In May 2022, a Souplantation restaurant not formally associated with the former company was announced. The location was set to open in La Mesa, California, in mid-2022, but in July was delayed without an opening date, and there were conflicting reports on whether the new restaurant would include recipes owned by the original company. Later reports indicated that the Souplantation in La Mesa would not be reopened and that the location would instead be occupied by a Golden Life ADHC daycare. In March 2023, ST Three LLC purchased the exclusive rights and intellectual property assets of Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes. One former location in Tucson, Arizona on Broadway and Wilmot Road had initially been planned to reopen in fall 2023 but ultimately reopened on April 1, 2024. The company chose that particular location because it was the most popular location in the state of Arizona. There are currently no plans to reopen other locations across the country.

Format
Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes specializes in fresh salads and soups, and pasta, as well as bread, muffins, cornbread, and focaccia, baked on the premises. Most items are vegetarian.

The salad bar offers a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, croutons, and other salad condiments, as well as a few prepared featured salads, which changed monthly. Other sections include up to eight soup selections, a small bakery offering muffins, cornbread, pizza focaccia, and baked potatoes, a pasta section with a few different plates of pasta and sauces, and a dessert section offering fruit, puddings, and soft-serve ice cream. Featured menu items were rotated monthly and were typically themed, such as Asian, Greek, Italian, and customer favorites.

The company's home city of San Diego often served as a test market for new ideas and innovations, and was home to Souplantation's corporate offices. For example, some Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes locations were open on Sunday mornings for breakfast. In 2011, the company launched its first quick-serve restaurant, called Souplantation Express, in Carlsbad, California.

In popular culture

 * Souplantation was the basis for the "Soup R' Crackers" chain that was a running joke on Party Down; the show's writers had originally planned to use the actual name of Souplantation, but the chain refused to allow it, necessitating the last-minute change to "Soup R' Crackers".
 * The chain features prominently in the 1986 volleyball movie Spiker, with multiple scenes conspicuously taking place at a Souplantation.
 * Episode 7 of Black-ish; "The Gift of Hunger" features a cafeteria-style restaurant named "Beef Plantation". Rainbow Johnson, the matriarch of the family, chides her husband Dre with "You have Roots on Laserdisc, but eating at a place called Beef Plantation doesn't bump you?".