™Souplantation Teases a California Comeback, Six Years After COVID
A Sweet Tomatoes Instagram video put the Souplantation logo back on screen but named no city or address.
Waves break along the California coast, and then a name shows up that the state's buffet regulars haven't seen on a working restaurant in six years: Souplantation.
That's the short video Sweet Tomatoes, the sister brand the chain's revival runs under, posted to Instagram on Monday. It's the only thing behind every "Souplantation is coming back" text in your group chat, and it's a teaser, not a lease. SanDiegoVille reported that the clip ends on one year, 2027, and names no city or address. Tasting Table didn't see any date in the same post.
The real news is the name. The revived chain has done business only as Sweet Tomatoes, the label it always used outside California. Tasting Table took the Souplantation logo in the video as a hint that the original name could come back too.
The chain didn't fade out of California. It went dark all at once. In May 2020, executives told 4,400 employees that the 97 restaurants shut since March would stay shut, Restaurant Business reported. SanDiegoVille counts 44 of those restaurants in California.
On May 14 of that year, the San Diego owner, Garden Fresh Restaurant Corp., filed for Chapter 7 liquidation in federal bankruptcy court, SanDiegoVille reported. The company estimated its assets at $50 million to $100 million and listed more than 10,000 creditors, according to Restaurant Business.
The problem was the whole concept. Federal COVID guidelines called for an end to self-service salad bars and buffets, and the company was spending more than $1 million a week on dark restaurants, CEO John Haywood told Restaurant Business. "The magic of our concept is people being able to customize and control their own experience," he told the trade publication, which is why serving diners from behind the sneeze guard didn't work for them.
Restaurant Business also noted that liquidation didn't have to be the end, because the brand names and recipes were assets someone could buy. Somebody did. A company called ST Three LLC bought the rights, and on April 1, 2024, the first revived Sweet Tomatoes opened in the same Tucson, Arizona, building the old chain had used, SanDiegoVille reported.
The second one, in Fort Myers, Florida, opened this year in another former location, and a separate entity, ST Four LLC, runs it. Marlee Lossing, the company's director of corporate affairs, told Restaurant Business there were no plans to franchise. That makes two restaurants since 2024, measured against the 97 that closed.
The appetite didn't wait for them. In 2024 an unrelated copycat, Soup 'n Fresh, opened inside a former Souplantation in Rancho Cucamonga and later expanded to Chino Hills, SanDiegoVille reported. The real brand is only now pointing its camera at the coast.
Where on that coast is the argument. San Diego, where the first Souplantation opened in 1978, likes its chances, especially after a cryptic Sweet Tomatoes post late last year offered the clue "where the ocean waves meet sand," SanDiegoVille noted. Los Angeles and Orange counties had big Souplantation footprints of their own.
Whichever city gets it will get the menu Tasting Table says the revival kept, Joan's Broccoli Madness and the blueberry muffins included. Everyone else gets the caption: "Stay tuned..."
Source: ktla.com.
Source: sandiegoville.com, retrieved October 7, 2026. Other sources: tastingtable.com, restaurantbusinessonline.com, restaurantbusinessonline.com (2).
Comments 0