Sweet Tomatoes to return to California
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The reborn Sweet Tomatoes opened in Tucson, Arizona, in 2024.Photo courtesy of Sweet Tomatoes
The once-defunct buffet chain Sweet Tomatoes — which in California was known as Souplantation — is coming back to the West Coast.
It’s a homecoming for the buffet concept, which in its first life was based in San Diego and operated by Garden Fresh. It began as Souplantation, but when it came time to grow outside the Golden State, the owners at the time felt it needed a new name. So units outside California were named Sweet Tomatoes, though it was the same concept.
But the COVID shutdown killed Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes. All 97 restaurants were shuttered and liquidated in a 2020 bankruptcy.
Then, in 2024, Sweet Tomatoes came back.
A company named ST Three LCC acquired the intellectual property rights out of the 2020 bankruptcy, brought back some of the original corporate team members, and revived the brand, first in Tuscon, Arizona.
Earlier this year, a second location opened in Fort Myers, Florida, with a somewhat updated design.
And in 2027, the brand will finally return to California, the company posted on Instagram this week.
The restaurant is coming to Fountain Valley, California, which is in Orange County, south of Los Angeles.
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Company officials on Wednesday confirmed that the restaurant will be called Souplantation in California. That’s the brand name most known on the West Coast, though the concept is the same.
And, like the first two, the California restaurant will be company owned and there are no plans to franchise.
The move comes at a time when the buffet segment is shrinking. Even before the pandemic, sales were declining for brands like Old Country Buffet and HomeTown Buffet, according to Technomic data.
But the all-you-can-eat model for one price is an attractive value offering, at a time when consumers are struggling to cope with higher costs.
The return to California appears to be celebrated on social media — though San Diegans expressed a sense of betrayal that the first California location was not in the original home stomping ground.
UPDATE: This article was updated with new information from the company.
