Friday, October 07, 2016

Is Sweet Tomatoes Going the Way of OCB?

Sweet Tomatoes, also know in some areas as Souplantation, is a chain of salad and soup buffets in several parts of the US from California to the East Coast. On Tuesday evening, October 4, 2016 and Wednesday morning, October 5, 2016, the corporation closed all of the Sweet Tomatoes restaurants in the state of Illinois.

Garden Fresh Restaurant Corporation, the owner of Sweet Tomatoes, filed for bankruptcy on Monday. The corporation confirmed that the restaurants in Schaumburg, St. Charles, Waukegan, Lombard, Aurora and Glenview, Illinois are closed for business. The company reports that they plan to restructure, close more restaurants, and put the corporation up for sale. What will remain - for the moment - are approximately 100 restaurants with the Souplantation name that are located in the western US. The corporate headquarters are in San Diego, California. Sales are reported to have dropped by 5.2 million dollars in the last year.

Our source is the Daily Herald, a suburban Chicago information source. 
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We have also learned that the Sweet Tomatoes restaurant in Forth Worth, Texas, as well as the Irving, Texas location were closed at the same time. The two locations in Jacksonville, Florida were closed.

Nation's Restaurant News also has reported the story and has confirmed with Garden Fresh that locations will close nationwide. The restaurant chain website is still active and still shows locations in Florida and in North Carolina as still in operation. The other states with locations shown are all in the West and and up and down the coast.

I have only been to a Sweet Tomatoes once and that was in Cary, North Carolina. We liked it very much and have always hoped that they would open restaurants further up the East Coast. That hope is now gone.  We are on the restaurant chain's email list and a discount coupon email came this past week.

If any of our readers know of other Sweet Tomatoes or Souplantation closings please contact us with the email link and let us know so that we can inform our readers.  Thank you!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

All of our Sweet Tomatoes locations here in the Orlando FL area are still open and seem to be business as usual when I drive by. Have not eaten in one in a few years, but always look forward to the soups in the "winter" months we have here in Florida.