Sweet Tomatoes dropped the bombshell Monday in a short video posted to its official Instagram account. Against footage of waves crashing along the California coast, the video prominently displays both the Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes names and logos, followed by one enormous date: 2027. The caption says simply, "Stay tuned..." alongside hashtags including #SweetTomatoesIsBack, #ComingSoon, #FreshIsBack and #california.
What the company conspicuously did not reveal is where in California it is going. There is currently no announced city, address or opening date beyond 2027, and SanDiegoVille has not identified a San Diego lease or permit definitively connected to the company. Still, for anyone familiar with the history of Souplantation, the prospect of a San Diego comeback is impossible to ignore because this isn't just another California restaurant chain returning to the state. Souplantation was born here.
The first Souplantation opened in San Diego in 1978 before the company incorporated as Garden Fresh Restaurant Corp. in 1983 and ultimately expanded across the country. The restaurants operated primarily under the Souplantation name in Southern California and as Sweet Tomatoes elsewhere, eventually growing into a national chain with 97 restaurants still operating immediately before the pandemic, including 44 in California.
That history makes one detail in this week's announcement especially noteworthy. The company has spent its entire revival operating publicly as Sweet Tomatoes, yet its California teaser doesn't merely announce that Sweet Tomatoes is coming west. It deliberately puts "souplantation | Sweet Tomatoes" on screen, signaling that the name generations of Southern Californians remember is itself being revived.
The announcement is the latest chapter in a story SanDiegoVille has followed since the day Souplantation essentially died overnight. On May 7, 2020, SanDiegoVille broke the news that Garden Fresh was permanently shuttering Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes nationwide, an extraordinary collapse for a company that employed approximately 4,400 people and had operated for more than four decades. National reports followed that same day confirming that all 97 restaurants were finished.
Souplantation had been uniquely vulnerable to the COVID 19 restrictions because its entire identity revolved around customers serving themselves from communal salad bars, soup stations, bakery counters and other shared food areas. Garden Fresh CEO John Haywood said at the time that federal recommendations specifically discouraging self service stations left the company with no viable way to reopen while remaining true to the concept. The San Diego based company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation in the Southern District of California one week later, on May 14, 2020.
For many restaurant chains, that would have been the end of the story. Souplantation instead became one of those rare dead brands whose following seemed to intensify after it disappeared, particularly in San Diego, where generations of customers had grown up with the restaurants and immediately began asking whether someone could somehow bring them back.
The first major local attempt came in 2022, when La Mesa resident Dmitry Braverman leased the former Souplantation restaurant on Fletcher Parkway and announced plans to resurrect the concept. The proposal created enormous excitement, particularly after reports that former Souplantation employees and familiar recipes could be involved, but Braverman did not own the Souplantation intellectual property and the planned reboot never became the authentic revival many initially thought was coming.
The real resurrection was quietly taking shape elsewhere. ST Three LLC acquired the intellectual property associated with Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes following the original company's liquidation and brought aboard former Garden Fresh operators who understood the concept from the inside. Among them was longtime executive Mike Malone, who had spent roughly three decades with Garden Fresh and had personally opened the Tucson Sweet Tomatoes in 1996.
Rather than rapidly relaunching dozens of restaurants or radically modernizing the concept, the new ownership took an unusually deliberate approach. Its first revived Sweet Tomatoes opened April 1, 2024, at 6202 E. Broadway Boulevard in Tucson, returning to the very same building where the restaurant had operated before the pandemic. ST Three selected the location because it had historically been a particularly strong performer, and the reopening attracted long lines from customers eager to experience the buffet again.
More than two years passed before restaurant number two arrived. Sweet Tomatoes returned to its former location at 14080 S. Tamiami Trail in Fort Myers this past May, once again choosing a building where the old company had operated before the nationwide shutdown. The Florida comeback drew customers from hundreds of miles away and demonstrated that the extraordinary nostalgia surrounding the brand was not limited to Arizona.
That slow expansion is important when considering what may happen next. Tucson opened in 2024, Fort Myers followed in 2026, and California is now promised for 2027. Rather than flooding the country with franchises, the new ownership has so far treated the comeback almost like a restoration project, returning to proven former markets and rebuilding the brand one restaurant at a time.
San Diego has been watching for signs throughout the process, and the company has repeatedly given local fans reasons to keep paying attention. Late last year, Sweet Tomatoes posted a cryptic, wizard themed message teasing another possible return and asking, "Where could I return?" before offering the tantalizing clue, "Where the ocean waves meet sand." SanDiegoVille reported at the time that San Diego fans immediately flooded the comments begging the company to bring Souplantation back to its birthplace.
Sweet Tomatoes remained noncommittal when SanDiegoVille previously asked about expansion, telling us that the company hoped Tucson's success would pave the way to bring the restaurant back to as many loyal customers as possible and that "all markets are being considered." At the time, there was no confirmation that California was even next in line.
That changed this week. California is no longer merely one of the markets being considered because the company itself is now publicly advertising a 2027 return, and the Souplantation name is coming with it.
Reaction from San Diego fans was almost immediate. "If y'all don't come back to San Diego, I'm boutta be heartbroken," one commenter wrote beneath the announcement, while another pleaded, "DREAMS do come true, please come back to Carlsbad CA."
There are plenty of other logical destinations. Los Angeles and Orange counties once had substantial Souplantation footprints, while the Inland Empire has already demonstrated enormous appetite for the format through Soup 'n Fresh, an unrelated concept modeled closely after Souplantation that opened in a former Rancho Cucamonga Souplantation in 2024 and subsequently expanded to Chino Hills.
San Diego, however, offers something none of those markets can replicate. It is where Souplantation started in 1978, where its former parent company was headquartered, where Garden Fresh's bankruptcy was filed and where the restaurant became embedded in local dining culture long before it grew into a national chain. For many San Diegans, Souplantation wasn't a visiting chain at all. It was ours.
The restaurant also occupies a peculiar place in local nostalgia because there was nothing particularly glamorous about it. Souplantation was an affordable, casual buffet where families, retirees, students and office workers could pile plates with salad before making repeated trips for Big Chunk Chicken Noodle soup, Joan's Broccoli Madness, clam chowder, baked potatoes, pizza focaccia, blueberry muffins and soft serve. The experience was comfortingly predictable, which may help explain why its abrupt disappearance generated such an enduring reaction.
The new owners appear to understand that nostalgia is the asset they purchased. The revived Sweet Tomatoes has largely resisted the temptation to transform itself into a sleek new concept, instead leaning heavily into the food, format and familiarity customers remember. Restaurant Business reported before the Tucson reopening that the new operators were deliberately attempting to recreate the experience of the former chain, even reopening the same building with its original sign repainted.
Fort Myers followed the same playbook by returning to another former Sweet Tomatoes restaurant. That does not mean the California location will necessarily occupy an old Souplantation building, but the strategy makes San Diego's remaining former locations worth watching as the company moves toward its 2027 launch.
There is also an important distinction between what the new video confirms and what San Diego fans understandably want it to mean. Souplantation has confirmed California for 2027. It has not confirmed San Diego. Until the company announces a location or records emerge tying it to a specific property, claims that Souplantation is definitely returning here would be speculation.
But the speculation is considerably more grounded than it was even a year ago. A restaurant chain founded in San Diego nearly half a century ago has survived its parent's liquidation, been acquired by new ownership, successfully reopened former restaurants in Arizona and Florida, teased an eventual return near "ocean waves," and has now publicly resurrected the Souplantation name specifically for a California comeback.
Six years ago, SanDiegoVille broke the news that Souplantation would never reopen under its former owner. At the time, with every restaurant closed, thousands of employees laid off and the buffet model seemingly incompatible with the pandemic, there was little reason to believe San Diegans would ever walk through the doors of a real Souplantation again.
Today, we know that assumption was wrong. The company hasn't told us whether San Diego is getting its Souplantation back, but Souplantation itself is officially coming back to California in 2027.
Considering this is where the entire thing started, San Diego will now be watching very closely to see where that first bowl of Big Chunk Chicken Noodle gets served.
Originally published October 6, 2026.
