Sweet Tomatoes closed all 97 buffets when self-serve became the rule's target

Garden Fresh Restaurant Corp grew Souplantation and its East Coast twin Sweet Tomatoes into a 97-restaurant buffet chain built around self-serve salad bars and soup stations. The format had been shrinking for years — US buffet restaurants fell 26 percent from 1998 to 2017 while restaurants overall grew 22 percent — and Garden Fresh had already been through a bankruptcy before private equity owners bought it in 2017.

When the pandemic shut dining rooms in March 2020, the buffet format faced one extra problem: FDA guidance pointed squarely at discontinuing self-serve stations and salad bars. Chief executive John Haywood said the chain could not reopen while its core was banned — 'it doesn't work if we are not allowed to continue our model'. After eight weeks of attempted recovery, the company announced on 7–8 May 2020 that all 97 restaurants, including 23 in Florida, would close permanently, and filed for bankruptcy.

About 4,400 employees lost their jobs in a single announcement. The brand was later bought and a handful of locations reopened under new owners, but the chain that once ran nearly a hundred buffets ended in one week of May 2020.