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The Sweet Tomatoes restaurant on Hopyard Road in Pleasanton has shuttered for good after corporate officials announced last week that all Sweet Tomatoes locations nationwide, as well as its sister brand Souplantation, won’t reopen again after temporary closures amid COVID-19.
The coronavirus pandemic, which has severely impacted many restaurants, has hit those with a buffet business model particularly hard — like Sweet Tomatoes, which centered on salads, soups, pasta dishes and baked goods that were self-served and self-portioned.
“As you may have heard, we are unable to reopen our 97 Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes restaurants due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” officials said in a statement on the company website.
“The outpouring of love on social media has been overwhelming and we are so grateful to all of the sweet memories you have shared with us,” they added. “We would like to thank our 4,400 team members for their dedication and love they have shown to our local communities. We will miss you tremendously and wish you all the best.”
The Sweet Tomatoes restaurant in Pleasanton, which had been closed since mid-March since the COVID-19 pandemic and associated shelter-in-place order first arrived, was located at 4501 Hopyard Road — between Stoneridge Drive and West Las Positas Boulevard.
It’s going to be a challenge for many businesses. Every one wants to save dollar. Leisure and restaurant business will take a bit hit. Housing takes off 50 to 70% of your monthly income for many low and middle class families in bay area. Where is the budget for restaurants and other things. Employment situation is getting bad to worse. Walmart is doing thriving business, on the fact that they cater low and middle class. If the business is not made for this class its gone. Out of necessity started having hair cut with help of my wife, cooking more often, in fact on daily basis and feeling good about it. Many people will be doing the same. Unless I see a value and risk free of COVID I will not be going out. That’s my story..
Another business closed and more people thrown out of work. Wonder how many workers that Sweet Tomatoes on Hopyard employed? Wonder how many families including young children are associated with those now jobless workers? Wonder what they will do now with the present unemployment rate in the neighborhood of 20%?
Oh, well. Just have to consider them all to be collateral damage in our fight against the horrible coronavirus which has been mercilessly killing off Pleasantonians resulting in a current total Pleasanton coronavirus death toll of ……uhhhh……..Zero.
@Wombat
Wombat, you and I have debated each other over a number of topics, but I totally agree with you on this subject. I had said on a previous post that every time we wake up another business is gone. I don’t wring my hands on this virus and it saddens and concerns me of those that shiver in their basements. Los Angeles isn’t opening until a cure. WTH? Our governor actually isn’t opening up totally until a vaccine. The goal posts keep moving every time he speaks.
We need an injunction against the state. People believe they can live off a few months of printed money. Listen everyone, this cure is worst than the disease. We need more Doctors to speak up without being censored. The data and what ever science they are holding onto is wrong. I can only hope for more calm, commonsense voices to be heard. To put it into perspective, downtown could become a ghost town.
Oh great, the guy won’t get the flu vaccine “or any vaccine” here to tell us about science. Here to tell us about “all that garbage” they put in vaccines.
And he complains that doctors are being “censored”. I’ve got news for you, Jake Waters, those are quacks. Vaccines aren’t”full of g
Garbage.
Anti-vaxxers are full of garbage.
@BobB
Oh God, it’s BobB, the basement dweller guy, telling us about science. I bet you are just like that Bill Nye nut. Are you getting any signals down their Bobby? Got your aluminum foil hate on?
For dinner I had Chinese style duck, beans, rise and a muffin.
RICE
@Jake Waters
Everyone sees the health threat posed by coronavirus, but I find it surprising that so many people seem to be unaware of the human cost associated with our response against coronavirus, a response which is an overreaction in my opinion. Make no mistake: When we impose strict shelters-in-place against coronavirus, we are killing businesses and destroying people’s livelihoods and harming many people including children:
“US homelessness could increase 45% because of coronavirus unemployment, study says” – SF Gate, 5/14/20
“With the coronavirus-induced shock to the economy crippling businesses of all sizes and leaving millions of Americans out of work, homelessness in the United States could grow as much as 45% in a year, according to a new analysis conducted by a Columbia University professor. That would mean an additional 250,000 or so people would be without permanent shelter compared with the 568,000 who were homeless in January 2019, according to government data.”
Wombat:
After declaring unemployed as collateral damage, you now are sympathetic to “human cost”. You measure up as hypocrite.
For dessert, I had Peach Cobbler.
Elon Musk broke the barrier. Other businesses can claim discrimination if they can’t open. Musk’s affiliation as a Democrat, providing funding to the Democratic Party in this state, and more is specific to the discrimination of others. I love the dichotomy. It speaks to the politics and not the health issue at play here.
Vaccines do not cause autism.
Vaccinate your children. Vaccinate yourself.
Michael
What’s on the menu for tomorrow?
Much more interesting than more of the BobB, Jake and Wombat wars….
Charlie,
We are discussing chopped garlic, chopped onion, stir fried with black beans, served with rice, salmon as main course, with biscuit. Dessert will be dried fruit from our trees.
Good slam Charlie. Unfortunate you feel this is so humorous. I don’t take what we are going through as casual an issue.
That is quite a menu Mr. Austin. You eat well. I am envious!
Michael – sounds great!!
Have a good weekend!!
Jake
The only thing humorous about this situation is how serious you take your rants.
Very entertaining to read and the anticipation of what your next comment will be is what keeps me going everyday.
You and the Dr. from Cornell. Better than Amazon Prime and Netflix combined.
Businesses close for a lot of reasons. Some are closing because they had too much debt to begin with. Some because they weren’t prepared for any downturn.
I love Sweet Tomatoes. But I never saw them push strongly for takeout business during the lockdown, and I’m on their mailing list. Other large chains pushed aggressively.
Also, as we’re seeing in other parts of the country, many businesses aren’t getting enough business once the restrictions lift, because customers are afraid on their own.
People make individual decisions. It could be that Sweet Tomatoes also figured that customers would be too afraid to revisit a salad bar, and they decided they didn’t have the money to make it into an place where you use an app or design your salad electronically at the table.
Someone else will eventually fill the void they’re leaving. It will be a couple of years.
“Also, as we’re seeing in other parts of the country, many businesses aren’t getting enough business once the restrictions lift, because customers are afraid on their own. ”
Or it might just be that around 30% of the population is unemployed and can’t afford to eat out anymore.
That might have – a little – impact, no?
Dan
BTW, I loved Sweet Tomatoes here and its sister, Soup Plantation, down in San Diego.
This is a loss for me. I hope a similar business takes its place close by.
But the 30% who is unemployed worked in the restaurant business… it’s a cycle.
My point is that the government didn’t *cause* this. If left to it’s own devices, the disease would have caused a much worse panic that would have destroyed a whole lot more of the economy.
Now, our federal government did a pretty terrible job of this—the way to do a lockdown is to stop everything and then have the government pay the salaries of the furloughed workers until the lockdown is over, and make the lockdown more severe and absolutely limited in duration so that the economy can bounce back. So now we have a mix of a half-done lockdown and half of the panic that didn’t get averted. We’re going to spend years recovering from the half efforts, and from the disease itself.
It will be a contest to see which causes the worst economic damage. (Covid wins for which kills more.)
“My point is that the government didn’t *cause* this. If left to it’s own devices, the disease would have caused a much worse panic that would have destroyed a whole lot more of the economy.“
Yes, the government did, in fact, cause this.
And you have no evidence -NONE- that this virus would have impacted us worse. In fact, there is mounting evidence that what has happened thus far could have been lessened.
Look what’s happened in Georgia or North Dakota.
Conversely, New York actually made matters worse by MANDATING those infected be PLACED, in nursing homes, infecting MORE seniors.
Ridiculous.
Dan.
Pizza tonight!
Eggs, toast, hash browns and OJ this morning.
Should have used the Oxford comma.
“Coding that led to lockdown was ‘totally unreliable’ and a ‘buggy mess’, say experts”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/05/16/coding-led-lockdown-totally-unreliable-buggy-mess-say-experts/
By the man who’s model was used to dictate much of the policy on State lockdowns, and then was caught flaunting the lockdown so he could have an adulterous affair.
Slowly but surely, the truth is coming out.
BobB and others hardest hit.
Dan
Okay DKHSK, if you’re so smart and you are going to flout the public safety rules. Can you tell us what you had for breakfast? Put your money where your mouth is!
BobB,
I just so happen to get back to my hotel room for a glorious walk on the wharf in San Diego.
If I could, I would show you the MULTITUDES of people walking along the wharf without masks, seemingly getting on with their lives.
In fact, there was a huge protest of 100’s out in from of the San Diego Administration building just across the street from the wharf asking the government to ease their stupid restrictions.
One other thing to note on this trip, the airport DID NOT require masks. Imagine my surprise going through security and not one person I saw was wearing a mask except TSA. Of course, the airline made everyone wear masks but I’m not abasing that anyway because as much as I fly I always get cold from plane trips.
Stay indoor BobB.
Dan
Thought so.
Breakfast?
None of your damned business.
You’re not doing it right…
Re: “And you have no evidence -NONE- that this virus would have impacted us worse. In fact, there is mounting evidence that what has happened thus far could have been lessened.”
This statement is beyond wrong. It’s so deep in denial as to border on insanity.
Every single city or nation that attempted to ignore COVID paid for that stupidity with thousands of lives needlessly lost. Wuhan. Milan. NYC. Mexico. Ecuador. Brazil. So YES, the virus absolutely WOULD have impacted us worse if we had not done anything.
Could we have done better? Absolutely. But this is a fog-of-war crisis situation. Information is unreliable. Decisions are made in haste, panic and partial ignorance. And then you have the whole Kugler-Ross grief/denial spectrum of psychological responses to all that conflicting data. But should we have done nothing? Absolutely not.
Are the people going around without masks absolute idiots? Yes, based on the data that shows the virus comes out of asymptomatic spreaders in micro-droplets whenever they breathe (or speak, cough, or sneeze) … and that it then floats in the air for several minutes, able to infect anyone who breathers or touches it. Then there’s the other data that shows that it’s the single leading cause of death in places which aren’t taking prevention measures seriously. Look up the concept of “excess mortality” – you don’t need to argue about tests to know that far more people are dying this year than prior years.
Did we need to shut down the economy? We wouldn’t have, except so many chose “denial” and refused to accept the evidence in front of them. Why is it so hard for people to just suck it up, wear a mask and take the other necessary precautions? It’s because of those who didn’t react to the big change that the medical system was about to be overwhelmed. And it was to preserve the medical system – and what it does for ALL medical problems – that the shelter-in-place had to occur.
If you want to find a scapegoat for the mass unemployment, blame the idiots who can’t be bothered to put a scarf over their face and keep the hell away from others … the ones who are out there spreading it are destroying the economy for everyone.
If New Yorkers had watched China and Korea and Taiwan and immediately started wearing masks and working from home, they wouldn’t have gotten infected in droves on the subways and in the elevators. And if they’d been smarter about not moving people between contaminated hospitals and contaminated nursing homes, thousands would still be alive who are now dead.
It’s time to get past the denial and get with the new normal. Don’t be stupid about this any more.