 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Genre | Restaurant |
| Founded | 1986 |
| Defunct | 2012 |
| Headquarters | , U.S. |
Key people | Sandy Boyd, CEO |
Fresh Choice was a chain of buffet-style restaurants which operated in California, Washington, and Texas under the names Fresh Choice, Fresh Plus, Fresh Choice Express, and Zoopa.
The first restaurant was opened in Sunnyvale, California, on El Camino Real in the Cala Shopping center [1] in the space that was once Calaway's Bar and Grill by Martin Culver, Brad Wells, and Ken Oppeltz in 1986. Opening the first restaurant for under $140,000 using funds from Martin Culver's home equity line of credit, a cash investment from Brad Wells, and the restaurant background of Ken Oppeltz, the restaurant was an immediate success. The lines out the door prompted the trio to quickly search for a second location, which opened in the Moffett Business Park. Shortly thereafter, the group was approached by a venture capital group, raised several rounds of financing for expansion, and expanded by opening in the Stanford Shopping Center and Valley Fair Shopping Center, both former restaurant locations. Over a few years, Fresh Choice expanded to over 50 locations in California, Texas, and Washington.
Fresh Choice marketed itself as a healthier alternative to fast food restaurants with reference to menu options that include choices relatively low in fat, carbohydrates, and/or calories. All restaurants featured 50 foot salad bars, six freshly made soups daily, artisan pizza, and breads.
Fresh Choice obtained its produce from local farmers and tried to use seasonal, local, and organically grown produce. In 2009, the company embarked on a plan to grow many of its own vegetables. The Sacramento Magazine Diners' Choice Awards voted Fresh Choice as the restaurant with the most health-conscious menu in 2008 and 2009. [2] [3]
Fresh Choice was enrolled in PG&E's Climate Smart Program, through which Fresh Choice made voluntary charitable contributions that funded greenhouse gas capture and reduction projects to make its Northern California restaurants' energy usage carbon neutral. [4] Additionally, Fresh Choice sponsored and participated in events such as the 2009 Sacramento Earth Day, California International Marathon and health fairs. [5]
The former Gilroy location, which was a rebranded California Fresh restaurant, now operates as Fresh Choice under independent ownership.
In late 2012, Fresh Choice closed approximately half its locations. According to the Capitola-Soquel Patch, [6] Fresh Choice planned on re-organizing the restaurants into a new concept of à la carte fare and charging people by weight for their salads. They would also have a beer and wine bar, a breakfast bar, and updated seating. Some locations that had been open for less than two years closed, and one location which was supposed to open in Stockton was permanently shelved, according to the company.
On December 15, 2012, it was reported that all Fresh Choice locations would be closing permanently and that two of the Bay Area locations had been re-opened under the name "California Fresh". [7] [8] [9]
Ruby Tuesday Inc. is an American multinational foodservice retailer that owns, operates, and franchises Ruby Tuesday restaurants. The concept was started in 1972 by Samuel E. (Sandy) Beall III.
Philippe's, or "Philippe the Original" is a restaurant located in downtown Los Angeles, California. The restaurant is well known for continuously operating since 1908, making it one of the oldest restaurants in Los Angeles. It is also renowned for claiming to be the inventor of the French dip sandwich.
A buffet can be either a sideboard or a system of serving meals in which food is placed in a public area where the diners serve themselves. A form of service à la française, buffets are offered at various places including hotels, restaurants, and many social events. Buffet restaurants normally offer all-you-can-eat food for a set price, but some measure prices by weight or by number of dishes. Buffets usually have some or mostly hot dishes, so the term cold buffet has been developed to describe formats lacking hot food. Hot or cold buffets usually involve dishware and utensils, but a finger buffet is an array of foods that are designed to be small and easily consumed only by hand, such as cupcakes, slices of pizza, foods on cocktail sticks, etc.
VitaNova Brands, based in San Antonio, Texas, was an operator of a number of American national buffet chain restaurants including subsidiary company Furr's.
A full-course dinner is a meal with multiple courses, almost invariably eaten in the evening or afternoon. Most Western-world multicourse meals follow a standard sequence, influenced by traditional French haute cuisine. It commonly begins with an appetizer, followed by the main course, the salad course, and eventually the dessert, but the exact sequence varies widely. Full-course dinners are generally very formal as well as very expensive, and can have as few as 3 or as many as 21 courses. Some major styles include service à la russe and service à la française.
Sizzler USA Restaurants, Inc., doing business as Sizzler, is a United States-based restaurant chain with headquarters in Mission Viejo, California, with locations mainly in California, plus some in the nearby states of Washington, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Idaho, Utah, Oregon and Puerto Rico. It is known for steak, seafood, and salad bar items.
Pei Wei Asian Diner, LLC, doing business as Pei Wei Asian Kitchen, ) is an American restaurant chain serving Pan Asian fare, operating in at 119 locations in the United States. Pei Wei's dishes are made to order in an open concept kitchen using cooking methods like wok firing. The restaurant offers guest customization that includes vegetarian and gluten-free options.
Brewers Fayre is a licensed pub restaurant chain, with 161 locations across the UK as of August 2018. Owned by Whitbread, Brewers Fayre restaurants are known for serving traditional British pub food and for their Sunday Carvery.
Jason's Deli is an American chain of fast casual restaurants founded in 1976 in Beaumont, Texas, by Joe Tortorice, Jr. There are currently over 245 locations in 29 states. The menu includes sandwiches, wraps, baked potatoes, pasta, soups, salads, and desserts, as well as catering items such as boxed lunches. The free ice cream station is also a big draw for most customers.
Restaurants fall into several industry classifications, based upon menu style, preparation methods and pricing, as well as the means by which the food is served to the customer. This article mainly describes the situation in the US, while categorisation differs widely around the world.
Souper Salad is an American restaurant chain based in Dallas, Texas. It is an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant serving fresh salads, made-from-scratch soups, homemade breads, and more. All locations are in the Southwestern United States, with the majority located in Texas. The chain is privately owned and has been in operation since 1978. As of October 2022, the chain had 3 locations.
Farm-to-table is a social movement which promotes serving local food at restaurants and school cafeterias, preferably through direct acquisition from the producer. This might be accomplished by a direct sales relationship, a community-supported agriculture arrangement, a farmer's market, a local distributor or by the restaurant or school raising its own food. Farm-to-table often incorporates a form of food traceability where the origin of the food is identified to consumers. Often restaurants cannot source all the food they need for dishes locally, so only some dishes or only some ingredients are labelled as local.
Lyon's Restaurant was a chain of diner-style restaurants, similar to Denny's. Many Lyon's were in Northern California, with their corporate headquarters in Sacramento.
Sweet Tomatoes, operating as Souplantation in southern California, is a United States–based chain of all-you-can-eat buffet-style restaurants. The first location opened in 1978 in San Diego, California, where the company was headquartered. The company was incorporated as Garden Fresh Corp. in 1983. The company went public in 1995 but was taken private in 2004. The company, owned by Garden Fresh Restaurant Corporation, temporarily closed its 97 locations in March 2020 in response to government mandates related to the COVID-19 pandemic. On May 7, 2020, the closure was made permanent and the company filed for liquidation. However, one restaurant in Tucson, Arizona, is planning to reopen after one firm bought the assets of the company, with no word yet on whether other locations will be reopened.
Slim Chickens is an American fast-casual restaurant chain which specializes in chicken tenders, wings, sandwiches, salads, wraps, chicken and waffles, and other items. It was founded in 2003 by Greg Smart and Tom Gordon.
Swan Oyster Depot is a seafood eatery and cultural landmark located in the Polk Gulch neighborhood of San Francisco, California. It opened there in 1903 and except for a brief hiatus and rebuilding period following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, it has been running continuously in the same venue since that time. This makes it one of the longest continuous businesses and dining establishments in the United States. Swan's menu has remained largely unchanged throughout its history, and it has had exactly the same 18 wooden stools and marble counter that were installed for the post-earthquake reopening in 1912.
W.W. "Biff" Naylor is a retired restaurant owner in Los Angeles, California. He was born in Oakland, California in 1939 and graduated from Pennsylvania State University. His father W.W. “Tiny” Naylor started Tiny's Waffle Shops in Central California in the 1920s, and operated a chain of more than 40 Tiny Naylor's and Biff's restaurants in Southern California. Biff Naylor took over operations of Tiny Naylor's after his father's death in 1959 and was still operating at least one location in 1999. The Biff's restaurant chain of the 1940s was a "forerunner to all the modern coffee shops," Naylor told the San Jose Mercury News in 2016. Those restaurants employed modern architecture in the googie style, and innovations that would be adopted widely through the restaurant industry including open exhibition cooking kitchen, stainless steel counters, refrigerated pie cases, and plate "lowerators" that warmed or cooled plates as needed. In 2017 Los Angeles magazine food critic Patric Kuh called the longtime restaurant operator "Diner royalty". Saveur magazine wrote that Biff Naylor created "The best damn coffee shops ever" in their "Saveur 100" list
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Radio Room is a bar and restaurant in Portland, Oregon.