Restaurant Tour: Raw Ingredients

Unfinished wood, concrete and metal give Sweet Tomatoes’ new interior a farmlike feeling.

By Lisa Bertagnoli, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 8/1/2007

1. The narrow salad bar line “explodes” into a vast, 220-seat dining space, complete with unfinished ceilings and high windows.

2. Newer iterations of Sweet Tomatoes have more tables and fewer booths.

3. The entryway leads directly to Sweet Tomatoes’ salad bar lines to ensure no confusion for first-time customers.

4. One holdover from the previous design: marketing in the form of sage sayings plastered on the walls and tabletops.

5. Concrete floors and metal-framed chairs add an industrial, but not uncomfortable, edge to the space.

6. The double 55-foot-long salad bar has three lines: one regular, one express and one for takeout.

7. Up high, unfinished lumber and exposed duct work lend an industrial feeling to the space.

8. The express lane lets customers familiar with the concept move through faster.

9. A round booth topped with flowers provides a focal point, but one that will be eliminated from the protoype to create a more unified dining area.

10. Grouping the soup, bread and dessert stations together makes the restaurant easier for guests to navigate.

Of a barn, but not in it: That’s the feeling that comes across in the new prototype for Sweet Tomatoes and its sibling concept, Souplantation.

The narrow, story-and-a-half entryway and 55-foot-long salad bar that follows it empty into a vast, bright dining room with a vaulted ceiling, exposed beams and gleaming metal duct work. Sky-high, rectangular windows let in light and a view of the sky. Where the walls aren’t paneled in plywood, they’re covered with corn-yellow, tomato-red and lettuce-green paint.

Decorative touches are limited to an arrangement of silk wildflowers clustered in galvanized tin buckets; extreme close-up photography of an orange segment, mint leaves, a tomato and other garden offerings; and sayings painted on the wall, among them “From Nature, To Us, To You” and “Create Indulge Enjoy.”

All this differs quite drastically from the concepts’ former look, a drop-ceilinged, carpeted affair outfitted with Corian counters, wood paneling, plenty of hanging plants and maple-hued Windsor chairs. “It was grandma’s kitchen,” says Lyle Beecher, AIA, principal in charge and project designer at Beecher Walker Architects, the Salt Lake City firm involved with the project.

Farmlike, Not Barnlike

The quest for a new design dates to 2004, after Fairmont Capital acquired parent company Garden Fresh in 2003. “As we transitioned out of being publicly held, we took a very careful look at how guests could have the best experience,” says Garden Fresh CEO Michael Mack.

The company’s main design objectives, Mack says, were to make the food-bar areas more visible and easier to navigate, add more merchandising touches, and stress the menu’s fresh-food approach. "We wanted to give people a stronger sense of the freshness of the product," Mack says.

Before launching the design project, Beecher and the in-house design team met for several days at Garden Fresh headquarters in San Diego for a charrette, a meeting at which they nailed down design objectives. During the design and construction process, the team stayed true to the charrette, "which is rare," Beecher says.

The team’s aesthetic objective was to create a space that conveyed a farmlike feel, but not overly so. "You don’t walk in and say, ‘This feels like a farm,’" Mack says. "But the materials are more earthy and natural, less what I’d call slick."

The design team chose materials and colors that present a finished look, but with an unfinished cast. The concrete floors are stained ochre in the dining area and sage green in the food-serving stations. Where the walls aren’t painted, they’re paneled with rough-looking plywood, a touch that accomplishes the design objective but also saves money. The ceiling is crossed with wooden supports; all duct work and insulation is visible. High, rectangular windows let in light and draw the eye to the dining room’s dramatic ceiling height.

The food stations—soup, hot food, dessert and breads in addition to the salad bar—are grouped together and set apart from the dining room, making them more easily navigable. Large circular signs hanging above each station make the food bars easy to locate from any spot in the dining room.

More Seats, Less Noise

The company has made several design adjustments since the first prototype opened in Chula Vista, Calif., last fall. It added more booths, customers’ favorite seating option, and wall paint to bring more color to the space.

Future adjustments will include removing the round banquette topped with the flower buckets. The round piece, which Mack says disrupts the dining area’s layout, replaced another design notion: a fire pit that would add color and theater to the space. Cost and liability issues nixed that idea, Mack says.

The restaurants will also get more seats. The Desert Ridge, Ariz., location, near Phoenix, has 220 seats, but can fit 240 to 250.

And acoustic issues must be addressed as well. The sharp concrete and metal surfaces create an ambience that mottles some sounds but sends others, for instance a baby’s cry, ricocheting around the room.

Garden Fresh plans to add eight to 10 new units a year, expanding to markets such as Chicago and Dallas. Older stores will be repainted and refixtured as needed, but perhaps not gutted. "That needs more evaluation," Mack says.

While he won’t divulge a price tag, Mack says the current design costs less to build than the older model. He also declines to estimate the new design’s effect on unit volumes.

It remains to be seen, he adds, whether the new design accomplishes its objectives of being more workable and user friendly. Focus groups, however, reveal that some customers like the older, grandma’s-kitchen look better. "It’s what they’re familiar with," Mack says.

But he still believes that the new building is better for both customers and the bottom line. "We got what we wanted," Mack says. "We’re very proud of what we accomplished."

Menu Sampler

Unlimited soup, salad, bread, potato, hot-food and dessert bar: $8.99 for adults, $4.49 for children 6-12, $1.49 for children 3-5. Kids 2 and under eat free; 10 percent discount for seniors age 60 and over

Sampling of salad-bar ingredients: green and red cabbage, radishes, celery, broccoli, tomatoes, blue, feta and cheddar cheeses, eggs

Salad-bar prepared salads: Honey-Minted Fruit, Wonton Chicken Happiness, Broccoli Madness with Bacon, Southern Dill Potato Salad

Soups: Sweet Tomato Onion, Vegetable Medley, Irish Potato Leek, Deep Kettle House Chili

Desserts: chocolate mousse, chunked melon and pineapple, soft-serve ice cream, chocolate brownie muffins