At least the eatery served raw salad vegetables, some not loaded with salt and fatty dressings. With Fresh choice, you had a choice of salad with plain vinegar you put on, with nothing you added yourself, or salads with the house dressing sometimes labeled with ingredients. What will replace it?
The restaurant is closed and not scheduled to re-open. Fresh Choice served soup and salad with more variety of fixings than the usual ice-berg lettuce most affordable (to low-income seniors) restaurants serve, on Howe Avenue is closed.
A few years ago another vegetarian soup-and-salad buffet-style restaurant on Howe Avenue closer to Alta Arden also closed. It was run by a former nurse who made the most delicious vegetarian soups and served salads in a large buffet-style restaurant decorated with lots of green plants and one of the calmest eating atmospheres you could experience at lunch time for a buffet eatery. It was soon replaced by an Asian-style restaurant.
If you call the number, you'll probably be referred to call a U.S. bankruptcy trustee. The Fresh Choice at the Arden Fair Mall and the one in Citrus Heights also has been closed. The restaurant at the Arden Fair Mall a few years ago used to be the choice of families who ate there before going to the state Fair each summer to have healthier food choices that were vegetarian-friendly as compared to the deep-fried and usually more expensive selections not so vegan friendly at the Fair.
What was fresh about Fresh Choice had been the labels put above each bowl of salad varieties you put on your plate. The label listed the ingredients in the salad dressing, in case you were allergic to any ingredient. Few other restaurants label the ingredients on a buffet line where you scoop vegetables onto your plate as you move down the line.
Fresh Choice at Arden Fair Mall disappeared last year
Other, more expensive restaurants are forthcoming, and none of them vegan, raw vegan, or vegetarian-oriented. And a fairly new Starbucks is close to where Fresh Choice stood in the Arden Fair Mall. Now, the Fresh Choice at Howe Avenue near Fair Oaks Blvd is closed as of a few days ago. The restaurant used to be crowded with families as well as the many seniors who live in the neighborhood who had an affordable place to bring their clubs to, to bring grandchildren, or to have lunch or an early dinner with a discount for coming in between 3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m.
There was that senior discount even at lunch hour, all day, and no hike in prices on weekends like you have in other buffet eateries. And the senior discount started at age 55. You could walk there safely at lunchtime and eat all you want for around seven dollars and some change this year, or for six dollars and some change in the past few years. But now, this vegetarian-friendly restaurant that had some of the best ingredients for salads in town, is closed.
Check out the November 24, 2012 Sacramento Bee column by Cathie Anderson, "Fresh Choice Closes." Cathy Anderson's column reads, "When you call a corporate headquarters and the receptionist suggests you call a U.S. bankruptcy trustee, it's not a good sign." Years ago, entire classrooms of children would show up at lunchtime at Fresh Choice to eat there and learn about how healthy vegetables were.
There was even a dessert bar featuring fresh, whole fruit as well as the usual desserts of puddings, muffins, pies, and other sweet desserts. There was a choice of various breads and pasta with numerous sauces and a variety of soups. Before the yogurt machine was replaced with soft serve, kids could be seen filling soup bowls with yogurt and adding muffins or cake slices to the frozen fixings.
Besides the salads there were the famous soups. The only criticism of the soups came from the seniors with high blood pressure who were salt-sensitive always asking, but never getting the added, excess salt removed from the soups such as butternut squash, navy bean or lentil.
When it came to the salads, you could add your own vegetables to the plate that were not seasoned and then for those on the Dr. Ornish's reversal diet to clean out clogged arteries, you didn't have to load your plate with vegetables that already had oil on them. You could just choose the spinach, carrots, beans, legumes, broccoli, raw beets, red cabbage, edamame, and other vegetables that had no salad dressing, salt, or artificial sweeteners on them.
You could pile up a plate of raw vegetables that were really bare of seasoning and sprinkle a little vinegar on them instead of being forced to wolf down salad oils or spices. That was down right healthy. And now the restaurant is closed, the second Fresh Choice to close in the past two years, replaced by expensive restaurants, fast-food places, or other businesses that are not so vegetarian-oriented. The question is why the eateries had to go out of business.
You have nearby Fresh Choice all those college students at CSUS, perhaps a mile away. You have hundreds of stores and offices. A mile away in the opposite direction there's also medical offices such as the Kaiser medical office building, and an upscale shopping center on Fair Oaks Blvd. walking distance from Howe Avenue. And across the street from Fresh Choice on Howe were senior assisted living apartments and other places were people either work or live.
The question is why are the fast-food restaurants surrounding Fresh Choice thriving, having successful businesses, making enough money to stay open, and the one vegetarian and vegan friendly eatery in town open for lunch and dinner is closed?
The Fresh Choice company, which owned about 30 restaurants at one time, emerged from bankruptcy protection in 2010, but it looks as though the recovery didn't last. Check out the sites, Company Bankruptcy Information for Fresh Choice, LLC and Fresh Choice Restaurant Industry News: Restaurant News Resource. Also see, What happened to Fresh Choice Arden? | Folsom | Yelp.
If you read some of the Yelp Reviews of Fresh Choice focusing only on the Sacramento eateries, most of the complaints came from meat eaters looking for pizza and other selections that had meat on them. The restaurant was a welcome addition for vegetarians and vegans who didn't want meat on their plates.
Those who complained about the soups were youth who didn't want creamed soups. Other than the reviews, seniors in the area would have loved for the chefs to take out the added salt from the soups so that people who were salt-sensitive could have no-added salt soups, which never happened. In spite of salt and pepper shakers on each table, the soups were loaded with salt. And a few years ago the non-fat yogurt machines were replaced by diary-fat dominated soft-serve instead of the 'cultured' non-fat vanilla yogurt. See the Yelp reviews site for comments on Sacramento's Fresh Choice restaurants.
On the review side of the good points, Fresh Choice will be missed by vegans and vegetarians who wanted a place where they could have health-friendly foods for those whose arteries quickly fill up from eating meat, pizza, cheese, and too much oil on salads (instead of fats from ground seeds and nuts used as salad dressing). Until then, many vegans who can't afford the existing vegan restaurant prices will be eating at home or picnicking.
What would a vegan want in a buffet? Simply, organic vegetables and fruits that are clean, spinach on the salad bar and not clumped with balls of mud, and a choice of salad dressings they could choose such as apple cider vinegar instead of oils, and no added salt to the foods, since the customer then would be free to use the salt shakers on the tables, and those who are salt-sensitive would be able to abstain. Could all this be affordable to low-income seniors living solely on social security retirement and wanting healthy food? Sacramento has spoken as far as how much money can be earned with healthy soup and salad fixings featuring lots of dark green leafy vegetables.
If you look at the Cathie Anderson column, it says that people who wanted to eat at Fresh Choice a few days ago then went to the restaurant at the other end of the parking lot, Mel's Drive-In, and the staff at Mel's Drive-In told the customers that "when Fresh Choice workers showed up, they were locked out."
The point is that according to the Anderson column, Fresh Choice "is temporarily closed." The Anderson column also mentions that a U.S. trustee said no reopening is scheduled. But so far, no records of a new bankruptcy filing could be found. For further information where to phone if you have business with Fresh Choice, such as a creditor, there's a phone number listed in Cathie Anderson's November 24, 2012 article, "Fresh Choice Closes."
Some fast-food eateries are introducing fruit bowls in selected restaurants
You have a food chain fast-food eateries offering fruit bowls, but the fruit is not organic. For example, in selected Wendy's restaurants in a few cities, you could order a fresh fruit bowl menu item, when it appeared in selected Wendy's restaurants February 15, 2005 in Glenview, Illinois. Wendy's introduced a new menu choice at select restaurants consisting of a fruit bowl and fruit cup with the roll out of the new menu roll-out that has been offered since mid-February of 2005.
Will more fast-food eateries be offering more fixings that are vegan or vegetarian-friendly in the future for Sacramento? Or will the vegetarian, vegan, and raw vegan food offerings be few and far between and off the budget for many low-income seniors who use the 'reversal' vegetarian or vegan diets with no-added salt foods for health reasons?
Interestingly, customers ask will the restaurant fit the demographics of the neighborhood. For example, if you open a restaurant in an area of young office workers, blue collar employees, families, or retirees looking for healthier food choices, will the restaurant fit what the people living or working nearby want in food at specific hours of the day?
