Taziki’s new Kýpelos bowls launched this week. | Photo courtesy of Taziki’s.
The troublesome first half of the year for fast-casual brands Chipotle, Sweetgreen and Cava have sparked a certain agita, with industry watchers asking, “Have we reached peak ‘slop bowl?’”
It’s a term that has been (perhaps unfairly) tied to the three build-your-bowl brands since May, when New York Times writer Emma Goldberg pondered society’s slide into “mushy, purposeless dissociated slop,” or what she called “living the slop life.”
Goldberg’s essay didn’t just focus on the “nebulous mash of ingredients” served at brands like Chipotle, Sweetgreen and Cava (she also mentions Naya and Chopt), where “the selling point of the assembly line is efficiency, not craft.”
In those bowls, Goldberg saw a metaphor for a broader movement toward homogeneity: with our fast fashion, our AI-driven social media content, and the overall lowering-in-quality of our lives in general.
It’s all slop, she contends.
But, really, the term “slop bowl” comes from social media, where fitness and nutrition influencers have long touted meals of protein on top of protein, with a side of protein, combined in a bowl as a vehicle for the “macros” that will allegedly make us stronger, more chiseled and (one assumes eventually) able to outrun the grim reaper, all of which is perfectly valid, according to GQ.
But now, with the three publicly traded fast-casual bowl brands suffering sales weakness that began in the first quarter, some are seeing the notion of the slop bowl as the problem.
Those people, however, would be wrong.
Whether filled with protein-rich slop or the (arguably) healthful ingredients of a Chipotle/Sweetgreen/Cava makeline, bowls are on the rise.
Mentions of bowls on menus increased 6.5% over the past year, according to Technomic’s Ignite Menu, a sister brand of Restaurant Business.
Today, 41.6% of restaurant operators have bowls on the menu, and Technomic predicts that will increase to 43.2% by the second quarter of 2027.
This year, for example, we’ve seen two taco chains—Torchy’s Tacos and Velvet Tacos—launch new bowl categories on their menus, in part because of consumer demand.
And this week, the Mediterranean chain Taziki’s Mediterranean Café announced it has rolled out a new customizable bowl option, using the Greek name for bowls: Kýpelos.
Dan Simpson, Taziki’s CEO, said the 108-unit chain has long focused on more-elevated curated plates, salads and gyros. But the chain’s guests have been asking to build bowls out of the ingredients that were already on hand.
About two years ago, the chain changed the physical bowl used for salads and noticed an immediate increase in sales. So Taziki’s began testing bowls built on a base of rice, pasta or quinoa, with grilled vegetables and the protein of choice, and “guests just ate it up,” he said.
“Whenever you do an LTO, you typically see a boom and then it settles,” said Simpson. “In 10 years at Taziki’s, I’ve never seen a test like this where it just keeps building every week.”
The Kýpelos are launching as an LTO, but Simpson said he expects the category will be made permanent on the menu, starting in January.
“You can never get bored with bowls. There are just so many different combinations,” he said.
Adding bowls has helped Taziki’s show off the range of proteins on the menu, including shrimp, salmon, kabobs, grilled lamb, falafel, harissa chicken and more.
The move toward customization is not without risks. Choice fatigue is real, he said.
Taziki’s limits the ingredient options, which also helps prevent guests from building a bowl of, well, slop.
Simpson is not worried about being painted with the “slop bowl” brush.
He recalled watching his own grandfather mushing his dinner together on the plate and proclaiming that “it all ends up in the same place anyway.”
The problems Chipotle, Sweetgreen and Cava faced in the first half of the year have far more to do with a challenging economic environment. Consumers are not eating out as much, and they’re looking for value. A big bowl of it.
Both Chipotle and Sweetgreen are seen as pricy options, though they are working to change the perception of value for their respective brands. Cava, meanwhile, has benefitted from offering everyday value, but the challenge is building guest frequency amid a consumer “fog” of uncertainty about the future, as CEO Brett Schulman described it.
All three chains are plotting to bring new innovation to their respective menus to boost traffic. And that innovation will likely come in bowl form.
The 3,800-unit Chipotle is gunning to reach 7,000 units across North America, as well as growing in international markets.
Sweetgreen, with more than 260 units, is driving toward a 1,000-unit mark, with 40 new restaurants this year, half of which will be the automated Infinite Kitchen format (robotic slop bowls).
The 398-unit Cava, meanwhile, also has a goal of 1,000 units by 2032.
In the end, that means a lot of bowls reaching more of America. Fast casual may have hurdles to jump before these goals are reached, but it would seem our love of bowls—sloppy or otherwise—is here to stay.
