Zoup!

Zoup! Eatery is a fast-casual restaurant brand centered on soup, salads, sandwiches, and bowls, with a strong focus on the lunch and early dinner crowd. Guests order at the counter and can see the kitchen activity, with a rotating lineup of broth-based and hearty soups, customizable grain and broth bowls, made-to-order salads, and toasted sandwiches. The concept is built around variety and comfort food rather than a single signature item, which allows it to fit into a wide range of daily routines from quick solo lunches to office catering.

The brand was founded by Detroit-area entrepreneur Eric Ersher and his partners, who started in the early 1990s as a wholesale soup company supplying other foodservice operators. They opened the first Zoup! restaurant in Southfield, Michigan, in 1998 to bring those recipes directly to consumers and test a soup-forward concept in a retail setting. Franchising began in the early 2000s, and the chain steadily expanded across the Midwest, the Mid-Atlantic, and select markets in the Northeast and South. A notable milestone came in the 2010s when Zoup! surpassed 60 locations and shifted from a local soup shop into a recognized fast-casual player in multi-tenant retail, downtown office districts, and near college campuses.

Ownership changed in 2022, when Montreal-based MTY Food Group Inc., a large North American multi-brand restaurant franchisor, acquired the Zoup! restaurant system. Around the same time, Campbell Soup Company acquired the separate Zoup! retail broth and packaged soup business found in supermarkets, allowing the Zoup! name to live in both restaurant and grocery channels. Under MTY’s ownership, Zoup! Eatery operates within a broader portfolio of quick-service and fast-casual concepts and benefits from shared franchising, supply chain, and development resources. The brand has continued to update its menu with an emphasis on bowls, plant-forward options, and take-home broth, tying its in-restaurant experience more closely to the products on grocery shelves.

As of March 2023, Zoup! Eatery operated roughly 60 locations across the United States and Canada. The footprint is concentrated in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Ontario, with additional restaurants in markets such as Illinois, Indiana, and Colorado. Units are typically inline or endcap spaces in suburban shopping centers, urban mixed-use projects, and sites near college and medical campuses, with layouts oriented toward steady daytime traffic and a meaningful catering component. While some older locations have closed in recent years, the company continues to open new franchised units, focusing on markets where MTY already has infrastructure, including the Midwest, the Mid-Atlantic, Ontario, and select secondary U.S. markets with strong daytime populations.

Over the past five years, Zoup! has evolved from a soup-first concept into a broader “eatery” platform built around bowls, salads, and sandwiches, while still treating soup as its core. The acquisition by MTY marked an important step in that evolution, giving the brand additional support to refine its menu, invest in digital ordering, and strengthen its catering and takeout business. For landlords, brokers, and developers, Zoup!’s current positioning as a controlled-growth, franchised fast-casual concept with a daytime-oriented guest base makes it a flexible tenant for multi-tenant retail, office-adjacent projects, and mixed-use environments where lunch and early evening traffic are critical to the merchandising mix.