Eighteen years after the first Soonta opened on Waymouth Street in 2008, the brand is heading coast to coast. A new Brighton store officially opened its doors on April 17, a Royal Adelaide Hospital location soft launched at the end of April, and the first-ever Western Australian Soonta is opening in June. Adelaide-born, now genuinely national. This is what’s behind the chapter the team is calling Soonta’s next phase.
The expansion was covered in Glam Adelaide on May 9, 2026, where the brand was framed as one of the most exciting fast-casual success stories to come out of South Australia. The piece on this site walks through what each of the three new locations means — for customers across the country, for prospective franchisees watching the brand, and for the wider story of where Vietnamese fast-casual is heading in Australia.
The Brighton SA Store — Opened April 17
For South Australian customers, the Brighton store is the latest addition to the metro Adelaide network, putting Soonta’s signature flavours on the coastline for the first time. The catchment is distinct from the existing inland stores: a mix of beach-side foot traffic in summer, local resident demand in winter, and weekend visitors from the broader Adelaide metro area year-round.
Practically, this means Brighton residents can now order banh mi, salad bowls, bun bowls, rice bowls, cold rolls, and spring rolls without driving into the city or to one of the closer inland Soonta stores. Office workers in the area get a closer fresh-Vietnamese lunch option than they had before April 17. And catering customers along the coastal strip now have a Soonta location well inside the free 500m delivery zone for offices closer to Brighton than to other SA stores.
The store opening was the soft milestone — the more interesting question for regular customers is what it means for the weekly menu rhythm. Brighton’s catchment will start generating its own demand data over the next quarter, and the menu mix at this store will start reflecting it. Stores in summer-heavy coastal areas tend to over-index on cold rolls, salad bowls, and iced drinks. Stores in inland office precincts tend to lean toward warm rice bowls and banh mi. Brighton’s data will tell us which of these is the real local lean.
Royal Adelaide Hospital — Soft Launched in Late April
The Royal Adelaide Hospital location is a different kind of opening. It serves a very specific catchment: hospital staff, patients’ families, visitors, and the broader medical precinct workers across the road. The customer rhythm at a hospital location is unlike a high-street store — peak hours follow shift changes, the lunch rush spreads later in the afternoon, and the dietary mix skews more toward the careful end (vegetarian, gluten-free, low-fat options matter more).
For the Soonta menu, this catchment fits naturally. The Bun Bowl — cold vermicelli, fresh herbs, lean protein options — reads as a healthy lunch to a hospital crowd in a way a heavier sandwich doesn’t. The Salad Bowl does the same. And the Sweet Potato Chips, positioned on the menu as a healthier alternative to white potato chips, fit the register of staff grabbing a quick side between shifts.
The RAH location matters for a less obvious reason too: hospital staff are a high-recommendation customer base. When nurses, doctors, allied health, and admin staff find a lunch option they like, they tell each other, and they tell incoming staff. A successful first quarter at RAH should translate into demand spillover at other inner-Adelaide Soonta locations as staff refer family and friends.
The First WA Store — Opening June
This is the milestone that genuinely changes Soonta’s national footprint. The Western Australian opening in June is the first Soonta west of the South Australian border, taking the brand from a three-state operation (SA, VIC, QLD) to four states. Coast to coast becomes accurate language for the first time.
For WA customers, the impact is straightforward: a brand that’s been Adelaide-born for 18 years lands in Perth (or wherever the specific WA location ends up — the Glam Adelaide piece confirms WA in June without locking the suburb). Vietnamese fast-casual in WA isn’t unserved, but a brand with 18 years of SA operating discipline behind it is a meaningful entrant.
For the wider Soonta national strategy, WA closes a gap that’s been visible for years. SA has 17+ locations. VIC has one (The Glen, Glen Waverley). QLD has one (Cannon Hill, Brisbane). Adding WA gives the brand presence in four of Australia’s most populated states. It’s not yet a balanced national footprint — that would require more VIC and QLD stores — but it’s the right shape of expansion: get one foothold in WA first, then build into it, the same way the brand built into VIC and QLD over the previous three years.
Why This Matters: Eighteen Years of Operating Discipline
The single Waymouth Street store from 2008 didn’t become 18+ stores by being lucky. It became 18+ stores because the operating discipline behind the menu and the franchise model held up across catchments. A few specific things that the expansion track record validates:
- The menu travels. Vietnamese fast-casual works in CBD office precincts, suburban shopping strips, hospitals, and coastal areas without major reformulation. This isn’t true of every cuisine — many concepts that work in a single catchment fall apart in their second.
- The supply chain scales. Adding stores across state borders requires logistics that handle SA, VIC, and QLD simultaneously. The fact that the brand is now adding WA suggests the supply chain infrastructure is genuinely ready, not stretched.
- The franchise model is defensible. In 2025, Soonta was a dual finalist at the Franchise Industry Awards — Franchisor of the Year, plus Franchise Innovation of the Year. External recognition like that doesn’t fix a broken franchise model, but it does signal that the industry is reading the model as serious.
The team described the next phase as “continued expansion, strengthening our national footprint, and continuing to improve the customer experience across all stores”. That’s the public framing. The operational subtext is: the model has proved out in three states, the WA opening tests it in a fourth, and the rest of 2026 should clarify whether SA, VIC, QLD, and now WA can be operated as a true national network rather than a multi-state cluster.
What This Expansion Means for Customers
Three concrete shifts you should expect over the next 12 months as the expansion plays out:
Menu consistency. As stores grow, more pressure goes onto keeping the menu identical across all locations. The Brighton, RAH, and WA stores should all serve the same banh mi, the same bowl format, the same cold rolls and spring rolls you’d get at the original city store. If you’ve never had Soonta and want to try it for the first time at a new location, the experience should match what regulars in Adelaide have known for years.
Catering reach. The catering model — Signature Box, Tasting Box, finger food platters — is identical across SA, VIC, QLD, and (from June) WA. As stores grow, more offices fall inside Soonta’s free-500m delivery zones for catering. If your office didn’t have a nearby Soonta a year ago and is wondering whether one’s closer now, the answer is probably yes.
Loyalty app and ordering consistency. The Soonta app, app download, and online ordering experience should remain identical across the growing network. Customers who travel between SA, VIC, QLD, and WA can use the same loyalty account everywhere, with the same menu and the same ordering flow.
What This Signals for Prospective Franchisees
If you’ve been watching Soonta as a possible franchise opportunity, this expansion phase is a useful signal. A brand that’s adding three locations across two states in one quarter (Brighton SA, Royal Adelaide Hospital, WA in June) is a brand whose franchise model is currently being stress-tested under growth. That’s good — operating under expansion pressure surfaces what works and what needs adjustment, faster than steady-state operation does.
A few questions worth asking the franchise team if you’re considering a conversation:
- What’s the next state after WA? Is there a public expansion plan beyond June 2026?
- What’s the franchisee profile that’s worked best in the recent openings — owner-operator, multi-store operator, or institutional?
- How is the supply chain holding up as the network grows beyond 18 locations?
If those questions get clear, confident answers, the model is in good shape. If they get hedged answers, the brand is still figuring out the second half of its expansion. Either way, it’s information that helps a prospective franchisee make a real decision.
What’s Next
Beyond Brighton, Royal Adelaide Hospital, and WA, Glam Adelaide flagged “several new venues across the country” coming, with the framing of “continued expansion” rather than a single big announcement. That’s the right cadence for a brand at 18+ locations: keep opening at a sustainable rate, prove out each new location for a full quarter before announcing the next, and let the customer base grow with the footprint rather than ahead of it.
For Soonta customers across SA, VIC, QLD, and (from June) WA: the network is growing. For prospective franchisees: the model is being tested under real expansion pressure, and the external recognition (2025 Franchise Industry Awards dual finalist) suggests it’s holding up. For the wider Vietnamese fast-casual category in Australia: an Adelaide-born concept just became a coast-to-coast operator.
Read More
The full Glam Adelaide article — including the founder’s framing of the next phase — is here: “Adelaide-born Soonta is going national, with Brighton SA, plus WA and beyond in its sights” (Danika Zalac, Glam Adelaide, May 9 2026).
Browse the current Soonta location network across SA, VIC, and QLD or the full menu. Catering across all three current states (and WA from June) is on the catering page. For franchise enquiries about being part of the next chapter, the franchise overview is the starting point.
