RESTAURANT NEWS | INDIANA
Planted Bloomington Brings Its Plant-Based Truck Menu Indoors
The popular plant-based truck gets a brick-and-mortar serving the dishes regulars already know.
PLANTED BLOOMINGTON | MAP | INSTAGRAM
By Jamie Dutton
8:43 a.m. CT, Oct. 29, 2026
AUTHOR BIO: Jamie Dutton's job has her in airports regularly, as does a family spread out across the Midwest. She’s partial to BPTs and Bell’s.
Planted's new restaurant in downtown Bloomington, Indiana, looks a lot like the food truck it grew out of, only with walls. The plant-based spot opened October 23 as the first brick-and-mortar from a truck and catering company that started in 2023, with about 48 seats and a menu built from the dishes its regulars already knew.
Owner Nicole Schonemann runs the restaurant with general manager Seth Cook, who worked at The Owlery for its last two years. Schonemann wanted the space to feel, in her words, “like a playful home rather than a fancy restaurant,” a place to duck into on a blustery day.
Abundance bowls
That feeling extends to how the room was put together. Planted uses no single-use plastic, a holdover from the truck, and serves food on plates, bowls, and cups found at local thrift stores. The remodel used reclaimed barnwood, wood from a tree felled in a storm, and Habitat ReStore materials, and the kitchen sources organic and local ingredients when it can.
The menu leans on the truck's hits. The Violet is a banh mi-influenced flat with crispy lemongrass fried tofu, ginger tamarind sauce, mint, cilantro, jalapeño, and spicy mayo, and the mushroom shawarma taco returns alongside it. A newer arrival, the Bacon Rebel Brie & Me Redux, pairs vegan bacon with sweet jam, caramelized onions, and arugula. Hand-cut fries and handmade seasonal burgers, made without meat, round out the savory side, and Elixir Kombucha, a Kentucky brand, comes in cans and on keg. House ice cream is sold in pints to take home, and poured into kombucha floats and sundaes in the restaurant.
The Violet
Dishes will change with the seasons and what's local, so the lineup now is a starting point rather than a fixed list. Catering continues with the restaurant, and there’s a separate menu of sweet and savory bites. For now, Planted serves lunch on weekdays and brunch on weekends, with dinner planned for December or January.
The reuben
Stuffed mushrooms
If the truck taught Bloomington what Planted cooks, the permanent restaurant shows how it likes to serve it: plant-based food, on plates that already had a life before lunch.
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By ERIC BARTON