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Ryan Carpenter, founder of local smoothie and açai bowl chain Moberi, announced today he has purchased The Whole Bowl from founder Tali Ovadia.
Ovadia founded The Whole Bowl in 2001 and serves only one popular, vegetarian menu item: a rice and bean bowl topped with her signature Tali sauce. The Whole Bowl has seven locations in Portland and Beaverton, with an eighth coming soon.
Moberi launched in 2011 as a pedal-powered smoothie company, known for its açai bowls and for whipping up fruit smoothies on a repurposed bike outfitted with a blender. Carpenter appeared on an episode of Shark Tank in 2014 with his Moberi concept. Despite not getting an investment from the sharks, Moberi now has four locations across Portland and Beaverton. (The restaurant doesn’t blend by bike anymore.)
“There is a lot of alignment between the two brands,” Carpenter says. “We work very similarly. The culture within the companies is similar: both of our sets of employees are uniquely excited to work for both brands, and they’re also big fans of each other.”
The Whole Bowl has 23 employees and Moberi has 40, Carpenter says.
Carpenter has long admired The Whole Bowl for its simplicity of mission: Do one thing and do it well. The brand inspired him when he was first going into the açai bowl and smoothie business more than a decade ago. Since then, he has had a friendly working relationship with Ovadia—they had locations near each other at Portland International Airport, and about six years ago, he sold the Moberi cart on Northwest 23rd Avenue at Quimby Street to Ovadia and it became The Whole Bowl.
A new location of The Whole Bowl will open in the former Moberi space on Kruse Way in Lake Oswego in early February.
“In the spirit of The Whole Bowl, this handover has been more hugs than handshakes,” Ovadia said in a statement. “I wish Ryan the best of luck and many years of bowling.”
Customers now hoping to pick up smoothies along with their rice-and-beans bowls, or vice versa, not so fast: There are no plans in the works for the two brands to coexist under one roof.