Concept visual: Wild Bite Club.
Fishbowl built a national following around poke, then watched chicken, beef and tofu take over the order mix. Its new name, Thisbowl, shows how a once-specific food culture becomes a flexible lunch platform—and what gets lost in translation.
The fish is disappearing from the sign, but not from the bowl. Across Australia, a fast-casual chain born in a 26-square-metre Bondi shop is replacing the name Fishbowl with Thisbowl. The blue fish doodle stays. Salmon stays. The cold assembly line of grains, greens, sauces and proteins stays. What changes is the first promise a customer sees: the restaurant no longer defines lunch by the animal that launched it.
That sounds like cosmetic brand work until the orders are counted. Fishbowl began in 2016 with kingfish, salmon and tuna as its three proteins. Today salmon is the only seafood on the menu and accounts for less than a third of orders, according to company figures reported by Time Out Australia. Chicken, beef, tofu and eggplant now do most of the work. The old name had become a historical record, not an accurate menu description.
The transition matters beyond one Australian chain. Poke helped teach urban diners to accept lunch as a customised bowl: quick, colourful, portable and capable of carrying a wellness halo. Thisbowl’s bet is that the format has become more powerful than its origin. The risk is that removing the specific thing people remember leaves a smoother, larger—and less meaningful—brand.
Before: a fish shop with a fast-food argument
The original Fishbowl proposition was unusually legible. A small Bondi store sold Japanese-influenced bowls built around raw fish, rice and vegetables. The company describes its mission as changing fast-food culture, and the early menu made that ambition tangible: familiar takeaway speed, but with ingredients associated with sushi counters and beachside health culture.
The name did useful work. It identified the hero ingredient, suggested the serving vessel and gave the new chain a graphic mascot in two syllables. That specificity helped Fishbowl expand from a tiny shop to more than 60 locations. It also attached the business to a category consumers could understand before entering.
But categories become cages when the product travels. A group choosing lunch may include somebody who avoids raw fish, somebody seeking a hot protein and somebody who wants a plant-based meal. Even if all three could already eat at Fishbowl, the name made one of them do extra interpretive work. The menu had changed faster than the mental shortcut on the fascia.
The current Australian menu shows how far the offer has moved. A regular Salmon O.G. is listed at A$16.90. Chicken and roasted-tofu versions sit at A$15.90; chilli chicken and Tofu Boys start lower; braised beef reaches A$18.90. Build-your-own customers can choose chicken, beef, tofu, eggplant or salmon. Seafood is now one branch of the system, not the trunk.
After: the bowl becomes the brand
Thisbowl reverses the hierarchy. The vessel comes first, the protein second. Its mildly awkward grammar—this bowl, the one in front of you—tries to turn personal selection into the identity. The company is not abandoning poke so much as admitting that poke was the entry point to a broader operating model.
That model is exceptionally adaptable. A base, protein, vegetables, crunch and sauce can accommodate different diets without rebuilding the kitchen around separate dishes. Seasonal ingredients can rotate through a stable assembly sequence. A menu board can present novelty while the production line preserves repetition. For a customer, the bowl reads as personal. For an operator, it is modular.
This is the cultural shift hidden inside the rename. Poke entered the mainstream as a recognisable Hawaiian dish with Japanese influences. The fast-casual bowl that followed has become less a cuisine than an interface: customers compose lunch from components, while the restaurant sells controlled variation. The more successful that interface becomes, the less it needs to declare an origin.
The bowl did not replace poke; it absorbed poke’s permission to make lunch modular.
The US expansion made the mismatch harder to ignore. The company entered America under the Thisbowl name in 2024 and now operates four US restaurants, according to QSR Media. The newer name therefore appeared in the export market before it replaced Fishbowl at home. That order is revealing: international growth did not merely carry an Australian identity abroad; it helped produce a more portable identity that is now returning to Australia.
The lunch occasion has become its own category
New York provided a useful proving ground because the desk-lunch bowl is already a highly visible urban ritual. The Wall Street Journal has documented the city’s crowded culture of composed lunchtime bowls and the attempt by Thisbowl to make the occasion feel more experiential. The opportunity is not simply to sell Australians another protein. It is to compete in a global category where convenience, perceived health and a small sense of authorship meet.
The renaming campaign is following that logic at scale. Concrete Playground reports that the more-than-60-store network is being converted while the fish logo and build-your-own format remain. Time Out reported that the full Australian changeover was planned for mid-October, with around 20 Sydney stores already switched when the campaign was announced.
Keeping the fish doodle is a smart bridge, but it exposes the tension. Thisbowl wants the reach of a category-neutral name without discarding the symbol that accumulated recognition. In other words, the chain is asking the fish to perform brand equity while relieving it of menu authority.
A new sign does not update the whole system
The least glamorous details may determine whether the transition feels coherent. Location pages still direct customers to a “FISHBOWL app” even as the corporate story announces Thisbowl. The Android listing retains a Fishbowl-based package identity. Rewards accounts, store listings, delivery platforms, search results and receipts all carry fragments of the earlier brand.
This is more than digital housekeeping. A restaurant chain is experienced through dozens of small confirmations: the name on a map, the icon on a phone, the wording in a loyalty email, the label on a bank statement. When those confirmations disagree, customers may wonder whether they found the right business. The cost of a rebrand is therefore not only new fascia. It is the effort required to synchronise a distributed operating system.
The residue also reveals something about timing. The company waited until its product mix had already changed and its US business already used the new name. This is not a speculative repositioning meant to create demand from nothing. It is a lagging correction to behaviour the chain says is already visible in its sales.
The word that vanished may have been the memorable part
There is serious counter-evidence. Fishbowl is concrete, visual and distinctive. Thisbowl is broader but linguistically generic, and generic names can be expensive to own in search, conversation and memory. The retained fish illustration may soften the transition, but it may also prolong ambiguity about what the company now stands for.
Nor does a menu mix prove that the old name was suppressing demand. Customers could be choosing chicken because it is familiar, priced below salmon or better suited to repeat weekday eating—not because “Fishbowl” deterred them. Existing customers may have learned long ago that the restaurant serves more than fish. If the rename fails to bring in new diners or raise visit frequency, the chain will have spent money correcting a problem that lived mainly inside brand strategy.
That gives the next stage a clear test. If the broader name matters, customer acquisition should expand beyond seafood-preferring diners, mixed groups should find the choice easier and non-salmon items should support repeat visits without eroding the premium cues salmon provided. Evidence against the thesis would be stagnant traffic, weaker recall or a retreat toward fish imagery to explain the business.
What the new name needs to prove
What is observed is straightforward: the menu has diversified, salmon is below one-third of orders, the United States already uses Thisbowl and the Australian estate is being renamed. What is emerging is a broader fast-casual pattern in which cuisine-specific bowls become flexible platforms for weekday lunch. The possible next step is that more chains will define themselves by occasion and operating format rather than a signature ingredient.
That future is not automatically better. A name that welcomes everyone can also tell no one a story. Fishbowl’s transition will be useful precisely because the physical restaurant changes so little. If traffic and frequency improve after the signs, apps and listings finally align, the renamed chain will have shown that category language can block a business whose kitchen has already moved on. If little changes, the fish was never the barrier; it was the character.
The format has won; identity is still on trial
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p class=”wbc-rpt-view”>Thisbowl is a useful signal for operators whose menu has escaped the ingredient or cuisine named above the door. A modular bowl line can serve mixed groups, repeat weekday visits and multiple dietary preferences with one operating grammar; that is a genuine growth advantage. The risk is that category-neutral language trades away the memory, origin and price cues that made the first proposition sharp. The proof will not be a tidy rollout or celebratory discount. It will be whether the renamed Australian estate recruits new diners, increases visit frequency and completes the unglamorous migration of apps, loyalty accounts, maps and delivery listings without weakening recognition. Until then, the menu has outgrown Fishbowl more conclusively than the business has proven Thisbowl.