We analyzed the prices of 30 all-you-can-eat buffets across the country, taking into account a variety of factors: Geographic region, size of the buffet independent vs. Delivered weekdays plus a bonus Sunday feature. Unsubscribe whenever. Buffets often break even on food and eke out a profit by minimizing the cost of labor.
Because margins are so slim, buffets rely on high foot traffic : At Golden Corral, a buffet chain with locations in 42 states, dining floors are 5k-square-feet and seat people. The volume of food required to satiate all-you-can-eaters on a daily basis can be staggering.
Each year, Ovation Brands, the owner of multiple major buffet chains, serves up 85m dinner rolls, 47m pounds of chicken, and 6m pounds of steak — Waste reduction is a key focus of any successful buffet and a frequent tactic is reusing food. Buffets are also able to save money by utilizing economies of scale and buying food in bulk.
Using data from a wholesale food supplier, we worked out the approximate cost per serving of a few popular buffet items. By nature, buffets attract the very customers they wish to avoid: Big eaters with insatiable appetites. But what happens when a customer ignores these tricks and devours a Godzilla-sized portion of food? Is it possible to — dare we ask — out-eat the all-you-can-eat buffet?
While the buffet might lose money on a small number of meat gluttons, it handily makes it back on those who under -consume or only eat the cheaper foods. Every buffet owner we talked to had a few war stories about dealing with policy abusers.
Other proprietors have taken more extreme measures. Over the years, buffets have made headlines for kicking out guests who eat too much :. In the past 20 years, more than 1. Ovation Brands, the conglomerate that owns these chains, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy 3 times since Industry experts attribute this decline, in part, to the spread of food delivery apps.
For 30 years, she has served guests a Polish-themed spread that includes kielbasa, schnitzel, and pierogi. Her secret? Sticking to the roots of what first made buffets popular in the s: excess and variety. And many bars and clubs in the U. Then again, food-related discriminatory pricing is uniquely awkward.
If this became widespread, it could reinforce the stereotype that women are supposed to be birdlike and abstemious while men can indulge without restraint.
I do tend to eat less than my boyfriend most days. But I have also been known to hoover up more than an Icelandic body-builder , tucking away, in one short sitting, a Chipotle burrito, chips, guac, random olives and things we had in the house, those two-bite brownies from Whole Foods, and definitely more than one "serving" of gelato. In short, Anachronistic Gender Ideas Restaurant would get hosed if they caught me on the wrong day. If an entire restaurant just assumes that women eat less than men, then it might be seen as wrong or unusual if they eat more.
That makes them stagnant and boring, and no one wants to pick a restaurant like that for a fun evening out. Would you? Dinnertime staples like Old Country Buffet aren't the only buffets reevaluating things, and hotel breakfast buffets are also taking a good, long look at not just how profitable they are, but how wasteful they are. It's worse than you might think, and according to Forbes , a typical breakfast buffet throws away around half the food that's put out.
That's an unthinkable amount of waste, and the problem really only came to light in That's when the Hyatt Regency Orlando's executive chef Lawrence Eells opened their kitchen to a team of researchers that looked at just how efficient their buffets were, and the answer was pretty much, "Not efficient at all.
Eells — who oversaw around 5, buffet-centric events each year — said he was shocked by the findings, and that "The scope of the problem was an eye-opener beyond belief. They ruled the buffet scene for a long time, but the 21st century hasn't been kind. When the Star Tribune reported on the sudden shuttering of a number of locations in following a bankruptcy filing, they added that since , more than locations had closed. Just what happened to bring down the company wasn't clearly stated, but a big part of it was a case that started in That's when a Nebraska man ate there, and left with a case of food poisoning that was nearly deadly.
Part of the reason for that may have been that Ovations also known as Buffets LLC purchased the company between the time the lawsuit was filed and when the judge made a ruling.
Peter Donbavand, a spokesperson for the company, blames that lack of disclosure — as well as sales that fell short of the seller's projections — for the bankruptcy filing, according to Reuters. The closings that followed left a massive hole in the buffet-style dining industry, which might be a big reason it's hard to find a good buffet these days.
They put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak, and when they struggled, that led to closing hundreds of restaurants. The parent company had the dubious honor of declaring bankruptcy for an unprecedented third time in via CNBC , and they had previously filed Chapter 11 in and Let's start with just two years prior, they had made purchases that made them the largest buffet chain in the US.
Those are mind-numbing numbers. More than one chain of buffets has struggled lately. Remember Sizzler? Their woes go back to at least , when The New York Times reported they closed locations, let 4, employees go, and filed for bankruptcy.
Part of their problem was their buffet. It seemed like a great idea to give their target customers — middle-class Americans — the variety they wanted, but it didn't work. Sizzler tried to partner buffets with steak, and when presented with either a nice but pricey steak or a wide expanse of buffet food, too many customers were opting for the lower-priced buffet.
Even though Sizzler wanted to be a respectable steakhouse, so many people were going there for the buffet that it's what they became known for. Anyone actually wanting steak would head somewhere else. Buffets also take up a lot of space, and according to restaurant consultant Ron Paul, the average Sizzler was around 10, square feet too small for buffet tables. That took away from the number of people they could seat at once, and all that combined to mean the chain was headed for disaster.
Looking at bankruptcy, they decided to rebrand. They eventually staged a comeback — but they did it without a buffet. Those super-cheap buffets are gone now, and it's not just a matter of rising food prices. They were never meant to make a profit, they were meant to get people in the door — people who would then go on to gamble at the adjoining casinos.
According to Time , there are a few reasons why this scheme's largely disappeared. You can blame foodies for a big part of it. The buffet is affordable, and a lot of us love a deal. When did our hearts grow cold toward buffets, and why?
Obviously, since I have written an article about it, I know the answer. You may wish you were a child at Ponderosa who can make her own choices, but this is not the case. What if people eat too much? Buffets save a lot of money on overhead because they can make large batches of cheap foods and you ultimately do most of the service part yourself.
I would posit that where this business model falls apart is in the way it makes people feel: that they are being manipulated in strange ways. Conspiracy theories about buffets abound. In , in the forums of BodyBuilding. Like those all-you-can-eat buffets, do they put in some [type] of ingredient in all the foods which makes you full quicker? Of course, a secret get-full-quick ingredient does not exist.
In a Reddit Ask Me Anything session last year , a buffet owner fielded questions about how old the crab legs are old and how bad the oysters are bad , assuring readers that actually, the sushi is fine to eat if the place is busy, and that they are right to assume that leftover food gets recycled into soups and casseroles. That is not what we hope for. There are also some obvious problems with leaving huge mounds of food out in the open for extended periods of time and letting lots of people touch them.
In , contaminated meat at a Sizzler buffet in Milwaukee infected the entire salad bar and thereby 60 people with E. A few years later, the chain removed the salad bars from all of its restaurants in Australia because someone put rat poison in two of them. Souplantation hosted an E. Souper Salad went bankrupt in , blaming the recession. I cannot deduce why! But then it had another in , when the USDA issued a warning about preventing foodborne illnesses, specifically fried rice-borne illnesses.
Professor Dunn taught me lots of things, actually, in our brief phone call.
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