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The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets
- bobosha 7y agoMakes me wonder how the "Paradox of Choice" works in this situation since the customer is already committed to purchasing. Does this lead to more-than-usual consumption (cf. the usual shying away from purchase in a Choice paradox scenario)
- diffeomorphism 7y agoIsn't loss aversion more relevant to this? You already paid for all this, so you would "lose money" by not eating more.
- lonelappde 7y agoYou mean sunk cost? Loss aversion from the buffet would depend on how much food is available, not how much you paid.
- diffeomorphism 7y agoSunk cost fits better. I think loss aversion is however also not a bad fit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Loss_aversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Loss_aversion One is: I already paid, therefore I should eat. The other is: I paid for infinity, therefore I should eat more.
- d33 7y agoI saw a great solution to the over-eating problem in one sushi spot in Italy. Not exactly a buffer, but you could pay upfront and order as much as you want per person. The caveat is that you can only order four servings at once and you pay the full a'la carte price for everything you hadn't fully eaten.
- whorleater 7y agoThis is the case with all you can eat sushi places in the US as well
- paulpauper 7y agothen why not make multiple small trips?
- smokey_the_bear 7y agoThey also serve a much higher ratio of rice to fish than a typical sushi restaurant
- owl57 7y agoyou pay the full a'la carte price for everything you hadn't fully eaten I've heard of a game in university: two players take their meals in the cafeteria, the one with the more expensive lunch wins, the other one pays for both. Rules: you must eat everything and you take only one portion of anything (this is not a caviar-eating contest).
- joegahona 7y agoInteresting exercise, but why not just throw the uneaten food under the table, or covertly take it to the restroom and toss it in the toilet?
- lotsofpulp 7y agoThe purpose is to incentivize people to think twice about what they are ordering and how much they can eat, not to prevent people who are already intent on abusing the system. For that, you simply have to observe and ban people.
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoGuess the owners would not appreciate the local Keto meetup having an event at their buffet.
- ReptileMan 7y agoDepends. There are enough cheap cuts for slow cooking - and you could always drawn your meats in sugary sauces anyway.
- pge 7y agoThe other technique not mentioned here is for buffets to just stop refilling the higher cost items on the buffet if a group of big eaters comes in. then let them sit empty while the diners fill up on potatoes or what not, before finally refilling them.
- k__ 7y agoUsually, they refill all you ask for.
- castratikron 7y agoAnother trick is to keep drinks topped off. Fills you up.
- lostlogin 7y agoAdding more salt to the food helps this path, but maybe I’ve just been too cynical and that day’s kitchen staff too heavy handed.
- lonelappde 7y agoSalt makes food tastier and motivates you take another bite, which continues the cycle, so it's a good choice to put in the cheaper food by calorie/mass/volume/whatever-creates-satiety.
- _ph_ 7y agoWhile very occasionally a buffet can be fun, I usually consider them not so great an experience. Yes, it is nice to be able to decide yourself the relative composition of ingredients, like adding the extra piece of meat or a lot of your favorite vegetable, but too often you end out with a strange mix of stuff on your plate. A plate, which as described in the article, usually is to small of this. So while you might get a little bit more food, it is often less quality, than if you had ordered a prepared dish. And of course, many restaurants offer dishes which are smaller or lager.
- lqet 7y ago> but too often you end out with a strange mix of stuff on your plate Bingo. When presented with a buffet, people (myself included) usually have a fear of "missing out" the good stuff, so they just load a little bit of everything to their plate. At a buffet, you usually don't have the information about (1) how filling an individual ingredient is and (2) how well they go together. So each and every time, you end up with too much food which doesn't really combine. In the end, you leave too full and slightly unsatisfied. On a menu, the individual menus or plates have been tested for months against the cooks and guests, and the kitchen has adjusted plates which were always returned with leftovers to be smaller and/or removed meals that led to too much complaints So basically, on a buffet you will get an untested meal designed by someone usually not competent enough to design it (you), every time.
- tjoff 7y agoAnd even if you had perfect knowledge and would combine an exact replica of what was on the standard menu the fact that it is a buffet means the food has been out for a while. It seldom will be as good of an experience as just ordering the same thing. Which I sometimes do. At which point people will look at you funny. But you can't in many places and unless everyone does the same (unlikely) you end up getting your food when everyone else is about done. I'm generally not a fan of buffets.
- easymodex 7y agoWell my trick is to get a little bit of everything then return and just get what you liked the most and go crazy. Sometimes there's an issue with too many things to try, but usually it works. I always take all-you-can-eat literally.
- pliny 7y agoThis article links to two (!) different Wansink studies.
- jubjubbird 7y agoFor context: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/?s=brian+wansink https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/?s=brian+wansink (he's a Cornell prof with dubious research/PR tactics)
- dokein 7y agoYou’re being kind — He’s a former Cornell Prof who was removed from his position for making up data to fit PR-able conclusions. None of his work should be cited as evidence of anything.
- lalaland1125 7y agoA quote from the Brian himself illustrating how he is able to "publish" so much junk research. > P-hacking shouldn’t be confused with deep data dives – with figuring out why our results don’t look as perfect as we want. With field studies, hypotheses usually don’t “come out” on the first data run. But instead of dropping the study, a person contributes more to science by figuring out when the hypo worked and when it didn’t. This is Plan B. Perhaps your hypo worked during lunches but not dinners, or with small groups but not large groups. You don’t change your hypothesis, but you figure out where it worked and where it didn’t. This is horrifically bad research practice and basically guarantees that all of your results will be completely p-hacked. https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2018/09/23/tweeking-big-problem-not-think/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2018/09/23/tweeking-b... is another hilarious example.
- ip26 7y agoReally? Suppose you just ran a twenty year, many million dollar field study, the hypothesis was not confirmed, you just throw everything out & that's that?
- deleted 7y ago
- wtmt 7y agoAccording to Drawdown, reducing food waste is the top individual action one can take to reduce one’s impact on climate change. Buffets tend to be quite wasteful and/or encourage serving older food a lot more than a la carte orders. There could be some exceptions, such as buffets in hotels where it’s included in the room rent and is a lot easier to plan for (the quantities) based on the number of guests and the guest demographics. As a consumer, if you want value for money in a buffet, the best bets, IMO, are fresh foods and/or the ones that aren’t processed much. All the high sugar and high fat processed foods tend to be made with low quality ingredients while also being terrible for health. Also focus on enjoying the variety with smaller quantities of everything you’d like to eat rather than trying to eat a lot more than your usual appetite.
- learnstats2 7y agoIt's unclear to me why buffets would be more wasteful than other restaurants, particularly in climate change terms. There's some contradiction in what you've said about minimising waste and demanding fresh foods. If we stick to only the freshest foods, then we waste a lot more. Surely being able to serve in quantity creates positive economies of scale.
- wtmt 7y agoIn my observation, buffet customers tend to attempt to eat a lot more by filling their plates with a lot more than they can handle. This is because they’ve already paid for it and believe that eating more is the way to get more value for money. Once they’re in the middle of the meal, they realize that they cannot finish it and that gets wasted. With a la carte, you’d at least have the option of taking the leftovers home.
- noisem4ker 7y agoSome places have a nominal "no leftovers" policy. I'm not sure if and how they enforce it, but the idea is that if there's something significant left on your plate, you should take it with you as you leave paying as if it were something you ordered from the menu.
- katzgrau 7y agoThe only thing I found more interesting than all-you-can-eat buffets actually turning a profit is that there are business people who are apparently content running a business with such slim margins. This article quotes a 5% margin. I know food industry margins are low in the first place, but as a business owner in a different field I'm left wondering why anyone would even bother. The same business prowess and attention to detail you need to make a buffett run profitably could get you very far in another industry.
- generalpass 7y ago> The only thing I found more interesting than all-you-can-eat buffets actually turning a profit is that there are business people who are apparently content running a business with such slim margins. > This article quotes a 5% margin. I know food industry margins are low in the first place, but as a business owner in a different field I'm left wondering why anyone would even bother. The same business prowess and attention to detail you need to make a buffett run profitably could get you very far in another industry. This is because you are assuming entrepreneurs act only for the purpose of profit. Entrepreneurs act for the same reason all people act: to achieve their desired ends. These ends are established based on emotional desires, which do not necessarily correlate with things like maximum ROI.
- kgwgk 7y agoMost industries have low margins. You can see net margins for US public companies here: http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/margin.html http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/... The average is 7.7%
- chrisseaton 7y ago> there are business people who are apparently content running a business with such slim margins ... I'm left wondering why anyone would even bother A percentage margin is expressed relative to the value of the sales. Low margin on high value sales is as good as high margin on low value sales, in terms of how much money you make. Low margin is only a problem in low value sales. Why shouldn’t people running a business with extremely high value sales, due to low margins? I can’t see what you’d find that a bizarre thing to do? I’d be happy making 5% if I was selling a jumbo jet a day, for example. You can’t criticise just the margin in isolation like you’ve done.
- dtertman 7y agoThe Red Apple, quoted in the story, closed their original location (that had been open for 30 years) last summer to make way for condos. At 5% margins it's pretty easy to see how a builder could make them a great or even life-changing offer.
- glangdale 7y agoI've seen a number of instances where "all-you-can-eat" rapidly devolves into "all-you-can-find" - where expensive items simply don't get refilled until the big eaters go away. We went to a Churrasco place one time with my startup team and the staff more or less spent half the allotted time essentially hiding from us. It was comical, but expensive. The other aspect of buffets is that frequently the food is quite dreadful; they may have steak, but it's cheap cuts, cooked to the consistency of a Frisbee. Even if you're "beating the buffet" economically, you're just eating bad food for no reason.
- devchix 7y agoThe "better" all-you-can-eats are priced accordingly. The Bellagio in Las Vegas had a seafood thing that cost north of $40, if I remember correctly. The crab legs get constantly refilled, they also had giant prawns. This was years ago so it may not exist any longer. Founding Farmers in DC has a brunch thing, also expensive, but the lox tray is never empty. The surprise in the bill is the cost of drinks, espressos and mimosas add up quickly. I wonder if there's a different economic model for the more upscale all-you-can-eats. The food choices is more appealing all around.
- Nursie 7y agoBuffet style places are popular in singapore, but often cost around SGD100 per person.
- sabujp 7y agoyou can get all you can eat crab legs in much cheaper chinese buffets in vegas outside the strip.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoBrazilian steak houses are often buffets as well.
- ghaff 7y agoThey often are because they want you to fill up on salad and so forth rather than just eat meat. (And, if they don't have a buffet, they bring plenty of that sort of thing around the table.) I sorta like Brazilian steakhouses but I certainly don't get my money's worth because I don't have the appetite I used to have.
- 0x445442 7y agoIf I do go to a buffet I only eat protein because it seems to be the only way to get my money's worth.
- ddlatham 7y agoIf I go to a buffet I fill up my plate with all the food I most enjoy even if that includes the cheap stuff. Then I feel like I got my money's worth, even if they made a profit.
- mod 7y agoFor some people, getting their money's worth (literally: the food they eat cost the restaurant almost as much, or more than, the amount the customer paid to eat it) is the enjoyment. Several of my family members are this way.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoPretty sure that philosophy (sufficiently widespread) is what leads to the decline of societies.
- stevenwoo 7y agoA variation of that philosophy led to the end of a limited salad deal in China, supposedly patrons would stack their plates to an absurd height to get around the one plate limit. https://kotaku.com/how-chinese-ingenuity-destroyed-salad-bars-at-pizza-hut-834835079 https://kotaku.com/how-chinese-ingenuity-destroyed-salad-bar...
- PopeDotNinja 7y agoI sometimes drink a stupid amount of diet soda. I know drinks are usually high margin, but I wouldn't be surprised if some places lose money on me. I went to a Denny's recently and tried to count the number of refills I got, but I lost count. This is the same Denny's I went to in college, where the waitress knew me. She'd drop two pitchers of Diet Coke on the table before she took my order. The epitaph on my tomb stone should probably be "Didn't do an autopsy. We just assumed he was one giant tumor artificial sweetener induced cancer."
- WilliamEdward 7y agoI know you are joking but artificial sweeteners do not cause cancer. Current literature does suggest they are bad for your teeth though.
- celticninja 7y agoI doubt it. The postmix box that they use costs cents(if that) per litre.
- mod 7y agoIf the drink was $2 and served in glass, you'd have to have a 3-digit number of refills before they lost money on it, assuming they use a gun.
- lonelappde 7y agoIncluding dishwasher and ice/refrigeration expenses?
- snovv_crash 7y agoAll studies I've seen of artificial sweeteners have only shown that they are measurably worse for you than water. Sugar is worse than non-nutritive sweeteners Similarly with MSG, studies show it is less toxic than salt. It is only 'toxic' in ridiculously large quantities.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
- tartoran 7y agoBuffets are great but there’s something off with the food at the all you can eat buffets with fixed price. Probably the food is of lesser quality..
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- narag 7y agoThere's one Argentinian buffet in Madrid (in Plenilunio mall if someone is interested) with an unusual system: they bring the food around the tables and you pick what you want. Most of it is barbecued meat. I avoid going there because I can't help eating too much every time.
- soneca 7y agoThat's the typical way of barbecue restaurants in Brazil. We have it for barbecue, pizza, and japanese food actually.
- dyeje 7y agoIt's actually less unusual than you would think, these are called churrascarias or Brazillian steakhouses.
- detritus 7y agoSounds like an Argentinian version of a Brazilian rodizio.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod%C3%ADzio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod%C3%ADzio
- croisillon 7y agosounds like the Brazilian rodizio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod%C3%ADzio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod%C3%ADzio
- fortran77 7y agoThey mention Golden Corral. They save money, notoriously, by serving "Dumpster-Aged" ribs. https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1hubzj/all_you_can_eat_ribs_courtesy_of_golden_corral/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1hubzj/all_you_can_... There's even an ad they ran that featured this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj43JdXjLNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj43JdXjLNQ
- oogali 7y agoThat’s a parody ad, not an official Golden Corral ad.
- Jommi 7y agoI'm still at awe of the Sushi Buffet thing that you can see all around in Helsinki, Finland. So far I have not seen anything like it, anywhere else in the world. Usually the price you pay is 10€ for an unrestricted and no time limit access to eating sushi. And the sushi is incredibly okay! It's nothing compared to stuff you find Tokyo ofcourse, but the price for quality is literally unbeatable. And all this is happening in a city where restaurant prices for main dish are usually around 18-20€. What am I missing?
- theironlily 7y agoPerhaps the restaurant uses a lot more rice for the rolls and the nigiris, or offer to fill up patrons with green tea or miso soup. Or, they are constantly busy and make their margins by the sheer number of patrons coming in for the incredible deal!
- Benji_San 7y agoThere are also quite a few all-you-can-eat-sushi buffet places in Turku, all with the same price of around 10€ during lunchhours. A interesting part that was left out from the initial post is that we have these "lunch coupons" in Finland. AFAIK most employers provide these for their employees either as part of the total compensation or allow the employees to buy them tax free. The idea is basically that you get lunch for the coupon, the max valued coupon is currently worth 10,70€. Seeing how more or less all restaurants that serves lunch accepts these coupons I don't think it is possible to charge much more than the max valued coupon.
- vnorilo 7y agoIn Helsinki, most good lunches are more than the 10.80€ maximum. Everyone is paying the overage of 0.5-1€ with their card. For people unfamiliar with the system, the lunch coupons you use are deducted from your salary pre-tax, so it's significantly cheaper.
- nocubicles 7y agoBeen wondering the same of how its possible. Wish they could also do it across the bay in Tallinn.
- astura 7y ago>The big buffet chains that once dotted the Midwest have been hit the hardest: Old Country Buffet is down to 17 of its 350 original locations; HomeTown Buffet has closed 217 of its 250 eateries; Ryan’s Buffet has downsized from 400 to 16. I am not surprised. I went to an Old Country Buffet about two decades ago during the time I was working in a hospital kitchen. I recognized a lot of their dishes from work, they were serving the same lowest quality cheap food that we served to the patients. Now Old Country Buffet has to compete with the variety of high-quality restaurants we have available today. Customer's tastes have changed and now eating a reasonable amount of higher quality food seems more desirable than eating unlimited hospital food. There are high quality buffets thought, Indian buffets are the best thing ever. But the low quality ones are dying out.
- bluedino 7y agoGolden Corral has moved up to the midwest.
- Broken_Hippo 7y agoThey've been there for some years (at least 10-15 in Indiana) - I lived there, though I think it has been at least 10 years since I've been there. I remember being somewhat disappointed the last few times and it was generally difficult to get beverage refills often enough. I'm not sure they are "quality". The best I've had was an Indian buffet in Indiana and a hotel's breakfast buffet in Amsterdam. I woke up to eat breakfast there.
- marktangotango 7y agoThat’s what I noticed too, it’s like no one working there even tastes the food, it’s just not good. Definitely not woRuth the price when you can a good meal for the same money at a lot of places.
- anticensor 7y agoThe simple trick is you need to price it such that any combination will always cover the costs of the most expensive meal. -Don't just downvote, explain why it won't work.
- learc83 7y agoBecause the difference between the average and the most expensive is so great, that people who eat the average meal aren't willing to pay enough to cover the most expensive.
- diffeomorphism 7y agoThat price is obviously too high. Congratulations, you have no customers now.
- jasoneckert 7y agoI stopped going to all-you-can-eat buffets years ago for the simple reason that you don't stop eating when you're full - you stop eating when you hate yourself. If the number of all-you-can-eat buffets drops, it's likely because society is starting to advocate healthier lifestyles in my opinion.
- CydeWeys 7y agoFor the same reason there's certain foods that I almost never allow myself to buy at the grocery store (like Pirate's Booty) -- I will eat it until it's gone and then feel bad. I probably go to an all-you-can-eat buffet once every couple years, and that's enough. Interestingly I'm not including Indian buffets or hotel breakfast buffets in that count; those don't trigger the same "you must eat everything in sight" urges for whatever reason.
- virtuallynathan 7y agoI’ve started going more, but mostly to Brazilian steakhouses. You will stop eating steak exactly when you are satiated. I actually lose weight if I go a few days in a row.
- isoskeles 7y agoDo you avoid the cheesy biscuits?
- mixmastamyk 7y agoPão de queijo, definitely not.
- emiliobumachar 7y agoBrazilian here. I overeat at steakhouses just like anywhere else, and never heard the distinction before. Maybe it's just you?
- asdkhadsj 7y agoHell, I struggle with even normal restaurants. I like going out, my wife and I can afford it, but I feel like I'm going out for the freshly, crispy yummy food.. and yet, I always end up taking half of it home because they hand me a massive plate. I'm thinking next time we go out we'll try and get the same thing and split a plate. .. and then tip as if we ordered 2 plates because I feel guilty to the server. Hah.
- ReptileMan 7y ago>A German triathlete was asked to prematurely leave an $18.95 buffet after consuming 100 plates of sushi. Gotta love this guy's confidence in the ability of the budget restaurant to procure and handle properly high quality fresh seafood
- _pmf_ 7y agoThe trick is cheap food and tons of glutamate.
- JeanMarcS 7y agoMeanwhile in France... https://www.lesgrandsbuffets.com/en https://www.lesgrandsbuffets.com/en
- gnicholas 7y ago> Even higher-end buffets, like the $98 brunch at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, employ these tactics: “They hide the truffles, the foie gras, and the oysters,” says Britt. “You literally can’t find them.” I honeymooned are The Del, and they kindly comped our brunch for our entire stay. This was for the downstairs brunch, which doesn’t have as much meat but is still amazing. It’s about $40/person these days, and considering all that it includes (made to order eggs, bacon, waffles, pancakes, pastries, fruit, desserts, and fresh squeezed juice), and the level of service, it’s a pretty good value.
- derefr 7y agoOne nice thing about buffets—all-you-can-eat or not—is that, if you want, you can eat small portions of a wide variety of things, rather than large portions of a small number of dishes. The economics of a buffet are the only reason this is really possible; it’s not like you could place an order for e.g. “five breaded shrimp, three grams of braised pork, two wontons’ worth of wonton soup, ...” from a Chinese restaurant. You could only order each of these in larger amounts, because there are fixed costs to making a dish.
- MisterTea 7y agoAgreed. A friend recently had his 40th at a nice Thai restaurant and had a buffet instead of individual orders. More expensive but there was something for everyone and I got to sample everything. The local casino/racetrack also had a really nice all you can eat that I'd go to with friends and family just to have dinner. The variety was amazing with Asian, seafood, meats, Italian, Indian, etc. But it didn't turn a profit and closed within a few years. They had the crowds but the cost of food + the number of employees needed to serve it all was immense vs making a few grand a day from a few hundred people. Shame because I loved that buffet. I used to enjoy the local Chinese all you can eat buffets but the quality became subpar. I visited one not far from me that I haven't been to in a good two decades and I was astonished to see the interior was exactly the same 90's chain restaurant decor down to the worn red plastic "glasses". It felt grimy and dirty and they were clearly not turning a good profit as their awning was tattered in places. It closed down last year.
- ValentineC 7y ago> it’s not like you could place an order for e.g. “five breaded shrimp, three grams of braised pork, two wontons’ worth of wonton soup, ...” from a Chinese restaurant. You could only order each of these in larger amounts, because there are fixed costs to making a dish. This seems to work at dim sum places, maybe because most dim sum seem to be portioned into, and then steamed, in small bamboo baskets.
- ingsoc79 7y agoDim sum restaurants can do this well because they can crank them out in volume. A stack of 4 piece dishes gets snapped up quickly as the cart makes its way through the floor. It's also why the larger dim sum palaces are usually so much better than smaller a-la-carte restaurants.
- mmhsieh 7y agoi wonder if you can ever just take the steam tray a la homer.
- cbanek 7y agoI've got to shill for yet another all you can eat Polish buffet in Chicagoland that has been open for 40+ years. Warsaw Inn. That buffet is really amazing. So good! Go there. Eat all the different kinds of pierogies. But also, they mostly just serve polish food, and I don't remember much if any seafood around either. It seems like for different types of buffets you'd have different food costs. Like a sushi buffet probably takes more than a taco buffet. But the article says they think delivery food options killed the buffet. I'm not so sure, I think fast casual chains were around a lot earlier and did a lot of damage. You had the same labor savings with not needing dedicated wait-staff, and you could get a lot of people through the doors. While you can't cook in huge quantities, I'm sure they do a huge amount of all the prep in batches, which is how they can get the food out relatively quickly.
- drcode 7y agoLOL that place is so far South you might as well call it an "Indianapolisland" restaurant.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoBut 3 Floyd’s is right next store to pickup a six pack :)
- audiometry 7y agoI’m coming to a Beazley course in Andersonville this spring. Any good polish restaurants to suggest in the area?
- wombatpm 7y agoThanks. I’ve been looking for a good Polish buffet ever since Bobak’s closed.
- xenocyon 7y agoThe danger for consumers is assuming this is a zero-sum and that the converse economic goal applies to you (i.e. assuming that the consumer benefits by eating a lot or focusing on meat). I conjecture that after factoring in the economics of health and quality of life, the economic optimum for a typical buffet consumer is the same as for any other eater: to eat sparingly and in a balanced manner.
- Scaevolus 7y agoBuffets feel like an unbounded solution to optimizing for calories per dollar, which is a ridiculous thing to focus on as an overweight engineer!
- madsbuch 7y agoWell, no? As stated in the article, the truffles and oysters were hidden. This is assumingly because people optimise for most expensive dishes. If one would optimise for calories, she'd just take the cake and fatty meats (which are also usually cheaper meats).
- kbutler 7y agoOptimizing calories per dollar suggests hitting the cheap starch, which is even cheaper away from the buffet. Optimizing expensive-food-per-dollar would hit the meats, rather than the highest-calorie options.
- syntheticnature 7y agoThere is one other aspect about buffets: food is available quickly. This is primarily useful when traveling, if one wants to have warm food with significant cooked vegetable content (keeping in mind the aspects raised in other comment threads) without adding an hour or more to the trip.
- jjeaff 7y agoI think you would want to eat nutritionally balanced, yes. But you would also want to eat the most calories possible that would stick with you long enough to skip followup meals and not exceed your ideal daily caloric intake. I can skip breakfast and eat a really big late lunch and won't need any more food for the rest of the day until lunch the next day.
- getgoogled 7y agoI read this while at a buffet.
- pepy 7y agobetter get your money worth of steak
- pingou 7y agoI wonder if the growth of intermittent fasting is gonna reduce even further the number of all-you-can-eat buffets. Fast for an entire day (or 2 if you're feeling brave), then gorge yourself the next day at a buffet.
- sabujp 7y agoback when i lived in the south, I would go to all you can eat chinese buffets and just eat crab legs. They even had scallops on their mongolian bar! They always lost money when I came in. These places are impossible to find and I don't think exist anymore for less than $20.
- selimthegrim 7y agoI’ve seen a couple in New Orleans but I don’t know if I would vouch for their quality
- sabujp 7y agoi'm not sure how you can get bad quality crab legs, they're all boiled and they look ok.
- ValentineC 7y agoI organise some tech conferences. We tend to hold our speakers dinner at an upmarket all-you-can-eat buffet, mainly because we have a mix of adventurous and not-so-adventurous eaters. We try to let our speakers and guests have an opportunity to try our local cuisine, but I'm starting to think that buffets aren't that great for doing so. Travellers new to a country/region wouldn't know what to take, unless there's a local by their side explaining the dishes to them. As the person that foots the bill, I also usually observe how much everyone consumes — it's usually 2-3 small plates worth; probably valued at a quarter of what we're paying per head.
- ckdarby 7y agoReally? I figure most people just take a little bit of everything the first round to figure out what they liked and then come back for more.
- leetcrew 7y agoyeah, I find buffets are ideal for sampling lots of unfamiliar foods. I'm a lot more willing to try a small portion of something new than to actually order it as an entree. now as far as value for your money goes, you probably don't come out ahead at an all-you-can eat buffet unless you bring a solid appetite with you. it's possible in GP's case that the cuisine of the restaurant itself is just too unfamiliar. the pickier attendees might not find anything they like. it's also possible that they don't want to be seen gorging themselves at a professional event where they are meeting a lot of people for the first time.
- war1025 7y ago> it's also possible that they don't want to be seen gorging themselves at a professional event where they are meeting a lot of people for the first time. Personally, I'd be less concerned about being seen as gorging myself in a such a situation, and more concerned with whether or not the unfamiliar food was going to leave me with unexpected digestive issues. People I don't know, in a place I'm unfamiliar with, eating food I'm not familiar with sounds like a great recipe for caution.
- wildduck 7y agoThere was an all you can eat sushi place, they charge you for the sushi that you couldn't finish. I thought that was a pretty good way to charge.
- ptcampbell 7y agoI thought this was going to be about US healthcare.
- rossdavidh 7y ago"By 2030, the National Restaurant Association projects that 80% of all restaurant items will be eaten at home..." I doubt it. I'm not convinced that any of the delivery app companies are really making money; by 2030 they may not exist any more.
- therealdrag0 7y agoI mean delivery has always been a thing. Before the delivery-app-err it was maybe mostly pizza, but I don't see why delivery in general can't still be a major thing. Also take out is always an option!
- bobthepanda 7y agoIt was never 80% of food though. It's not even really 80% today. If VC funding were to dry up I'd imagine either the higher delivery fees or the higher order minimums of the past would come back, and then consumers would respond to prices and reduce ordering out.
- therealdrag0 7y agoNo argument there.
- AnthonyMouse 7y agoThis probably depends a lot on autonomous vehicles. Right now VC money is subsidizing deliveries, but that's mostly subsidizing the driver. Especially for items like this, because if you take the driver out of the equation and create purpose-built autonomous vehicles that aren't intended to have human occupants, they can be much smaller and don't have to worry about passenger safety. You could have autonomous electric vehicles the size of RC cars delivering takeout to your door.
- bobbiechen 7y agoRight. There's a startup which uses cute small robots to deliver food in Berkeley right now [1]. There are still a lot of humans in the loop - handling the actual pickup, remote-controlling the robots from Columbia - but even so that could save money compared to having a local driver in a car to make the whole delivery. [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Kiwibots-win-fans-at-UC-Berkeley-as-they-deliver-13895867.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Kiwibots-win-fa...
- gesman 7y agoBuffets are making money on impatient customers who are piling up on fries and mac-n-cheese and other super cheap "fillers" and junk foods before discovering and allocating space for more delicious and expensive dishes that are typically placed at the far end of a food isles. This way they compensate the losses caused by my visit. I don't touch any food until i do complete walkaround and learn about everything they have to offer. Then i typically pigout on lobster legs, tenderloin cuts, fish-rich sushi and other high end proteins, carefully avoiding any cheaper "fillers". My visit to buffet would cost me the equivalent of ~$200 visit in a-la-carte restaurant.
- stretchwithme 7y agoA friend of mine, not a native speaker, calls them "eat all you can" buffets.
- stevespang 7y agoVegetarian on diet: I eat at Golden Corral, only salad, watermelon, cole slaw, stir fried veggies (lot's of red bell peppers and some fresh pineapple), little rice, unsweetened tea - - and I only go from 2 pm to 4 pm weekdays when the price as $8 or $9 for senior, no charge for drink. It's pure torture to stay away from the dessert bar. I cannot buy that variety anywhere for that price.
- droithomme 7y agoI liked buffets a lot but in the last 15 years all but one buffet I liked to go to went dramatically downhill in quality. It is likely this was due to cost cutting measures to stay competitive. Eventually it got to where dishes and cutlery weren't even cleaned properly and I'd have to dig through a stack to find one without residue, and I was getting food poisoning about a quarter of the time. I simply had to stop going, they were bad, and unsafe. This is likely why there has been a mass purging of buffet chains nationally during this time period. It's not that the public has lost their interest in buffets, it's that people have noticed the quality is too low to be acceptable despite the price, which isn't a bargain anyway for any but those that game the system as is mentioned in the article, or for the ultimate in low cost places like all you can eat combination sushi-thai-vietnamese-mongolianBBQ-Chinese-italian-jello-mac'n'cheese lunch places only $4.99, or $3.99 if you use the pennysaver coupon. Like the top comment mentions, some of us don't want to gorge ourselves, it's nice to have a variety of things to sample, but also buffets are useful for weekday lunch since you can be in and out with a full meal much faster than you can in a restaurant where you have to wait for your order. One remaining buffet that's still good quality in my area is a certain classy Indian restaurant. They only do the buffet for lunch from 11-2, so it's impossible for people to come in and eat for 4 hours straight. Also there's almost no meat at all, so the restaurant doesn't appeal to those who come in to eat a pile of steaks. I've never seen anyone come and just eat plate after plate. People come because they can get good vegetarian food quickly for lunch. High quality buffets will likely survive, but there's less of a market for them. A successful hybrid model might be that of Olive Garden, which mixes reheated frozen food with unlimited breadsticks and salad, both which are extremely cheap to provide unlimited quantities of.
- anewguy9000 7y agonow im hungry
- ThrustVectoring 7y agoThe labor advantages for buffet-style restaurants generalizes - you eliminate a lot of downtime due to timing variability when you switch from make-to-order to make-to-inventory, reducing labor costs significantly. You can get this without a buffet model in restaurants, most notably with the conveyor-belt sushi restaurants that charge per dish you take.
- ladyattis 7y agoI remember a story from my dad that one of he and one of his friends use to eat at this one lunch time all you can eat buffet in the 80s. Unfortunately, one of his friends spoiled the deal by getting more to eat, he even asked the restaurant staff for a bigger spoon. In the end, they were banned (even though my dad I think had only two plates since he had a busy day ahead) from the restaurant.
- dirktheman 7y agoTo quote a well-known Dutch hotel/restaurant owner: "They'll eat me poor but drink me rich". The margin on the food may be thin, but drink margins are usually more like 75-100%.