“But that peak didn’t continue to rise” That’s...generally what peak means, yes. 😐

"Buffets are unsanitary!" Me: "Oh no! Anyway..." *Shovels inhuman portions of mac and cheese onto dinner plate.*

When I was a kid, I saw someone at Ryan’s take mash potatoes put them on the plate, try them, and then scoop it back into the buffet tray. We never went back. And it’s now gone.

I've had great and terrible buffet experiences. For me it really comes down to cleanliness. A deal-killer is kids are running around touching all the food with their grubby little hands.

I'll miss the buffet for the variety of dishes, no waiting and nostalgia.

if you look at where the business model came from it was never going to survive the modern restaurant landscape in america. When the casinos made the buffets they own the real estate sell one of your big three costs is already taken care of. Also, the point of the buffet was not to make money from selling food it was to keep people in the casino gambling as long as possible I.e. it was never supposed to make money.

I live in Houston and we have some awesome Chinese buffets. There are a few observations: 1. I think they can keep food costs down b/c most of the meats are either breaded, heavily sauced, or mixed with vegetables. They don't just serve up steak on a plate. 2. A lot of the cheap items are really, really, REALLY good. As a customer, my inner a-hole really wants to get the most "value" from buffets by skipping the cheap stuff. But man the soups, dumplings, and fried rice are amazing. 3. The dark underbelly of many "thriving" restaurants in Houston is illegal immigrant labor, often paid less than minimum wage. Make of that what you will but it is everywhere and has to be considered.

I used to absolutely stuff myself with food at Old Country Buffet and Asian buffets whenever my family went to them when I was young. I'm 25 now and haven't been to one in several years. Even if I were to go to one now I doubt I'd be able to eat as much as I did when I was younger. That was one of the great things about eating at buffets as a kid - it was the perfect place to satisfy your always constantly hungry stomach plus you were at the age where you could eat large amounts of food without getting easily full or putting on a lot of weight.

who here is old enough to remember dine in pizza hut buffet

I loved Golden Corral as a kid. Hell, even as an adult. After Covid I’ll never be able to blissfully ignore how unsanitary they are again.

I live in Texas and go to my local Chinese buffet weekly and it’s always packed with people. A lot of the chains definitely are dying down but I think some of the Chinese buffets will stick it out. Then again I also live in Texas which isn’t known for being healthy or taking the pandemic too seriously.

I go to buffets like once or twice a year. I love the idea of being able to eat so many different styles of food so I want to still go to them. Hopefully they can innovate.

I'm super short and sneeze guards wouldn't stop someone of my stature from being gross. Just saying... Also, when I was a kid... I watched a grown adult drop a serving spoon and put it back. Enough said. 😦

The Chinese buffets in my area do pretty well, and they can be counted on to have good oysters, crab legs and crawfish, as well as sushi and the other typical fare.

COVID has realized how disgusting EVERYTHING is. But like as soon as it’s over I still might go😂

Worked as grill cook at Sizzler in West Palm Beach Fl. I could see into salad bar prep area. They kept back door open all day due to heat in kitchen. All salad bar foods left out all shift and constantly covered with flies. Nobody including management cared. I had to quit. Restaurants pay workers and managers the absolute bottom scale and we put their products in our mouths? Not me. This 30 year restaurant veteran says you are crazy to ever eat at most restaurants.

Here in Switzerland buffets are more common than fast food restaurants. The food is much more healthier and you have more variety.

Ah, being a kid in the 90s, getting appetizers like "crab meat" rangoon, a salad drowning in ranch, mac & cheese that looks yummy, but tastes like yellow, mashed taters, a big ol' piece of meat, & every dessert offered!

Buffets should have a sink by the door and patrons have to wash their hands before they sit down >___>

I've a feeling the biggest reason buffets suffered has more to do with how wages have been stagnant for 40 years, but cost of living has consistently increased, reducing the "go out and eat" portion of people's budgets to $0/year.

Here in Brazil, per kilo buffets (you weight your plate to pay a proportional price per weight) are probably the most common kind of restaurant. For any one working with limited lunch time, they're a fast way to pick a little bit of everything you'd be having at home.

I think buffets started to die out when consumers starting associating "how much" to calories instead of dollar value.

I think a lot of those sanitary concerns could be solved by requiring guests to wear gloves while serving their food, or maybe even just hiring staff to serve it for you, like some fast casual restaurants. It would drive up costs but also alleviate a lot of those health concerns among consumers.

Growing up in the 70's to a construction/logging family I would argue the most important piece of this equation left out is the literal generational change that took place in America. The WWII and Baby Boomer generations were raised in relative scarcity and lived in a far more manual/less-automated society, with far fewer choices for food. Buffets offered a veritable unlimited cornucopia for consumers that allowed you to just walk in, put your coat on your chair, and have a variety of time-consuming dishes immediately at your finger tips. A one-up from the diner/greasy-spoon restaurants that predominated outside urban centers. Fast forward a few decades and you now have a rainbow of ethnic food and small personal restaurants, every sort of fast-food franchise, and deli counters in every grocery. Add that to the almost extinction of manual labor in the US in favor of mechanization/automation and no one 'needs' the calories anymore.

No wonder Warren Buffet is rich . He invented food

I love buffets, this isn't gonna make me stop going to them. I don't care about being served, I care about the food and the variety of it

I used to love Golden Corral, my best friend and I originally bonded over weekly outings there. As I grew older, I realized that you are essentially paying to get full. I can get full eating just about anywhere else and it would be cheaper. The variety is nice, but everything is a lesser quality.

Guy said “or even thirds” 😂😂 I’m out here getting 8+ full plates

This is all true but I think kbbq and sushi buffets will still survive, at least in downtown

The amount of leftover food at Buffets are kind of a waste

"a new take on the buffet model has been rearing it's head" Shows Reading Terminal Market which has been open since 1893

I believe that cleanliness is the main concern of many restaurants 😋. No matter where you go out to dine .

I have a newfound respect for those extended family members, in my childhood, who had the self-discipline to go to the bathroom to wash there hands AFTER having filled their plate and brought it back to the table where it’s now getting cold.

Buffet: "All you can eat." Bowling ball shaped men named Chuck: "Are you challenging me?"

Best buffet I’ve ever had was a sashimi place in Tokyo that gave you 90 minutes to eat as much as you wanted. It was pretty good, and not very expensive, either.

I am European and I've visited Florida once. I had never been to a buffet like golden corral before. We went there, and people were vomiting outside the restaurant to be able to go back inside and fit more food in their stomachs. The gluttony of it all was just horrifying, never been to a buffet since

As a parent it is just really nice to be able to put 20 different foods in front of your kid. So often a child will just say “I don’t like spaghetti” and then just won’t eat or they barely peck at a plate as they try to go play with their toys. My kids are underweight so seeing them uninterested in food is very stressful.

Goodbye Sweet Tomatoes. Best soup and salad buffet ever. Damn you COVID.

Best value buffet I ever has was in the 90's at Pizza Hut: $4.95 lunch or $9.95 dinner. Help yourself to as many different pizza slices and bowls of salads as you like. If I remember correctly, drinks (pepsi, coke) were extra.

The content you guys make is really good I’m glad I found this channel :)

"we're starting to see food halls pop up" me: *laughs in southeast asian*

I still love them, after Covid 19 ends I'm definitely coming back

Ideas to save buffets: 1) Make a menu of only a few cheap items (like a few pastas, potato salads, soups and normal salads.) 2) Have a full stocked liquor bar and soda bar and make people pay full for drinks 3) Put alcoholic hand sanitiser dispensers at the beginning and end of the lines 4) Have sanitising UV light emitters that the tongs can sit on top of when not in use. Instruct customers to put the tongs on the emitters after they're done using them 5) Hire an employee to oversee the lines and to continuously clean down the tongs and surfaces every 20 minutes or so 6) Give each employee a checklist of items each day involving instructions for steps they must follow to keep the restaurant clean. If they fail to follow through and fill up the daily checklist each day too many days in a row, make sure they're either forced to take remedial training or that they're fired 7) Work with delivery companies to craft food items for take out or delivery meals that are more expensive than the all you can eat buffet meals offered in the restaurant (a restaurant near me already does this.)

Last buffet I went to was in 2019 where I witnessed a 12 year old girl eatting food off the serving spoon and then proceeding to put the spoon back into the food.... it was the most horrific thing I ever saw.... needless to say that was my last time ever going to a buffet again

Can't wait for CoVid to be over so I can go back to my fav Chinese buffet

Man, Ryan's was amazing as a kid

I’ve had 3 buffet loves in my lifetime... 1 was the chain *”soup’r salad”* - 2 was the chain *”Chuck Wagon”* and 3 was the *”Amish Buffet”* in Intercourse, PA (although that one falls into a weird grey area because it’s “all you can eat,” but it’s communal dining-platters of food are brought to each massive banquet table, instead of traditional buffet self serve.) ❤️

None of those outbreaks had anything to do with the utensils. Also Chi Chi's wasn't a buffet style restaurant, I don't even remember them having a salad bar. Buffets are gross but it seems misleading

I miss early 2000s Home Town Buffet

Just keep food behind glass and have someone serve it to you... As long as you have "our plate" we will fill it.

I grew up in a big family. We loved buffets because we could eat as much as we want and each eat what we wanted. Now that I'm older, I realize buffets are unsanitary. I still love family style since it's nice to have with my big family.

Over in my area, there’s this buffet, that actually had really good sanitation throughout the dining area and restrooms. The previous buffets were Chinese food buffets, and had very little sanitation, and when this buffet chain came, everyone came and was pretty successful, until of course... Covid, but I think everyone will have some type of memory about buffets

I don't recall Chi Chi's ever being a buffet?

I fell in love with sushi at Japanese Buffets as a teenager. The last time I went, the sushi looked old and I realized that they weren't making fresh sushi until the old sushi was gone and dinner started. Later on, the place shut down for months "holiday" and never reopened. I can definitely say, I'm 27 years old and haven't been to a buffet in 6 years or so. I havent been to Golden Corral or any main buffet place and over a decade besides a cruise and I avoided that like the plaque. Btw Chi Chi's was my favorite restaurant growing up. Hurt my heart when they closed

When I was a kid it was always my favorite time of the month when we went to go eat at Hometown Buffet. Man that sign brings back some nostalgia.

I went to an all you can eat place for my birthday this year, but it was anything but a buffet. It was also super expensive. After tip, it was $250 for three of us. As for the food, it was a Brazilian steakhouse, where they come around to your table and offer you different types of meat, which they slice off a stale right in front of you. It’s a really cool experience, and the food was amazing.

F for buffets. There is still a place for them despite current times...

I skip all the buffet tables and go straight for the hibachi station. My food is made to order and tastes much better than whatever was sitting under the heat lamps with people coughing on them.

I used to go to sizzler with my grandma and I usually got the salad bar. I loved loading my plate up with chicken wings and drenching them with the squeeze bottle of hot sauce that was there. And I'd usually go back for seconds and put the bbq sauce on them. 🤣 Also in my old neighborhood there was a Chinese buffet that my mom took me and my brother to all the time. I was so sad when it closed, but that was over a decade ago

It’s interesting how they jack around prices, recently my cost (family of 3) at Golden Corral was $53, but a dinner at Texas Roadhouse was $35

Still love golden buffet as long as it’s a clean one. Also much of the high end buffets in Vegas are amazing

My friend and I went to a Golden Corral in Connecticut back in September and they were serving the meals in cafeteria style, it was much nicer and more organized than the old way.

Definitely not the case in Thailand. The buffet culture has become so popular that some places had to start offering buffet option just to survive, here even Paul boulangerie had to start offering all you can eat option a few years back.

I like chicken, I like steak, I like seafood, I like most things in fact, but restaurants generally serve meals of one thing only. I enjoy buffets not because it's all I can eat, but because I like a little bit of everything. There are still buffets in my area. They tend to be on weekends at the bigger hotels.

I'm glad people are starting realize just because you can eat as much as you want doesn't mean you should.

We lost a Golden Corall and a place called Jumbos it was a Chinese/Japanese all you can eat and they had frog legs. :( Gonna miss eating there

Announcer: buffets are unsanitary My mind: take 3 vitamin gummies and you’re goooooooooood.

Wedding receptions, Quicineras, Birthday parties, Baby showers, Funerals, Anniversaries and other celebrations are often held at Buffets nowadays. It’s a money and time saving option for a lot of people. No worries about decorating, cleaning up or food preparation. And there’s something that’s tasty and appealing for most of the guests. And the Restaurant owner has a guaranteed block of time that their business will have a lot of customers. Some of these customers may return some time in the future if they liked the food and venue. Very interesting video. Thanks for sharing!

Post cov-19, anybody else questioning their whole life?? Just imagine how many germs we’ve encountered! I used to loooove buffets!

I washed dishes in a buffet years ago. It’s never ending. After it was converted to a normal restaurant there were far far far fewer dishes to wash.

Food halls are less economically efficient for the end customer though- so to try 3 diff items is basically buying 3 diff meals $$$. Buffets gave us all the selection under one roof which reduced the costs vs buying them separately. I think a better comparison is the huge trend of GHOST KITCHENS- which are part of the delivery order boom (Seamless / Uber eats)- where 7 diff restaurants menus are actually all produced under 1 central kitchen

I have such good memories of hometown buffet and a place called sweet tomatoes that recently shut down

My favorite is sushi buffets. Looks like that's gone forever.

COVID-19 spared no one and nothing.

My wife and I went to a buffet restaurant and a waitress brought us some dinner rolls that were leftover from another table. We called the manager and she went to the back room and got us fresh rolls. Golden Corral in Rockford Illinois.

I recently went into a deli that had a large section of self serve hot and cold items. They had boxes of disposable gloves every few feet all around that area

Who else remembers when Wendy's had a buffet? Those were the days.....

When my coworkers and I first learned about the coronavirus back in February, we stopped going to the serve-yourself style setups. As much as I loved the variety of foods you could get at a buffet, I don't see myself getting comfortable enough to go again with everyone touching the same serving utensils. I've heard that some buffets have switched to having a server put what you want on your plate, or having customers get new gloves each time they hit the buffet bar, but that's not the same. Doesn't seem worth it.

There’s a Golden Corral across the street from where I work now. It’s only visited by older customers now. As a kid tho I loved going to old country buffet to get max and cheese, tacos, and fish

In Brazil they’re extremely popular. It’s the type of restaurants most workers usually go to for lunch if they can’t eat at home.

I've noticed a marked decline, over the past 20 years, in Chinese restaurants. Could you make an episode about that?

I use to work at a Ryan's when I was in high school...it was awful. Damn customers were disgusting and completely ignored cleanliness. I hated that job because of the poor treatment, low wages and bad customers.

My favorite buffet style restaurant was Wendy's which on 1980s had All U can Eat Salad Bars. I was thought was safer because most items were chilled. My favorite now is Cafe in major hospital. The Hot Soups are always great.

A good buffet I’ve been to is a pizza buffet called Pizza Ranch. The location I go to in Waukesha tends to be clean with tasty food, especially the fried chicken

God I loved Cicis pizza when I was a kid. Me and my family and a few friends would go to a local Cicis and after eating a enough food to fill an American stomach we’d to go the gaming room and play until it was time to leave.

then Covid said, “die, buffets” ,and it was done.

Dang, I miss Sweet Tomatoes. They always had a wonderful selection - those pasta dishes and delicious dessert cobblers... mmmmm. I made a point to visit every time I was in Florida or Vegas. Ci-Cis was fun, too. Not exactly haute cuisine, but always cheap & cheerful.

As a kid my mom loved to eat at Furs Cafeteria in Norwalk California. I loved it too. You didn’t serve yourself, staff served all the food. The last Furs Cafeteria I seen was in El Paso Texas.

We started that food hall trend in Mississippi in Jackson it’s nice too have more food choices then a buffet

Strong disagree, after 23 years in the restaurant business dealing with costs: 3-4% goes to front of house staff 12-16% goes to back of house staff Salaried staff doesn’t count against costs or labor. Try exceeding those percentages and see if you still have a job at the end of the month.

There was a restaurant in the mall where everything was laid out in a line, but they had servers dipping stuff onto your plate. You paid up front, walked through the line with your plate, told them what to put on it, then you sat down and ate. I don't remember ever getting seconds though. Seems like a much safer way to do it.

I live in Vegas so it’s a buffet town here but even here a lot of buffets never opened back up post lockdown. The standalone Asian buffets (krazy buffet, buffet @ Asia) and casino buffets are still packed regularly however

As a former employee in a buffet I can confirm some leftovers are kept and served the next day.

I wish my golden corral was open, I miss it... This negative video didn't scare me off

Soup plantation was my fav. They had a pasta guy that made chicken Alfredo. And nachos .

Food halls? Tell us more -- I have never heard of them! Thanks for this fascinating information. Buffets have added immensely to my life as a single person with nobody to take meals with most of the time. Boy do I miss Quincy's and Ryan's -- the loss of Ryan's is a real tragedy. I was afraid you would mention another factor for the buffets' evanescence -- vacuum cleaners like me. I mostly eat one meal per day and have often had three or four plates worth at the groaning boards. Have assumed this was part of their business plan since most people are there for a normal sized meal. I think a major factor you don't invoke is people's fickle tastes. Attendance at Ryan's was quite healthy for a long while there but send down and down and down. This was a chain with genuine down home style and selections, very humble and totally lacking in pretense. I understand the brass gave employees the shaft at the end, giving almost no notice (or was it no severance pay -- something like that).

I can’t be the only one that notices buffet chains never clean their dishes

Sizzlers, Ryan’s, Shoney’s, Old Country Buffett, Pizza Hut, CiCi’s Pizza the places of my childhood.

I will never forget when in grade 11, a bunch of us went to a buffet called Imperial and two of my friends found cigarette butts in the fried rice. To keep us quiet, our entire meal was free and we took the deal. However, after that experience, I've never felt comfortable at buffets again.

Whenever I go to US from Japan, I never miss a buffet restaurant. I know the risk and fun of eating oyster and sushi there!