The Rise And Fall Of The Buffet Chain - Cheddar Explains 

“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 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'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'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.

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

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 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 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'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. 😦

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

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.

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.

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.

No wonder Warren Buffet is rich . He invented food

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

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.

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'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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.)

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

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

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

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

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.

I miss early 2000s Home Town Buffet

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.

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

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

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

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

Man, Ryan's was amazing as a kid

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

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

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

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

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.

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 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 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

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!

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

COVID-19 spared no one and nothing.

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 genuinely didn't understand how gross buffets were until COVID and now I can never unsee it.

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.

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

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 went on a 4 day cruise to Mexico in the late 90's. I ate at the various ship buffets 3 or 4 times a day including the midnight buffet. The food was great! 2 weeks after I returned, I was watching the news and I saw the exact ship that I was on. 300 people were sick with many people dying due to a botulism food poisoning.

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

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.

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.

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.) ❤️

your ecoli scare isn't localized to buffets. buffets aren't even the biggest contributor

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Imagine a buffet where only employees fill your plate and the buffet is only visible.

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.

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.

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

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

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!

Used to have a Chinese buffet in my home town which proudly touted everyone could eat for just $4.99. This was actually until very recently, like 2-3 years ago. At some point they raised the price to $5.29, but they had a scandal shortly after about taking people’s partially finished drinks and using them to refill other people’s drinks, so the price went back down to $4.99. We found out last year that the reason they were able to keep the price so low was because the owner hired illegal aliens as employees and strong-armed them into working for next to no pay. He was indicted for multiple violations of the 13th Amendment.

MAY PONDEROSA LIVE FOREVER! TACOS W/ HAM CUBES ON TOP OF THE NACHO CHEESE

I miss stuffing my face with yesterdays rehashed dishes😭😭😭..as a kid I used to eat dirt, bugs and drank old water...a buffet was a walk in the park💪

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

RIP Chi-Chi's, a chain of FrankenTexMex that was inexplicably named after breasts-- and that as family friendly asf. My mom legit skipped the bill with me as a tween like it was an indie movie with Steve Carrell

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

The restaurant I work at isn't quite buffet, but we have an element of self service where people pick up their choice of plated cakes or cold seafood plates from the counters and pay for their tray of food before sitting down, before Covid we used to have a salad buffet and I'll tell you it resulted in a lot of waste, you had to keep it stocked up at all times to present a good selection, but that meant less popular options would get thrown away, since Covid happened we switched to pre-prepared salad bowls, easier to predict the usage and order the correct amount of ingredients so that we're not running out or accidentally ordering more than gets used and throwing out. I do remember the first year or two I worked there we had some self serve hot counters in addition to our main hot counters, on the main hot counters you'd ask for your food and the chef would plate up your portion, but on the self serve counters you'd get customers doubling up their portions and then making a huge fuss when they get charged double at the register, it was more trouble than it was worth. One big problem regarding cross contamination as well, allergens, people not washing their hands before handling serving implements is one thing but also there's always that one customer who wants to swap the tongs over. They want to use the vegetable tongs for pork and ruin it for the Muslims, Jewish, and Vegetarian/Vegan customers, or a customer who wants to use the bread roll tongs to handle some almond croissants. I've even seen customers drop tongs on the floor and then try reusing them instead of asking a member of staff for a new pair.

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).