[HN Gopher] The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets (2020)
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The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets (2020)
Author : Vagantem
Score : 190 points
Date : 2023-12-06 10:20 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (thehustle.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (thehustle.co)
| willsmith72 wrote:
| > To avoid these situations, some owners have updated their
| language to "All-you-can-eat within reason"
|
| That's just no fun, you lose all the upside. I hope they offer
| free doggy bags and takeaway for those who eat less than a
| reasonable amount
| 1594932281 wrote:
| The buffet has to make money too, otherwise they wouldn't
| exist. If you want doggy bags/takeaway just eat at a regular
| restaurant and pay per item.
| JambalayaJim wrote:
| All you can eat within reason is certainly lame.
|
| Charging customers for food left on the plate is quite
| reasonable though. I'm sure a lot gets left on the plate and
| the waste must be nauseating.
| whycome wrote:
| > Charging customers for food left on the plate is quite
| reasonable though.
|
| Is it though? What if the food quality is really low? As the
| article states, it's a place to get rid of some old food
| items. Do you think you have an obligation to eat it no
| matter what?
| leetcrew wrote:
| yes, it's totally reasonable. if you aren't sure you're
| going to like the food, start with a small taste. if you
| don't like _any_ of the food, take the hit once and don 't
| go back.
| tekla wrote:
| > Do you think you have an obligation to eat it no matter
| what?
|
| No, just pay for the waste.
| nerdbert wrote:
| The article doesn't say the buffet is a place to get rid of
| old food items, it says that buffets have worked out
| strategies to get incorporate their own old food items.
|
| Anyway, if you don't want to pay for wasting things you
| don't like, make your first plate a grazing/browsing
| sampler platter, then come back for the stuff you liked.
| naremu wrote:
| >A woman was booted from a Golden Corral for eating all the
| brownies, then attempting to smuggle home extras in her purse.
|
| This is the most hilarious tragedy of the commons I've ever
| heard of
|
| So I guess you gotta do what you gotta do
| euroderf wrote:
| I heard an AYCE story from a cruise ship between Finland and
| Sweden. Someone at a table of Germans (a rep for cheepnis)
| was seen tipping food from their plate into a handbag, obv
| for later consumption. So a waitress comes by and says "oh
| you'll want milk with that" and pours milk into the loaded
| bag.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| One guy I know got kicked because he showed up at noon and got
| kicked at 10PM when they wanted to close. He was mad that he
| could not stay and is mad 20 years later about it.
| gosub100 wrote:
| probably the same guy that buys socks with a "lifetime
| guarantee" and returns them 20yr later. Some people just get
| off on free stuff.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| >Some people just get off on free stuff.
|
| That is an understatement with that guy. I have been
| tempted to over the years to make a web comic on this guy.
| The junk he does most normal people would never even think
| of.
| toast0 wrote:
| I worked with a guy who would routinely get kicked out of
| AYCE restaurants and he seemed pretty cool with it. I think
| they'd usually kick him out after about an hour of dining.
| mcguire wrote:
| Back in Austin, there was a small chain of Mongolian grill
| restaurants that offered AYCE dumplings with your meal that a
| friend and I often went to. My friend really liked the
| dumplings and once had about six refill plates of them.
|
| The next time we went, they no longer offered AYCE dumplings.
| whartung wrote:
| Red Lobster decided to make its "All you can eat Shrimp" a
| permanent menu item. Turns out it cost them dearly. It was
| designed as a promotional loss leader, which doesn't work full
| time. They eventually had to creep the price up from $20 to
| $25.
| alxjsn wrote:
| As kids at a buffet we would all load up on way more food than we
| could eat. Naturally, we would just play with that food, mixing
| up all the things we could in cups and dare each other to take a
| sip. I bet we weren't the only ones who did that.
| grecy wrote:
| In most places now you have to pay extra for anything left on
| your plate.
|
| Rightly so, food waste is inexcusable when we have people going
| hungry.
|
| EDIT: With the planet being used up people are perfectly happy
| to just waste edible food. We're doomed.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Hunger is a political problem. We could easily feed everyone
| in the world pretty cheaply.
| supportengineer wrote:
| Housing is a political problem. We could easily house
| everyone in the world pretty cheaply.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > Rightly so, food waste is inexcusable when we have people
| going hungry.
|
| How would that food in the buffet get to the hungry?
| euniceee3 wrote:
| I smell a new startup!
|
| And really this would depend on a rich freeze drying
| industry. Imagine people driving around in trucks
| collecting all the uneaten scraps from children and adults
| plates. Sure we would not be able to handle to food safely,
| but we will be exporting it to countries that do not have
| as stringent laws on human consumption.
| nerdbert wrote:
| If the buffet restaurant hadn't bought it for someone to
| leave it on their plate, then the ingredient cost would
| have been lower and a poorer person would have been more
| likely to be able to afford it. Or someone in the supply
| chain could have donated it as part of their CSR program.
| wharvle wrote:
| So much food waste exists because food is incredibly cheap.
| Like, most of the time money spent recovering waste to give
| to the poor would be more effective if you just _bought more
| food_ with it. That's how cheap it is, and that's why nobody
| follows economic incentives to recover the waste without
| further prompting (there aren't such incentives).
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Logistics are seriously underrated.
| calderracrusade wrote:
| Logistics is also why "food is cheap" is a stupid
| argument.
|
| If the food hadn't been ordered, it wouldn't have been
| shipped, it wouldn't have been grown...
|
| It's silly to directly relate the exact food a kid didn't
| eat on a buffet in Los Angeles to a starving family in
| Detroit, but that doesn't mean there are zero lines to
| draw.
| mathgradthrow wrote:
| Food waste is a _result_ of trying to prevent people from
| going hungry. Systems which produce less food waste result in
| more people going hungry.
| nerdbert wrote:
| I really do not think that applies to all-you-can-eat
| buffet rules about leaving plates full of uneaten food.
| JohnFen wrote:
| As a kid, we went to all-you-can-eat buffets quite a bit. Once
| I stopped being a kid, though, I started avoiding them because
| the food tends to be pretty poor. I'd rather eat less and enjoy
| the food than eat more and not.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| The other trick, especially at places like Golden Corral is the
| oily fried foods.
|
| Oily fried foods are very filling. You are limited in how much
| you can eat without feeling sick.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Yeah, but who wants to go to a buffet to only eat fried foods?
| (I mean, I like an oily fried dish occasionally, but it's not
| something I'd go for at an all-you-can-eat place.)
|
| I suspect that if Golden Corral is struggling, and they are
| mostly serving oily fried foods, the problem isn't changing
| consumer preferences. The problem is that they aren't serving
| foods people like.
| pimlottc wrote:
| I can't read this in iOS Safari, the page keeps
| reloading/snapping back to the top when I try to scroll. Even
| dumps me out of reader mode, eventually.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Also broken in Chrome on macOS, the article renders briefly
| before everything disappears.
| bell-cot wrote:
| [January 2020]
|
| Originally on HN here -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22151891 - with 268 comments
|
| From a quick search on those comments, I still don't see the
| obvious comparison between all-you-can-eat restaurant buffets and
| all-you-can-use internet bandwidth.
| callalex wrote:
| I don't see how that's an obvious comparison at all? Food has a
| per-unit cost, while data packets (which is what I think you
| actually meant, not bandwidth) have at most a marginal cost
| that is nearly zero once bandwidth has been built and
| allocated.
| calderracrusade wrote:
| Falsy. Torrenting and 4k streaming are the crab leg
| enthusiasts. Who's paying to expand the pipes to customers?
| Netflix refuses to, even though they were consuming a jaw
| dropping amount of bandwidth compared to all other services.
| And the cartels (Comcast etc) also refuse. So this has
| sometimes become an infrastructure problem where taxes etc
| are roped in.
|
| And not all packets are the same. As much as net neutrality
| is a good idea at 10,000 feet. When you look into details
| like 911 calls over Wifi shouldn't actually share priority
| with 4k VR porn.
| callalex wrote:
| > Who's paying to expand the pipes to customers?
|
| The customers are. Comcast is charging every one of their
| customers $80+ per month to connect to internet
| infrastructure that they update maybe once every 20 years.
| They have massive profit margins, this is public data.
|
| > And not all packets are the same. As much as net
| neutrality is a good idea at 10,000 feet. When you look
| into details like 911 calls over Wifi shouldn't actually
| share priority with 4k VR porn.
|
| QOS is entirely unrelated to charging money for data
| packets used and is already a solved problem with existing
| infrastructure and technology, so I don't really understand
| why you brought up this straw man.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > When you look into details like 911 calls over Wifi
| shouldn't actually share priority with 4k VR porn.
|
| That's irrelevant, because sane people don't try to stream
| 4k VR porn and make 911 calls simultaneously on the same
| device. Just give each device ~64Kbps (enough for even a
| uncompressed phone call) that it has exclusive first dibs
| on. For robustness, give each modem ~1Mbps that _it_ has
| exclusive first dibs on, so 16 people in the same house can
| 't stomp on each other's traffic[0].
|
| This works fine even if the porn and the 911 calls are both
| going over indistiguishable TOR connections, as they
| ideally should be in order to deny ISPs the physical
| possibility of _not_ having net neutrality (though that 's
| not always practical).
|
| (A alternative option is to always allocate marginal
| bandwidth to the device that's using the least bandwidth
| total, which avoids having to know what a phone call costs,
| but seems like it would harder to make reliable in
| practice.)
|
| 0: Technically this is the only part you can properly
| _enforce_ , since a user could reprogram their modem to
| give more bandwidth to certain devices, but the
| 64Kbps/device limit is good default, and if they change it,
| any problems are on them.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Netflix places edge caches at all major providers so they
| pay for it that way.
| bell-cot wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_transit
|
| ...but even if all the traffic is somehow within an ISP's own
| network, that "...marginal cost that is nearly zero..." is a
| very poor description of the economics. Networks aren't free,
| and building a network that can handle 10X the bandwidth
| means you're stuck with a far higher monthly payment on your
| construction loan.
| JambalayaJim wrote:
| The article mentions that 80% of all restaurant items will be
| eaten at home by 2030.
|
| This further cultural entrenchment of people into homebodies is
| really sad to me. Really hope this does not happen.
|
| I am assuming of course that the implication is that in-
| restaurant dining demand will shift to delivery, not that
| delivery will see some massive explosion over and above current
| restaurant food demand.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| At least for my family, especially as delivery packaging has
| improved, restaurants have become an inferior experience unless
| they are fairly high end.
|
| Grandparents used to take everyone out to dinner regularly. Now
| we eat at their house. They have more comfortable chairs at
| home. The environment is much quieter. You don't have to wait
| for refills. They personally have better cutlery. We aren't
| really the types to like being waited on.
|
| So unless we explicitly want something social from the
| restaurant or we need a table as we are travelling, the reasons
| for actually going in one have disappeared.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| The packaging might be better but it doesn't solve the
| problem that the food arrives cold. Especially since the
| drivers pick up multiple deliveries and it can be 30-40
| minutes before you get your food.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Above all, the probability of a restaurant being able to
| provide a meal with sufficient quality is too low.
|
| If my family gets together, we can bang out a multiple course
| guaranteed high quality meal in one hour, having fun while we
| do it.
|
| But a lot of that is due to cooking knowledge that the elders
| in the family pass down and refine over many, many decades.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| That works if you have a family and enjoy cooking. For me
| neither applies.
|
| And I'm sure restaurant chefs get some kind of training to
| replace the passed down knowledge :)
| toyg wrote:
| It also works for very narrow sets of dishes. Nobody is
| an expert in every type of food in the world. Parent
| poster was just humblebragging.
| Spivak wrote:
| > This further cultural entrenchment of people into homebodies
| is really sad to me.
|
| This is an odd take because the trend in new/remodeled homes is
| dedicating practically the entire first floor and back yard of
| every home as an entertaining space. The line between "at home"
| and "out" is getting to be very thin.
|
| Going over to a different friend's house 4-5 times a week for
| dinner, games, movies, music, sporting events, swimming, spa,
| fire pit feels to me pretty darn out.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Not sure I'd put a lot of stock in that. My behavior has
| completely changed, why would I pay DoorDash or Uber Eats $30
| to deliver some fast food when I can go to a real restaurant
| and get much better food for cheaper?
|
| Delivery made sense when it was artificially subsidized by VCs,
| now that they've all jacked prices it's not competitive at all.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > why would I pay DoorDash or Uber Eats $30 to deliver some
| fast food when I can go to a real restaurant and get much
| better food for cheaper?
|
| Because you can eat it in the comfort of your own home,
| instead of the discomfort of an unfamiliar place surrounded
| by strangers.
|
| It may just be me but I really do not like eating in public.
| stickfigure wrote:
| It's absolutely incredible how much you can learn about
| cooking from youtube.
|
| My family rarely goes out to restaurants anymore, not
| because we don't love restaurants, but because it's more
| fun to cook at home.
| hilux wrote:
| You are so lucky to have a family who cook together!
| bluGill wrote:
| You quickly realize that most restaurants serve terrible
| food and so it isn't worth eating out at all.
| tayo42 wrote:
| I pretty much only go out now for stuff I can't make my
| self, or as a social thing.
|
| Most restaurant food needs to be simple and easy so they
| can get you in and out quick.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Eating out isn't uncomfortable. You get to people watch,
| make small talk with the waiter, talk with the person you
| are eating with, read a book if you are alone. You also get
| a chance to get out of the house for a while, I love eating
| out, and honestly only having a baby (which does add
| complexity) is the only reason I don't eat out more.
| geodel wrote:
| True. But it is more about trend like watching movie in
| multiplex is fun, there are those large butter popcorn
| containers, soda machine, bigger screen, better sound and
| so on. But more people are now streaming than going out
| for movie.
|
| So now I think more people then ever will be having
| restaurant food at comfort of home and not worrying about
| traffic, driving, cabs, parking, crowd, one more beer or
| wine glass etc.
| gspencley wrote:
| > Eating out isn't uncomfortable
|
| That really depends on your personality. Not only is
| "people watching" not my thing, but the idea of other
| people "people watching" me is terrifyingly
| uncomfortable. Sends shivers down my spine level of
| discomfort. Please don't watch me while I eat. Some of us
| find the idea of "making small talk" with anyone, let
| alone wait staff, to be inherently uncomfortable.
|
| For others, eating is a social activity, or an
| opportunity to socialize, and they like that. Some people
| feel "trapped" if they are cooped up inside their homes
| for too long, and need reasons to "get out of the house."
| That sounds like you, and that's great. Nothing wrong
| with it at all and you should enjoy eating out as much as
| you like. For others such as myself, who are introverted
| and find great comfort in the solitude of our homes, the
| reasons that you find eating out to be comfortable are
| the same reasons we find eating out to be uncomfortable.
| hilux wrote:
| You and I say that, but mistrusting strangers and being
| "anti-social" is the dominant paradigm - in America much
| more than in other countries, I think.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Here in Spain the restaurant is actually part of the
| experience. Like a beneficial thing. It's nice to truly get
| away. With colleagues we eat at a restaurant for lunch at
| least once a week. It helps that pretty much all places
| have a three course daily menu with drink for around EUR12.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| I mean I never pay for delivery (except very rarely pizza)
| but I still do takeout over eating in the restaurant 90% of
| the time.
| geodel wrote:
| One big thing is take out. It is quite common in many
| countries. Maybe not in US yet. Lot of people grab food from
| restaurant or stores on their way home from work. Some people
| even pick from different places to have some _combo meal_ at
| home which is not possible while eating in a restaurant.
| rascul wrote:
| It's quite common in the US.
| gspencley wrote:
| > why would I pay DoorDash or Uber Eats $30 to deliver some
| fast food when I can go to a real restaurant and get much
| better food for cheaper?
|
| 1. I don't have to drive
|
| 2. I don't have to listen to other people talking loud or
| being obnoxious while I'm trying to eat my meal and have a
| quiet private conversation with my wife
|
| 3. I can enjoy it in the comfort of my home, whether this
| means eating dinner in front of the tv, or enjoying a scotch
| or wine we have at home, or even just being able to get out
| of the clothes we've been in all day and enjoy comfort food
| in our PJs
|
| 4. I don't have to brave the cold or wet weather
|
| 5. I don't have to deal with wait staff interrupting my meal
| every 5 minutes to ask if everything is ok
|
| 6. I don't have to worry about music that I don't care for,
| or is distracting, being played while I eat
|
| 7. I don't have to worry about dirty dishes on the table, or
| the table itself being dirty (although to be fair I have no
| control over the dishes used to prepare the food and so some
| might consider this to be moot)
|
| 8. I don't have to worry about my home being crowded and busy
| with strangers, making for an uncomfortable dining
| experience. My mother once took me to a restaurant to
| celebrate my birthday, just the two of us. I'm a foodie and,
| despite listing several reasons I often prefer delivery /
| take-out over dine-in, I actually do love a great restaurant
| and the food at this particular place was supposed to be
| amazing. The two of us were put in a tiny corner in a
| _crowded_ restaurant so close to the tables nearest us that
| the three parties (us plus our neighbours on either side)
| could hear every single word of each others ' conversations.
| It was practically a communal table situation. Edit: I forgot
| to mention that we had a reservation which made this
| experience all the more frustrating. Which leads me to...
|
| 9. I don't have to worry about finding myself at a restaurant
| that has communal tables
|
| 10. I don't have to worry about people celebrating their
| birthdays receiving a loud and obnoxious group of wait staff
| bursting out of the kitchen to interrupt the entire
| restaurant's private conversations with an annoying song and
| cheer
|
| I recognize that a lot of the above points can be avoided by
| choosing a different restaurant. But sometimes you still want
| the food of a particular restaurant but that restaurant's
| dining atmosphere is what kills it for you.
| sfink wrote:
| > 5. I don't have to deal with wait staff interrupting my
| meal every 5 minutes to ask if everything is ok
|
| I'm sure you know this, but they're actually interrupting
| your meal every 5 minutes to minimize any possible delay in
| seating the next person after you. They just accomplish
| that by asking if everything is ok.
|
| It's all about throughput.
|
| (And it's a US thing. In France, among other places, you're
| expected to be the only group using the table for that
| meal. Which means they're in no rush for you to finish, but
| also that they are not happy if a group sits down but only
| a subset of people order food. Sometimes to the extent of
| asking you to leave.)
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah and you don't have to do the dishes afterwards. And it's
| served hot and you can order more if you feel like it.
| Kaytaro wrote:
| I'd bet tipping inflation has a lot to do with that. Delivery
| can often times come out cheaper with the apps suggested tip
| than dining in with 20-25% being expected.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Could be. Here in Spain dining out is the norm and 0% tip is
| expected (though some is highly welcomed of course)
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| While I agree that the suggested tip percentages are getting
| out of hand, I personally refuse to follow those and I would
| be surprised if most people did. I tip the same as I ever
| did: 10% (or less) for bad service, 15% for decent but
| unremarkable service, 20% (or more) for good service. There's
| absolutely no reason to increase the percentages one tips
| just because the people writing the POS software are putting
| in crazy values.
| hooverd wrote:
| Well, restaurants, even on the high end, are increasingly
| getting louder and less comfortable. I thought that I was just
| getting older, but it's a real thing [0]. My favorite bars are
| the ones that are comfortable and don't blast your ears off
| with music.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/11/how-r...
| [0]
| hilux wrote:
| The general trend is that people use money to buy "privacy,"
| i.e. the freedom to not have to interact with "strangers."
|
| It's a glaring example of local optimization at the cost of
| global (your own life, viewed in its entirety) worsening.
| xhrpost wrote:
| Yea it seems like western culture is obsessed with advancing
| hyper individualism. I can't judge, I'm a product of the
| culture myself, but our mental health seems to keep getting
| worse the more we keep our lives inside our own bubbles and
| move away from any aspect of community.
| rayiner wrote:
| Coming from an eastern culture, I'm happy to judge. Luckily
| it's a self-correcting problem. Hyper individualism makes
| having children both burdensome (lack of community support)
| and socially undesirable, and so these cultures are being
| replaced by less individualistic ones.
| toyg wrote:
| Except such cultures inevitably morph back into
| individualistic ones, typically once educational
| attainments and female emancipation kick in.
|
| It's not about culture, it's about economic conditions.
| wiradikusuma wrote:
| I regularly treat my 25-ish team to all-you-can-eat (AYCE)
| buffets (until recently, almost every week). What I observe,
| which could be country-specific, there are two kinds of "ideal"
| customers:
|
| 1. Family with kids. The kids don't eat much.
|
| 2. Couples. The female doesn't eat much. I honestly don't
| understand why they go to AYCE.
|
| I'm surprised to learn that in the US the ticket is $20. In
| Indonesia, with a minimum wage of only $320/mo, it's around that
| price too! ($10 to $20). Also in most AYCEs here you're limited
| to 90 minutes.
| swores wrote:
| > _doesn 't eat much. I honestly don't understand why they go
| to AYCE_
|
| If someone is going and eating a small amount of a single dish
| then it makes no sense (unless, as in your example, they're
| going with someone else like a spouse in which case maybe the
| person/s they're going with like it enough for it to be worth
| going on average despite the person who isn't eating much).
|
| But I've known a handful of people with quite small appetites
| who enjoy AYCE restaurants because it lets them enjoy several
| of their favourite dishes and/or try several new dishes, even
| if only a few mouthfuls of each. It might still work out poor
| value in raw terms of calories per $, but compared to any other
| way of enjoying 5 different types of tasty food in the same
| meal it can be very good value in pleasure per $.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| I personally can only manage about 1 1/2 plates of food. Not
| stacked either. But I do enjoy going to them as like you
| point out the fun is having all these different things you
| can try with low risk.
| mikestew wrote:
| _Couples. The female doesn 't eat much. I honestly don't
| understand why they go to AYCE._
|
| Because a buffet isn't a competitive contest where you pay to
| see how much food you can stuff down your gullet for $20. No,
| you're paying to walk away satisfied. If that only takes one
| plate, well, you still "got your money's worth".
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >Because a buffet isn't a competitive contest where you pay
| to see how much food you can stuff down your gullet for $20.
|
| I mean it was for me and my brothers growing up. Back when
| Pizza Hut used to have a linch buffet we'd always have a
| competition to see who could eat the most slices. Even though
| I was the youngest I won a decent amount of times. I recall
| my record being somewhere north of 20 slices, though the
| buffet slices were smaller than normal pizza slices. We were
| all skinny as rails back then too (and mostly still are).
| euroderf wrote:
| Making sure they don't actually make any money off you - this
| means checking your eating performance against your estimate
| of the prices of their inputs (wholesale food prices) -
| challenging and fun ?
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| Most AYCE places I know of charge 1EUR per year of age which I
| find very reasonable.
| michaelt wrote:
| I once went to an all-you-can-eat buffet in Bulgaria with a
| mechanism I'd never seen before.
|
| The salads and starches and suchlike were all self-service, and
| waiters toured the room with big skewers of freshly roasted meat
| they'd carve right in front of you. But of course they'd only
| serve you a certain amount, and they weren't very fast to make a
| return visit. Thus limiting diners' consumption of the more
| expensive items, unless the diner was very patient.
|
| Of course, the prices were very fair and we all left well fed.
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| That sounds like a churrascaria aka Brazilian steakhouse/bbq to
| me!
|
| Did the waiters ask if you wanted meat or were there cards with
| a red side and a green side?
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| I went to one of those once without understanding how the
| token worked.
|
| They kept coming again and again with the delicious things...
| I left so full I could barely walk.
|
| It's weird how while I could have turned "more grilled meat"
| down at any time but I didn't.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| I used to go with my team to Fogo de Chao in the before-fore
| times as they were right across from our building, and they
| applied the exact same strategy wrt to meat.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I've seen that in a few places, though I've never been to
| Bulgaria.
| civilitty wrote:
| In the US this is often the case at Brazilian steakhouses.
| They're usually higher end than regular buffets though because
| the meat is the main attraction and they're not stingy with it.
| voganmother42 wrote:
| Reminds me of "In churrascarias or the traditional Brazilian-
| style steakhouse restaurants, servers come to the table with
| knives and a vertically-held skewer, on which are speared
| various kinds of premium cuts of meat, most commonly local cuts
| of beef, pork, chicken, lamb, and sometimes atypical or exotic
| meats."
|
| Ive found these types of restaurants all over the US -
| https://fogodechao.com/ is one I remember
| fsckboy wrote:
| _churrascaria_ refers to the skewered and grilled cooking
| aspect.
|
| the roaming the room and serving you from the skewer is
| called _rodizio_
| ufo wrote:
| Although to be fair, most churrascarias use the rodizio
| model.
| Beijinger wrote:
| You make me miss Brazil. And you make me hungry.
| rapfaria wrote:
| Do americans have pizzeria rodizio? They bring slices to
| your table. Younger folks usually brag like "I had some 20
| slices last rodizio"
| ender341341 wrote:
| the only 'rodizio' I've seen in the US tend to be on the
| higher end, while most all you can eat pizza places tend
| to be on the lower end and just self serve.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| There is a place in Texas that does this called Delucca,
| I've been to their Dallas location and really liked it.
| e28eta wrote:
| The Mountain Mike's pizza in my hometown used to do that
| certain night(s) of the week when I was a kid. I don't
| know if they still do.
|
| Similar dynamic, they'd come out with a fresh pizza, do a
| lap around the dining room, and if you wanted that flavor
| you'd ask for a slice, or keep waiting.
|
| I don't remember if adults could make requests /
| suggestions.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Hence rodiziogrill.com :)
| paulddraper wrote:
| Often advertised in the US as "Brazilian grills."
|
| https://www.tucanos.com/
|
| https://www.rodiziogrill.com/
|
| The quality+price of a steakhouse with the variety of a
| buffet.
| Spivak wrote:
| I love me a Brazilian steakhouse, I think you're overestimating
| the patience required.
|
| * If there's something specific you want and it's not currently
| going around you can ask and they'll usually bring you a whole
| skewer just for you. Your server will also typically collect
| the table's favorites and send them your way.
|
| * For everything except the steak that's carved right on to
| your plate you can just ask for more when they're serving it to
| your table. And the only reason for the steak is just because
| they have to take it back to get seared again.
|
| * Unless your restaurant has specific dinner service slots
| (which is pretty rare) you'll likely get people coming over to
| serve you meat before you even get a chance to hit the "salad"
| bar.
|
| Those steakhouses make the economics work by simply charging
| $25/plate/lunch $50/plate/dinner before drinks. They've got to
| be some of the least "sleezy" restaurants around.
| dwringer wrote:
| I would have agreed with your comment 100% after my first
| visit to such a restaurant, but after my most recent visit I
| cannot do so. The amount of patience required depends
| entirely on the quality of service, and this is not
| necessarily consistent at all such restaurants at all times.
| michaelt wrote:
| This was at a time when Bulgaria's per-capita GDP was around
| $7500. I can assure you, they were not making the economics
| work by charging $50/plate :)
|
| Which is probably why they weren't delivering full skewers at
| request.
| jessehattabaugh wrote:
| We have those in the US; it's called Old Country Buffet
| https://youtu.be/net7t1HjQxY?si=W4lZ0ru3QYbFs7SO
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Never saw that style of service at old country buffet. That
| chain is usually go get it from the buffet tables with a
| person on the end of the buffet tables carving ham or beef.
| If you have never been to a 'Brazilian' steak house you
| should try it at least once they are a little pricy but a
| very interesting experience distinct from a buffet. The one I
| went to had a very small salad bar. Everything else they
| wandered by and served meat of skewers.
| JohnFen wrote:
| This is how I remember buffets operating in the US when I was a
| child, too. Nobody would go table to table to serve the good
| stuff, but would have stations at the buffet line, and you'd
| have to ask them to carve whatever you wanted. You could go
| back and get more as much as you wanted, but each trip got you
| a set amount.
| gosub100 wrote:
| > they weren't very fast to make a return visit
|
| I've seen this at several AYCE sushi restaurants. They
| repeatedly offer you seaweed salad, soup, and mussel
| appetizers, but get really 'busy' when they are preparing the
| sushi rolls. The worst I saw was (about 20 yrs ago) some stingy
| owner had a stipulation for AYCE only for the _first hour_ ,
| then you had to pay up. The chef was incredibly slow preparing
| the food. Other places I've seen try to chat you up to slow
| down your eating.
| calderracrusade wrote:
| My favorite is libertarians who use buffets as an example of why
| they don't pay taxes. "I don't pay for the salad bar, I get to
| eat steak, I can't choose where my taxes go". Except you
| literally do pay for all the wilting lettuce as you eat your
| steak. You don't get to tell them to un-order the lettuce and un-
| stock the salad bar just because it violates your NAP.
|
| There are many economics lessons to learn from buffets. And
| people tend to learn zero of them.
| daltont wrote:
| The imagery of the football players at the buffet brings back
| memories of my team going to the breakfast buffets at Shoney's
| the morning of Saturday games at noon. We didn't need lunch and
| the food was down before game time.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _They use larger than average serving spoons for things like
| potatoes, and smaller than average tongs for meats._
|
| Smart! The buffet my family has gone to the most, Sweet Tomatoes
| (RIP, COVID-19) didn't really even have meat. You could fish for
| chicken in the chicken noodle soup, and they had chili, but that
| was about it.
|
| > _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've never had the $98 brunch, but their downstairs (less
| expensive) brunch buffet is a pretty good deal. The pricing for
| kids was especially reasonable when we ate there a few years ago.
| But nothing will beat their pricing on our honeymoon -- they
| comped us brunch for the whole week!
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| Little ethnic buffets like the one mentioned at the end are my
| favorite types of hole in the walls. At that point, it's about
| trying a little bit of everything which if you ordered one of
| everything would be very expensive in comparison with the buffet
| entry price.
| dazc wrote:
| I worked for a hotel company once that did all you can eat
| breakfast buffets and lot of stuff was reheated day after day,
| the fruit salad was best avoided too.
|
| I don't know if this is standard but I avoid such places like the
| plague.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I value free hotel breakfasts at zero for this reason, or
| whatever the contents of the sealed food items. I prefer
| Embassy Suites though, where I can see them crack eggs.
| whartung wrote:
| > I prefer Embassy Suites though, where I can see them crack
| eggs.
|
| As I understand it, it's somewhat of an open secret that many
| of the eggs are powdered. I don't know if that's true. They
| may well also be "boil in a bag", which somewhat makes more
| sense when you see the texture and the somewhat strange
| "shapes" that they come out in, if they don't stir and break
| them.
|
| Heck, maybe they're boil in a bag powdered eggs.
|
| I was at a hotel in/near Miami, FL, and they opened their
| morning buffet to the local first responder community. I
| thought that was rather generous of them.
| jzb wrote:
| I grew up in a small town in Missouri in the 70s and 80s. I
| _literally_ had never had any form of Chinese food until I was
| about 17, and I _loved it_. So a friend and I would go into "the
| city" on the regular for a Chinese buffet -- on average once a
| week during the summer.
|
| I'm pretty sure the owner winced every time we pulled into the
| parking lot in my friend's heavily used Ford Escort. They had the
| best Crab Rangoon, and we would knock back between 3-5 heavily
| loaded plates, each. (Not only Crab Rangoon.) And then heaping
| bowls of self-serve ice cream.
|
| The restaurant is long gone now -- it folded sometime after I
| moved out of state (so I don't think it was our feasting that did
| it) -- which is a shame. I can't put away food the way I did as a
| teen, and I wish I could go back and have a few much more
| reasonably sized meals to help restore balance. In my limited
| defense we always tipped heavily even though we were poor
| teenagers with part-time amusement park wages.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > They had the best Crab Rangoon
|
| In late 1970's or early 1980's (I _think_ ), Super Stop &
| Shop's salad bar had a "seafood salad" with imitation crab
| meat.
|
| So I'm wondering if your "crab" Rangoon was real crab, or
| something much cheaper.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Crab rangoon is almost always imitation. Sometimes just cream
| cheese.
|
| I happily eat a dozen of them when the neighborhood Laotian
| church does its fundraiser, no matter what's in them. Perfect
| snack.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Most of the places around here use the canned crab meat,
| but very little of it usually.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Well, most Sushi places use fake crab meat (kani). And to be
| honest, it is not what makes sushi good or bad. I had below
| average sushi with real crab meat.
|
| Just for the guys with allergies: It contains eggs and wheat.
| resolutebat wrote:
| Random side note: _kani_ is the Japanese word for actual
| crab. Fake crab is _kani-kamaboko_ ( "crab fish sausage"),
| but the second word was lost in translation.
| nerdbert wrote:
| > I literally had never had any form of Chinese ... They had
| the best Crab Rangoon
|
| What the hell is that stuff? I lived most of my life in Asia,
| but went to a Chinese buffet on a visit to the USA. Crab
| Rangoon sounded exciting... but it was full of _cream cheese_
| or something? Absolutely shocking. I 'm very confident that's
| not a Chinese (or Burmese) dish.
| elil17 wrote:
| Chinese-American cuisine is it's own thing with dishes that
| reflect the ingredients available to Chinese immigrants in
| the 19th and 20th century and the demands of American
| consumers. It's typically a sweeter version of Guangdong
| food, with one or two Hunan or Sichuan dishes thrown in, and
| maybe some Japanese food as well. Then you've got uniquely
| Chinese-American food, like Egg Foo Young.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Around here (Midwest) we joke, it's not a complete Chinese
| Buffet unless it has mac-n-cheese.
| jghn wrote:
| It's cream cheese. Sometimes there's some crab or krab mixed
| in.
|
| My understanding is a lot of those fried American Chinese
| appetizers were introduced as part of the whole Trader Vics
| thing when he was getting underway
| whartung wrote:
| Our colloquial term for the Chinese buffets was "All you can
| stand Chinese".
|
| I haven't been to one in years. A singular issue with Chinese
| food today is the seeming race to the bottom. They're all as
| commoditized and cheap as they possibly be, and it's a real
| shame. It's also, at least locally, seems to be getting sweeter
| and sweeter.
| dhehsvc wrote:
| Let me guess, Columbia,MO?
| post_break wrote:
| One time my dad and his friend went to a pizza hut buffet. His
| friend was a prankster so he proceeded to pour the entire thing
| of dressing into the salad bowl, pick it up and take it to his
| seat. He said the manager came over and was pissed and told him
| he better eat all of it. He ate it all, much to the managers
| disapproval. We're talking the huge bowl, like 2 feet wide.
| mjevans wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if the 'greens' were the most expensive
| part of the buffet. All the shelf stable stuff is super easy to
| do in bulk, but greens go bad so quickly.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yep this is why McDonald's salads cost more than a burger.
| rurp wrote:
| The manager was probably annoyed because they knew that other
| customers would get mad about the salad not being available.
| Someone taking the entire giant bowl probably isn't in their
| normal workflow and will take some time to work around.
| post_break wrote:
| I'm not justifying it, if I were the manager I'd be pissed
| too haha.
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| Somewhat related - I have enjoyed watching Kitchen Nightmares and
| Hotel Hell, but I've always wondered about the economics of
| restaurants and whether Ramsay's "local and fresh" is really
| viable or not, and under which conditions. Anybody have
| recommendations that go into this?
| ManBeardPc wrote:
| I avoid all-you-can-eats, the quality is usually much worse and
| even if there is some good stuff everyone plunders that tray and
| it takes ages to refill. On special occasions the price is even
| higher, easily reaching 50EUR+. Why would I do that if there are
| several restaurants nearby where I get way better quality for
| less, can choose exactly what I want and still can barely eat it
| all? I don't understand the appeal.
| standardUser wrote:
| The appeal is eating little bits of lots of different things. I
| order the same way at restaurants - almost always multiple
| small dishes and rarely an entree. If so, it's shared.
|
| Also, having been to some high end buffets, these can sometimes
| be disappointing but they can also be truly amazing. I ate at a
| seafood buffet at a fancy hotel in Guangzhou once that blew my
| mind.
| mathgradthrow wrote:
| They miss the most important facet. Costco can only make so many
| chickens in their rotisserie. The downside is bounded.
|
| The best bang for your buck options at a buffet still come in a
| bucket, but there no obligation for the restaurant to keep that
| bucket full, regardless of demand. It's a bit like playing poker
| in vegas. You're competing with the other gamblers, not the
| house.
| gosub100 wrote:
| If a buffet consistently runs out of items they wont be popular
| for long. However, I think you've stumbled on an interesting
| point. I wonder if they could squeeze more profit by charging 2
| rates: "prime time" and "after hours". If the buffet was $30 at
| prime-time, you would be promised that nothing is run-out.
| Let's say that window runs from 11:45am - 1:15pm. Then sell
| economy-class half-price tickets that are still AYCE, but some
| of the good stuff might be picked clean or have limited
| quantity.
|
| This comes with the assumptions that 1) food waste should be
| minimized (i.e. can't be sold the next day, or less ideal to
| serve it at dinner hour if it was cooked for lunch), 2) the $15
| customer would almost never pay $30, or very little overlap.
| somethoughts wrote:
| In this post covid and high labor cost era - it'd be interesting
| if there will be any innovative company that attempts a Japanese
| conveyor belt sushi (i.e. pay $N dollars per dish of pre-plated
| food) setup but with Western style appetizers/Tapas.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| We have some of these in Barcelona. They're great actually.
|
| It's 12EUR for 4 plates or 15EUR unlimited with a drink, and
| really good quality overall.
| lukev wrote:
| I love articles like this. I'd happily read a book with each
| chapter breaking down the unit economics of a given type of
| business.
|
| Also, I can't help but recount an anecdote from the last time I
| was at an all-you-can-eat place... conveyor-belt sushi with my
| kids.
|
| A pair of guys came in and sat at the table next to us. They said
| a loud ironic prayer begging indulgence for "the sins we are
| about to commit" as they sat down... then proceeded to _unwrap_
| all the fish rolls, eating the contents as sashimi and discarding
| the rice and veggies on a tray on their table. By the time we
| left there was probably 8 lbs of rice on the tray... can't
| believe they weren't kicked out.
| ww520 wrote:
| Deliberate food wasters are despicable.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| It's rice. It's not like they're wasting anything
| significant, like the meat of an animal that gave its life.
| But still, the restaurant should have charged them for it at
| least, like every other all you can eat sushi place would
| have.
| 6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote:
| "like the meat of an animal that gave its life." - that's
| generally not how it works.
| standardUser wrote:
| Outside of some restaurants in South Korea, we generally
| only eat dead animals.
| progbits wrote:
| I assume the GP takes issue with the word "gave", as it
| was not given but taken.
| tomrod wrote:
| Can something be taken without being given?
| strken wrote:
| Bit of a tangent, but nearly all foods have an animal death
| rate per calorie, so there's no such thing as insignificant
| food.
|
| The exchange rate is usually better for grains than for
| e.g. chicken or even beef[0], though.
|
| [0] https://animalvisuals.org/projects/1mc/ Note that I'm a
| little skeptical of the numbers here, particularly those
| for grass-fed beef. Not that it matters for the purpose of
| claiming rice has a cost in lives.
| JohnFen wrote:
| All food waste is significant.
| byproxy wrote:
| I've never been to an AYCE sushi joint that didn't charge for
| the leftovers described in this example, for what it's worth.
| paulorlando wrote:
| Check out a book called Growth Units, which dives into unit
| economics across different business types.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _I'd happily read a book with each chapter breaking down the
| unit economics of a given type of business._
|
| Not 100% on-point, but check out Roadside MBA, [1] which was
| written by a trio of MBA professors. Instead of using the case
| study method with examples from huge companies, they do a deep
| dive on small businesses that they visited on cross-country
| roadtrips. Very entertaining and accessible.
|
| 1: https://www.amazon.com/Roadside-MBA-Entrepreneurs-
| Executives...
| hilux wrote:
| The author (Paul Oyer, Yale MBA) also has some entertaining
| videos, and a book, on the economics of online dating.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I actually reached out to him to see if he would sign a
| copy of the book for my daughter, with whom I read the book
| during COVID. He was happy to do so, and did the same for
| his new book on the economics of sports.
|
| I don't plan to read the book about online dating with my
| daughter, but perhaps she'll read it on her own someday!
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I've toyed around with the idea of doing an article where the
| spreadsheet gets progressively more complicated with how to
| model major business types.
|
| Maybe I should do it!
| treyfitty wrote:
| Please do. I for one would be interested!
| itishappy wrote:
| Seconded!
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Sometimes NPR's Planet Money podcast does this but it's
| generally 10-15 minutes at a pop coverage of a specific theory
| or news item for general audience, they covered buffets
| recently in a different way
|
| https://www.npr.org/2023/10/27/1197954459/all-you-can-eat-bu...
| WheatMillington wrote:
| I find NPR Planet Money to be the shallowest and most
| unsatisfying of takes possible on pretty much every issue
| they take on.
| euroderf wrote:
| Have pondered slurping down pizza toppings and discarding the
| crusts...
| buu700 wrote:
| Kicked out for what? If they want to disincentivize wasting
| rice, they should charge for leftovers and offer sashimi as an
| upsell. If they don't, that's on the restaurant.
| wizerdrobe wrote:
| Ultimately depends on the restaurant - we had an AYCE sushi,
| hibachi restaurant we loved with a style different than a
| conveyor belt that gracefully handled the issue.
|
| The restaurant had a to-go by-weight option. For the dine in
| patrons, you would check boxes on a menu slip with your
| order, quantity, etc.
|
| Their menu included a simple request that patrons reasonably
| finish each plate before submitting a new order, that being
| honest kept their prices reasonable, and that patrons wasting
| entire orders would be charged on a per-weight basis for the
| wasted order at their discretion.
| jimjimjim wrote:
| That line of thinking usually pairs with 'If there isn't a
| law against it then it must be Ok'. So the world becomes
| burdened with complex rules and laws to prevent people having
| to live in a hellscape of Jerks.
| buu700 wrote:
| I don't eat rice; I've been strictly keto for over a
| decade. My health choices make me a jerk?
|
| Some people are allergic to rice. Some people are on
| medically prescribed diets. Maybe there's an obscure
| religion that forbids eating rice. Some people just don't
| like rice. Are they all jerks too?
|
| That restaurant wouldn't be my preference, but if I did
| have to be there for an important reason, I certainly
| wouldn't be bullied into eating something I didn't want to
| eat. I'm generally strict about wasting food, but in that
| situation I wouldn't feel even slightly guilty about it.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Ordering a dish that is mostly rice knowing that you
| won't/can't eat it is being a jerk, yes. I don't know
| about that restaurant, but I've never seen a sushi place
| that didn't also serve sashimi.
| buu700 wrote:
| "If they want to disincentivize wasting rice, they should
| charge for leftovers and offer sashimi as an upsell."
| wizerdrobe wrote:
| You could always speak with the staff about your dietary
| restrictions as is standard practice for the allergic,
| intolerant, and such.
|
| If they can accommodate your request, and they typically
| will, you're golden. If not, you may need to patronize a
| different business. It is, after all, a reciprocal
| relationship. If your basic needs aren't met, and they
| have a stiff policy on substitution - then yes, you are a
| jerk for ignoring them.
| buu700 wrote:
| Exactly my point.
| burnished wrote:
| You're probably focusing on the wrong thing if you're
| jumping to the defense of people who leave things on the
| plate for any reason.
|
| The actual controversy here is that the folks in the
| story clearly thought they were cheating the system, and
| people are responding without questioning that, and some
| people are questioning that.
| rngname22 wrote:
| Because living in a world where every bad behavior is
| prevented through enforcement mechanisms and bureaucratic
| procedure sucks ass, compared to a world where people
| generally speaking follow a social contract. If you can't
| understand why then you might not be thinking about it hard
| enough. It introduces friction, especially on those who would
| already have behaved well.
| paulddraper wrote:
| This is the internet after all.
| jjulius wrote:
| >By the time we left there was probably 8 lbs of rice on the
| tray... can't believe they weren't kicked out.
|
| Why should they be? It's likely that the restaurant still
| charged them for the full price of the plates that were removed
| from the belt, regardless of whether or not they ate everything
| that was on said plate.
|
| If they're otherwise quiet, respectful and paying customers,
| what about picking apart their food warrants kicking them out?
| As another user suggested, what happens if you don't eat the
| crust at a pizza joint?
| ender341341 wrote:
| it sounds like it was an all you can eat place, the few one I
| go to has signs up saying if you don't eat what you take you
| may be charged an extra plate (I've never seen them actually
| enforce it, I assume it's more for people who go make a giant
| bowl and then eat almost none of it).
| jjulius wrote:
| Conveyor-belt sushi does not charge the same way a
| traditional "all you can eat" buffet restaurant charges.
| See my comment here[0].
|
| [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38562309
| lukev wrote:
| This one does/did.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > the restaurant still charged them for the full price of the
| plate
|
| At all-you-can-eat buffets, customers are charged a flat
| rate, not per plate.
|
| Obviously this breaks down if people are taking plates of
| food and chucking them in the trash.
|
| EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro2_bQkaG5U&t=84s
| burnished wrote:
| No this anecdote is about conveyor belt sushi, which in my
| experience is pay by the color coded plate
| lukev wrote:
| No, in this case, it was a flat rate up front.
|
| Basically 100% a buffet except the table moves to you
| (which, to the point of the original article, waiting for
| your preferred sushi to come around probably slows down
| consumption and improves the economics)
|
| Obviously if people want to buy food and waste it that's
| on them. But this was a pretty clear abuse of the
| restaurant's business model as well.
| jjulius wrote:
| OP specifically specifies that this was a "conveyor-belt
| sushi" restaurant. Those are only "all you can eat" in the
| sense that you're welcome to pull as many plates as you'd
| like off of the belt, but each plate is usually priced at
| one of a few different levels, and you will be charged for
| the total value of the plates you removed from the belt.
|
| Eg, if yellow plates are $1, blue plates are $2, and orange
| plates are $3, and you pulled two orange plates, a blue
| plate and a yellow plate, your total would come out to $9
| even if you didn't clear your plates.
| lukev wrote:
| That's not how this place works, and clearly it would
| have been less offensive behavior if it was.
| paulddraper wrote:
| So either that isn't all-you-can-eat, or I don't
| understand the definition of all-you-can-eat.
| sokoloff wrote:
| "All you can eat" rarely means "you can eat as much as
| you can afford" but rather means "you pay one price and
| can eat as much as you like for that price".
|
| That a conveyor belt is involved doesn't change the
| offer.
| lukev wrote:
| This place charged a flat fee at the door, then everything
| inside is all-you-can-eat.
| jjulius wrote:
| Interesting, I've never seen that at a conveyor-belt sushi
| joint before. That's not how they traditionally operate.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| There's a conveyor belt hot pot by me which does it both
| ways. You choose whether everyone at the table will do
| the normal method where they count up your plates and
| price based on the color, or pay a flat rate for however
| much you wish to eat. In the case of the latter, they
| reserve the right to tack on a fee if you're wasting
| food.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Most all-you-can-eat places I've been to have rules against
| food waste.
| paddy_m wrote:
| The profit calculator from NYMag was a great series of articles
| about the economics of business from investment banks, to drug
| dealers, to yoga studios.
| https://nymag.com/news/features/2007/profit/
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| In India all you can eat pizza is pretty popular. You pay ~350
| INR per person for non-vegetarian and ~250-300 INR per person for
| vegetarian. It's pretty good.
|
| The trick they use is a large fizzy complimentary drink up front,
| which reduces your hunger for the first set of pizzas which take
| a bit to arrive.
| euroderf wrote:
| Yup avoid the fizzy stuff. And also I've noticed in the US that
| the salad dressings can have noticeable sugar content.
| zwieback wrote:
| Planet Money (best podcast of all times) did an episode on this a
| while back: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1197954459
| foreigner wrote:
| My tiny, 5 foot tall, 90 pound mother _loved_ buffets. When she
| walked in you could almost see the owners doing a cash-money
| victory dance.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| I worked at an all-you-can-eat buffet as a teenager in the 1990s.
|
| Our big fill-you-up-cheap item was pizza. The ingredient cost for
| pizza is ridiculously low, even for above-average quality
| ingredients. An entire pizza was likely $0.50 or so, depending on
| toppings.
|
| The restaurant oven was this giant gas-fired thing with 5 or 6
| circular, rotating stone surfaces with each set to its own
| temperature. The pizza stone was set somewhere between 550 and
| 600deg F.
|
| My main job was making the pizza, and they were good. Definitely
| better than anything you could get at a Pizza Hut or Dominos or
| Little Caesars. People would even ask for custom pizzas, and
| management didn't care. You put it out on the buffet line and
| wave at them so they know it's ready. Of course, while they're
| waiting they aren't eating other things...
|
| The restaurant also had a little game room with arcade machines
| that spit out tickets for cheap prizes. Kids would have a slice
| or two of pizza and then run off to play games, making their
| visits especially profitable.
| xanderlewis wrote:
| > all-you-can-eat
|
| > pizza
|
| > cheap
|
| > arcade machines
|
| This all sounds too much like heaven to be true.
| trevyn wrote:
| ProTip: Many university cafeterias are all-you-can-eat and open
| to the public.
| bilsbie wrote:
| What's the best way to find all you can eat places? I don't think
| there are any in my area so I want to make a road trip.
| francisofascii wrote:
| > starches like potatoes might only cost the restaurant $0.30 per
| serving, compared to $2.25 per serving for steak.
|
| What you need is a hybrid buffet, in which each person gets a
| certain limit of meat, but unlimited of all the cheaper food.
| nerdbert wrote:
| There were, and probably still are, restaurants where you pay
| for the meat item and then get access to the unlimited "salad"
| bar which includes a wide range of other stuff.
| whartung wrote:
| Souplantation was like this.
|
| You could go through the salad bar, the soup, and bread line as
| much as you want.
|
| But on the salad bar, most of the actual proteins (I should say
| non-vegetable proteins -- all the garbanzos you can eat!) were
| an extra unit charge.
|
| The "secret" was that they always had Chicken Noodle Soup, so
| folks would go there and simply pick out all the chicken,
| leaving the broth and noodles. Which was, honestly, pretty
| annoying.
|
| Souplantation gave up with COVID. They literally threw in the
| towel, and shut the entire chain down.
| conductr wrote:
| I have a masochistic interest in opening a restaurant of some
| sort one day and one thing I'm pretty adamant about is owning my
| property. I live in an area where that is feasible and obviously
| it's not in many areas/cities. But, seeing that rent is 3x profit
| on this validates my back of envelope math. I don't want to be
| working for a landlord that's going to be constantly upping my
| rent. It's obviously a bit more capital intensive but it's also
| an asset that can be sold if the business doesn't work out.
|
| All the businesses I observe come and go it's usually something
| about how they opened a hip restaurant in a trendy neighborhood
| and 5-10 years later it's fully gentrified and the rent causes
| them to close shop. Did they make enough profit to offset the
| cost of the leasehold improvement investment? I'm guessing not in
| that short amount of time. Meanwhile, the businesses that are
| family owned and have been around for 50+ years have no rent
| expenses and can weather some ups and downs more gracefully. They
| also get to have a reasonable profit to live on.
| Animats wrote:
| I miss Fresh Choice, the mostly-vegetarian buffet. They went
| broke because the buffet itself was a lose and they were making
| money on the extras.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.mashed.com/1374299/chain-restaurant-buffets-
| disa...
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| It is pretty big in Asia. All you can eat sushi/sashimi is
| everywhere in Hong Kong, not that expensive, great experience for
| everyone.
|
| When I moved to UK I realised the difference. I can only eat like
| maybe 70% compared to an average Westerner so it is always much
| more expensive for me.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| I wonder if those economics also apply to software, ie "unlimited
| data storage" service providers.
| lvl102 wrote:
| My local Chinese restaurant stop doing their lunch and Sunday
| buffets during COVID. I asked the owner whether she would bring
| it back after the pandemic and she basically told me she makes
| 3-4x the profit off of take outs alone. And she'd cut dining-in
| too if she could. Restaurant business dramatically changed as a
| result of pandemic.
| ExMachina73 wrote:
| In most restaurants, the food itself is a loss leader. The real
| money is in booze and drinks. Why most diners back east have a
| bar. All the money is made in the bar drinks.
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