[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 : 408 points
Date : 2023-12-06 10:20 UTC (2 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.
| whycome wrote:
| I think we just have a distinction here where the poster
| suggested charging for "food left on the plate"
|
| Even in a case of "sampling" and finding things you
| didn't want to finish, you'd be charged. There can be a
| reasonable alternative.
| ska wrote:
| > Do you think you have an obligation to eat it no matter
| what?
|
| Only if you put it on your plate ;)
| 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.
| askvictor wrote:
| Lifetime guarantee is a shitty term. If they are saying
| it's for the lifetime of the product, then just be upfront
| and say what the expected lifetime of the product is, and
| guarantee it for that long.
| 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.
| justneedaname wrote:
| Was it this guy: https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&e
| src=s&source=web...
| sumtechguy wrote:
| hehe, it would _not_ surprise me if he gave that a try.
| 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.
| chipsrafferty wrote:
| I've never had food arrive cold.
| 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.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| It can be fun but its literally a two hour commitment
| usually to prepare a big meal, eat it, then deal with the
| hellfire you created in the kichen. I don't always have
| the energy for that at the end of the workday.
| 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.
| mckn1ght wrote:
| > Please don't watch me while I eat
|
| If it makes you feel any better, and maybe I'm only
| speaking for myself, but when I people watch, I'm barely
| paying attention, and I'm never really watching people
| actually eating. It's the activities around the eating,
| mostly just walking and talking (this is why I really
| like European sidewalk cafes, you get an endless river of
| people passing by to watch). I'm not taking detailed
| notes on anything, and definitely not bite sizes, how
| many times you chew, how messy you are etc. That's all
| too close for my own comfort. Couldn't care less about
| that stuff. Probably the most info I retain is new ideas
| on how to dress myself, outside of exceptional or weird
| situations that might arise in public. Which, OK, in the
| context of this thread, I might notice the people
| carrying two or more heaping mountains of food to their
| table at a time.
| porknubbins wrote:
| That's certainly a very valid viewpoint but it sounds
| like some form of social anxiety. I'm pretty introverted
| and rarely make smalltalk with anyone unprompted but I
| still enjoy going to certain restaurants and kind of
| nursing a drink while zoning out. I usually avoid the bar
| while alone because some bartenders think you want to
| chat.
| gspencley wrote:
| It's actually not social anxiety. Believe it or not, my
| wife and I are performing magicians, so I'm actually a
| part time entertainer on the side. I have no issues
| mingling, making small talk if I have to, and enjoying
| the company of others.
|
| But it's when I'm not seeking those things, when I want
| to enjoy a meal or a private conversation, then I start
| to a) feel protective of my privacy (and yes I know,
| restaurant = public place) and b) I just have no interest
| in the type of socializing that we're talking about
| (making small talk with the wait staff etc.).
|
| In other words I just want to be left alone, and I find
| the concept of people "people watching" me while I eat or
| go about my daily business to be, well, creepy. If I'm
| asking for attention it's different. If I'm enjoying a
| meal with my wife, leave me alone.
|
| I will add, however, that the privacy element is probably
| a bit more "extreme" for me than others because of having
| experiences as a child where privacy and boundaries, when
| there was an expectation of privacy, was violated. And so
| I am more concerned with privacy than probably even the
| typical tinfoil hat wearing techie who is paranoid about
| Internet and device privacy. That's undoubtedly where the
| thought of people "people watching" me while I eat at a
| restaurant creeps me the hell out comes from.
| 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.
| jzb wrote:
| "Eating out isn't uncomfortable."
|
| For you. If a person says they don't like eating out
| because it's uncomfortable, you can trust they know
| whether they are uncomfortable or not.
|
| I don't like loud, busy places. It's great when I can
| have a meal at a restaurant when it's not packed, but you
| never know until you get there.
| Beldin wrote:
| Don't forget the benefits of not having to set the table
| and not having to clean up, including doing the dishes.
| Also: not having to prepare, if you're cooking yourself.
|
| Re: baby: If there's an Ikea near you, you might want to
| try that. Around here, they typically are very well-
| prepared for small children (say, 1+). Basically, all of
| the cutlery and china they sell for kids is available for
| use in the restaurant. And they have play areas
| integrated into the dining area - kids play and parents
| can eat.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| For me, that completely depends whether I'm there alone
| or not.
|
| With friends, family or coworkers, eating out is
| fantastic and a fun social activity.
|
| Alone, it's awkward, uncomfortable and unpleasant.
|
| If I'm not with someone, I'd rather it be delivered.
| 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.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| At which point its always better to just pick it up
| yourself unless you absolutely cannot go do that for
| whatever reason. Not only is it significantly cheaper, but
| the food is also significantly hotter.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Because you can eat it in the comfort of your own home,
| instead of the discomfort of an unfamiliar place surrounded
| by strangers.
|
| People never ate out because of the food. They ate out
| because of the dining experience.
|
| You can make better meals, cheaper, at home, in less time
| than it takes to go out. Yet people still dined out.
|
| And, they pay a premium for it. There is no sense in paying
| a premium for home delivery, because you are getting
| substandard meals[1].
|
| [1] Few dishes travel well in a bag, even if it's packaged
| properly and delivered quickly - steam rising off hot food
| that is not ventilated causes things to go soggy. If you
| _do_ ventilate it, then it goes cold in minutes while
| traveling. Then reheating the food makes it less nice than
| it was when cooked. Hence, all delivered food tend to be
| slightly different to eating it off a plate when it is
| freshly cooked. Even pizzas suffer from being steamed while
| traveling.
| bonton89 wrote:
| I actually assumed eating at home increase wouldn't be
| because of doordash, but because of improved quality and
| variety of frozen meals. I remember what was available
| when I was a kid was mostly mediocre to outright bad. Now
| a lot of things like quite good frozen pizzas and lots of
| entrees you'd normally get at a sit-down chain are
| available in the frozen food section. I'm a pretty poor
| cook but I can't screw up following the oven directions
| on a box and I'd get the result faster and cheaper than
| doordash.
|
| It isn't as good as a home cooked meal but it is a lot
| better than the awful TV dinners I rarely ate back in the
| 80s.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| > You can make better meals, cheaper, at home, in less
| time than it takes to go out.
|
| This is going to be highly dependent on your local
| restaurants and what you like to eat. I can't make better
| bbq or pizza than the restaurants near me. I can make
| either of those pretty well, but not faster. I can make a
| pretty good burger, competitive with almost all the
| restaurants near me, but I can't make French fries as
| good as a restaurant with a fryer.
| OfficeChad wrote:
| Average HN work from home remotecel autist.
| rsynnott wrote:
| While this is a valid preference, I think it may be a
| rather unusual one; people tend to like going out.
| 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.)
| mckn1ght wrote:
| I'm not so sure it's just a US thing. I've been to plenty
| of places in EU that are very interested in feeding you
| and getting you out the door for the next people to come
| in. Some high end, in-demand places will even tell you up
| front what the time limit is because with their limited
| space, they need to be able to accommodate the next
| reservation.
|
| And often, it just comes down to overcorrection, where
| the server is afraid of getting bad tips (so yes, that is
| US specific, and maybe related to throughput, though not
| exclusively), or incompetency, where they haven't learned
| how to read the table and predict their needs.
| 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.
| ponector wrote:
| You can tip any amount. You chose if tipping inflation would
| affect you.
|
| US tipping is sick, and it is not fair to people who are
| involved in preparing your experience. Why only servers
| receiving tip? Why not the cook? Or cleaning lady? After all,
| dirty toilet will ruin your dining experience.
| 93po wrote:
| some places do share tips across the whole staff, though
| sometimes waiters still get a larger cut
| 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.
| telotortium wrote:
| I think this remains to be seen. It's possible that
| certain less individualistic cultures exposed to
| individualistic modernity will adapt in a robust way.
| toyg wrote:
| Jewish culture, Italian culture, Greek culture, Spanish
| culture - all famed for big families, worshipping
| fertility, etc etc. They all fell to the demands of
| advanced-capitalism demands. A couple of generations and
| that becomes true of any culture: once women are free to
| decide their own destiny, and educated enough to know
| there is a world of life options, they want to dedicate
| less of their time to child-rearing.
| rayiner wrote:
| It's about culture, not economic conditions. A number of
| American sub-cultures that are more educated and wealthy
| than average (Mormons, Muslims) also have above-
| replacement fertility rates.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Maybe we ask Mormon and Muslim women what they think of
| their education, wealth and expected role in those above-
| replacement fertility rates?
| JamesBarney wrote:
| It is culture but it's not the pro-individualism
| enlightenment parts of Western culture that made us
| great. There's so much anti-natalistic culture to fix
| (and a little bit of economics)
|
| - make housing cheaper
|
| - fix education so people can start their careers and
| adulthood earlier
|
| - pass safe harbor laws so that parents and feel safe
| leaving their kids at home, or letting them take the bus
|
| - also economic incentives help, beef up people's social
| security if they have kids
| shiroiuma wrote:
| > fix education so people can start their careers and
| adulthood earlier
|
| People can only learn so quickly; you're not going to
| give people a college-level education by age 15. Modern
| society requires more education to be productive than
| past societies, but this is at odds with human biology.
|
| > pass safe harbor laws so that parents and feel safe
| leaving their kids at home, or letting them take the bus
|
| This is only a problem in the US, but birthrates are low
| in all developed nations.
|
| Some economic incentives might help a bit, but they're
| not going to have a dramatic effect: people simply don't
| want to have big families any more. Kids are a lot of
| work (and expensive, even with those incentives), so
| people like to have 1 or 2 and concentrate all their
| attention on those. They don't want 6 kids.
| toyg wrote:
| Their reach of wealthy economic conditions is too recent.
| Give it a couple more generations and you'll see.
| sfink wrote:
| Are you claiming China and Japan are individualistic, or
| that people are hiding all the babies somewhere?
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-
| fer... does not show eastern countries as having
| particularly high birth rates, and the largest eastern
| countries have the lowest.
|
| The description on that page under Africa, which is the
| only continent remaining with fertility rate well above
| replacement rate, does agree with your assessment that it's
| about the society and its expectations.
|
| (As a side note, I heard that Nigeria is on track to soon
| becoming the country with the 2nd highest number of English
| speakers after the US, which stunned me given that India is
| the most populous country in the world and--I thought--has
| a fairly high percentage of English speakers.)
| rayiner wrote:
| > Are you claiming China and Japan are individualistic,
| or that people are hiding all the babies somewhere
|
| No? A -> B doesn't mean that B -> A. In the case of East
| Asia, it's nearly a century of deliberate anti-natal
| government policy. China's one-child policy is the most
| brutal, but pretty much all East Asian countries had
| softer forms of encouraging people not to have kids.
| shiroiuma wrote:
| It's not like this at all. People aren't having kids in
| _all_ developed nations, east or west, and also in
| developing nations as they become more developed, the
| birthrate falls dramatically. It 's not "anti-natal
| government policy", it's various other factors: cost of
| living, expectations of how much resources/attention will
| be devoted to each kid, women's rights, etc.
|
| China's one-child policy is long since over, but their
| birthrate is very low too. Government policy isn't the
| problem (if it's even a "problem"). People just don't
| want to have big families, and now that they have a
| choice, they don't.
| rayiner wrote:
| The one child policy was only ended in 2016. Several
| generations grew up under it, changing the culture
| significantly. That's been true in all Asian countries.
|
| > People just don't want to have big families, and now
| that they have a choice, they don't.
|
| But "choice" is individualism! There are American
| subcultures that are more educated and affluent than
| average, like Muslims and Mormons, that have much higher
| fertility rates than average. And that's because those
| cultures exert strong social pressures to conform to
| expectations about family life instead of leaving it to
| choice.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| There's more community outlets than ever before. Try joining
| a makerspace or a slow pitch softball league in 1950. All you
| had back then was the church or beers at the elks lodge after
| work.
| showerst wrote:
| Americans' participation in community outlets has been
| plummeting across basically every category since the late
| 60s -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
| rsynnott wrote:
| That does sound like unreasonable extrapolation; I'd be very
| suspicious of _any_ prediction that _anyone_ makes about
| consumer behaviour in 2030, because the track record for
| attempting to make long-term predictions about consumer
| behaviour is... not great.
|
| At least in this country (Ireland) restaurants seem to be, if
| anything, fuller than they were before covid; deliveries are
| definitely more of a thing than they used to be, but no
| apparent evidence that people are giving up on going out.
| 93po wrote:
| My home is quiet, I can wear pajamas, it costs 20% less because
| I'm not tipping (I do tip a couple bucks for takeout), costs
| even less because I'm not buying drinks, alcohol isn't marked
| up 5x from retail pricing, and I can relax after my meal
| instead of spending 20 minutes trying to get my waiter's
| attention for the check and then having to drive home.
|
| The only reason I eat out is it's a date and we're in the early
| stages of getting to know each other, I want to treat someone
| (including dates) to something nice, or it's a special
| occasion.
| 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).
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > though the buffet slices were smaller than normal pizza
| slices.
|
| That makes sense. At my local pizza place there isn't a
| buffet, but there is a lunch menu for slices, and those
| slices are double the size of XL slices.
| 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 ?
| silisili wrote:
| I like buffets in general for the freedom it allows me, not
| for the amount of food I can eat. Of course there's the
| freedom to choose foods, but I'm more talking about not being
| tied to a waitstaff. Eat what I want, then just leave. No
| having to flag down waitstaff when I want to pay, having to
| wait on them to come back, feeling guilted into tipping
| someone who did a pretty awful job, etc.
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| Most AYCE places I know of charge 1EUR per year of age which I
| find very reasonable.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Outside of children, it doesn't seems like a very good deal
| for customers. You don't eat more and more as you age.
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| Sorry, I should've been clearer. I was replying to the
| "families with with children". It applies only to children,
| usually up to 14 or the normal price.
| 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.
| djangelic wrote:
| Same, they had some kind of truffle pizza that was
| delicious
| 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.
| robocat wrote:
| And don't forget Comida por Quilo - buffet where you pay by
| the kilo/pound:
|
| https://theculturetrip.com/south-
| america/brazil/articles/the...
| 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.
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| I was hesitant to be that guy, but this does indeed sound
| like a brazilian steakhouse.
| 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.
| awiesenhofer wrote:
| Reminds me of the Czech Republic, where in some places you get
| unlimited sauce and dumplings with any roast dish. So you might
| only get 2-3 pieces of meat with your ie. Svickova but you can
| order more sauce and dumplings as often as you want. Of course
| both are relatively cheap and all the beers you order to go
| with it more than make up for it. Great for kids too (without
| the beer preferably).
| mckn1ght wrote:
| Makes sense. The slower you eat, the less food it takes to feel
| full, because the nutrients have had time to absorb into your
| blood and hit the feedback mechanisms. So the longer in between
| servings of high cost items, the less overall will probably be
| consumed.
| grecy wrote:
| I was just at a Brazilian steakhouse in Vegas that is exactly
| this.
|
| That being said, my table ate an inhuman amount of extremely
| delicious meat.
| sofixa wrote:
| > I once went to an all-you-can-eat buffet in Bulgaria with a
| mechanism I'd never seen before.
|
| Do you remember where it was and what it was called?
| hnbad wrote:
| I've been to a Chinese AYCE in Germany that has another spin on
| this: cheap meat like deep fried chicken is available as part
| of the regular buffet but the other fish and meat is only
| available at a separate buffet where you pick out cold
| vegetables and raw fish and meat and a sauce or marinade for it
| all to be grilled for you and served to your table. It's copied
| off the model of a popular chain of "Mongolian BBQ" places
| where this is the main selling point because the chef prepares
| the food in direct central view of most of the tables but it
| also slows down customers by requring them to put their plate
| with the expensive food in a queue and encouraging them to pass
| the time by filling up with the cheaper stuff from the ready-
| to-eat buffet.
|
| Another effect in addition to slowing down eating (i.e.
| reducing how much food is consumed before customers feel
| satieted/full) is that the raw meat and fish shrinks from the
| water loss during cooking so customers get to feel like they
| filled up their plate but only be served a smaller amount of
| cooked food than if they had been able to load up their plate
| with pre-cooked food directly. And of course most of the sauces
| and marinades as well as the deep-fried cheap food is also
| fairly salty, encouraging customers to pay for more drinks
| (which also additionally fill up their stomachs).
| 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.
| kjs3 wrote:
| There was a not-very-good Chinese buffet just off campus when I
| was at college, and religiously after Wednesday practice the
| whole rugby team would go. After 2 years or so of cleaning them
| out in about an hour, the owner banned us. :-)
| 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!
| matteoraso wrote:
| >Sweet Tomatoes (RIP, COVID-19) didn't really even have meat.
|
| Can't speak to that particular brand, but a lot of buffets will
| have high-end meats that are hidden from plain sight. I went to
| a dinky local buffet not too long ago, and I found a prime rib
| roast on my second pass through. What they did was place the
| carving station in a hole in the wall so it wasn't sticking
| out, and then staffed the station with an extremely quiet man.
| Since your focus is on the buffet line, you completely miss him
| and his expensive meat (and also dim sum, and maybe a few other
| things. IDK, I just went straight for the prime rib).
| 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.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Stuff has like a couple hour window under heat otherwise you
| have some explaining to do for the health inspector. You can
| tip them anonymously fwiw.
| 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.
| SI_Rob wrote:
| thank you, I always wondered why the word used for that
| stuff was just its actual name in Japanese. I've never
| heard it referred to as kani-kamaboko, despite being
| quite familiar with kamaboko (i guess, just the generic
| term for that pink tinted rubbery roll of fish) itself.
| This makes a lot of sense.
|
| However, aren't some types of imitation crab not kamaboko
| at all but a kind of fish fillet processed with crab
| juice to give it that flavor?
|
| I actually dislike the taste of crab so I am not all that
| familiar with the options.
| kccqzy wrote:
| The quality of the seafood is absolutely what makes sushi
| good or bad. What else could make sushi good or bad? Rice
| is basically a solved problem with a rice cooker and
| vinegar. Soy sauce and wasabi are both cheap commodities.
| chipsrafferty wrote:
| Well, maybe the fact that sushi refers to the rice, not
| the fish. Cucumber avocado sushi is sushi. A piece of
| salmon, even though often lumped in to the category, is
| not. I'd rather have good rice and average fish than bad
| rice and good fish.
| 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.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| In Shanghai, if you visit a Papa John's Pizza, you will
| have no trouble ordering black pepper beef chow mein.
|
| But I would hesitate to call that "pizza" just because of
| the name of the restaurant. I would not even call it
| "American food". That's not why it's on the menu.
| eru wrote:
| Mac-n-cheese is very popular in (at least) Singapore, and
| that includes amongst our ethnically-Chinese people.
|
| So it's Chinese enough by that standard.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| In Shanghai, cheese is something of a novelty item, but
| milk is sold in every convenience store. I find this
| surprising given that more than 90% of Chinese are
| lactose intolerant.
|
| On the other hand, I have gotten the comment several
| times from a cashier while buying milk, "wow, I've never
| seen anyone buy that much milk at once!"
|
| How much milk do you need to buy to trigger that comment?
| One gallon. I drink that much in about two days. (This is
| several cartons; the largest carton you can buy is 1350
| mL of milk.)
|
| So I conclude that Chinese people expect to be able to
| buy milk, but regardless of that expectation, they
| actually buy almost zero milk.
|
| The concept of lactose intolerance doesn't seem to be
| well known. I had someone react with horror when she
| asked what I was going to have for lunch and I said milk.
| She assured me that if I were to drink milk on an empty
| stomach, I would suffer from diarrhea. She was confused
| when I responded that that wouldn't happen to me because
| I'm white.
| eru wrote:
| Singapore is a bit more westernised, so people are more
| familiar with dairy products. We also have enough people
| from the wider Indian subcontinent (India, Bangladesh,
| Sri Lanka, etc), who traditionally have more of a dairy
| culture.
|
| Plus Singapore is reasonably fond of her time as a
| British colony.
|
| > She was confused when I responded that that wouldn't
| happen to me because I'm white.
|
| Of course, we also have populations of westerners with
| less lactose tolerance. I think Italians fall among them?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| European-style lactase persistence is centered in
| northern Europe, so yes, Italians have less of it.
|
| But the maybe 38% of Italians who can digest lactose (
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28673071/ ) still dwarf
| the ~7% of Chinese who can. If your only exposure to
| whites was Italians, with their very strong cultural
| features of cheese+, cream-based sauces, and ice cream++,
| you'd still know that (1) whites consume much, much, much
| more dairy than Chinese do; and (2) they are much less
| likely to suffer any negative consequences from doing so.
| On the other hand, Italians would probably sympathize
| with the risk of indigestion from drinking milk "wrong"
| where Danes or Dutchmen would most likely just be
| confused at the idea.
|
| My white ancestry is mostly drawn from England, Ireland,
| Sweden, and Russia, so the baseline expectation for me to
| be able to digest lactose would be a lot higher than the
| Italian baseline. Visually I do look more like a southern
| European.
|
| + To the best of my knowledge, there is no significant
| amount of lactose in cheese. But it is still a good
| indicator that milk features in the culture.
|
| ++ Ice cream is also very popular among the native
| Chinese.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > In Shanghai, cheese is something of a novelty item, but
| milk is sold in every convenience store. I find this
| surprising given that more than 90% of Chinese are
| lactose intolerant.
|
| I'm not sure that that's that surprising (particularly if
| it's UHT/shelf-stable milk); go to any convenience store
| anywhere in the developed world, and you'll find plenty
| of items that far less than 10% of the customer base have
| any interest in buying. As long as _enough_ people will
| buy it, they'll sell it; doesn't need to be the whole
| population or anything like it.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I'm not sure that that's that surprising (particularly
| if it's UHT/shelf-stable milk)
|
| It isn't! To get UHT milk, you have to go to a
| supermarket - it's an imported product. Supermarkets will
| also have cheese; kind and quality of the cheese vary by
| store.
|
| Convenience stores only carry fresh milk. I think my
| favored brand is from a local dairy.
|
| The price of milk in Shanghai, by the way, is much higher
| than the price anywhere in the US. This is an extreme
| reversal of the normal situation for food products.
| Imported UHT milk is quite a bit cheaper, I assume due to
| economies of scale, but I can't stand the taste of UHT
| milk.
|
| > go to any convenience store anywhere in the developed
| world, and you'll find plenty of items that far less than
| 10% of the customer base have any interest in buying.
|
| Mostly those items are theoretically capable of being
| used to full effect by 100% of the customer base. Here we
| have a situation where less than 10% of the customer base
| is even included in the potential customer base for the
| product. And given that milk has no place in an ordinary
| Chinese diet, a very large majority of those potential
| customers are never going to consider buying it.
| k8svet wrote:
| You drink _half a gallon of milk a day_? Wow. I 'm about
| as white as they make 'em, and if I drank a half gallon
| of milk, I'd absolutely have an incident.
| exhilaration wrote:
| There's a famous weight-gaining diet called Gallon Of
| Milk A Day (GOMAD) recommended by strength coaches, most
| recently Mark Rippetoe of Starting Strength. He gets
| asked about it a lot:
| https://startingstrength.com/resources/forum/general-q-
| and-a...
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Wha?
|
| Then General Cho's Chicken is American, because it's very
| popular in Iowa. Including amongst our ethnically-
| whitebread people.
| showerst wrote:
| Ironically you picked one of the American-Chinese food
| dishes that is, effectively, American.
|
| There's a fantastic documentary about it (and the Chinese
| food complex in American in general) --
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Search_for_General_Tso
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Hm. I thought it was one of the dishes mandated in China,
| to replace the old decadent menus with party-acceptable
| simple-ingredient menu item?
|
| Anyway, point taken.
| 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
| ska wrote:
| for reference: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-
| crab-rangoon
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Some version of this comment has been smugly posted on every
| single discussion about Chinese food since the beginning of
| time.
|
| If you are living in America, and you want the food made by
| the people in your community who are Chinese, would it make
| sense to call it Chinese food?
|
| Chinese food, as in: the food the Chinese people make.
|
| Italian food, as in: the food Italian people make.
|
| Indian food, as in: the food that Indian people make.
|
| America is a country made up of immigrants from _other_
| countries, so when they are here making the foods that they
| used to make in their home countries, we call it "Chinese
| food", "Italian food" etc.
|
| I understand why this can be confusing to people who aren't
| used to living in culturally diverse countries. It is normal
| in The United States to interact with people from all over
| the world. Saying "Chinese food" does not literally mean food
| from China, it means food made by Chinese immigrants to The
| United States.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > If you are living in America, and you want the food made
| by the people in your community who are Chinese, would it
| make sense to call it Chinese food?
|
| That still wouldn't include crab rangoon. It's just as
| homespun American as key lime pie. No Asians of any variety
| were ever involved, as you can tell by the fact that it is
| made of cheese.
|
| > Saying "Chinese food" does not literally mean food from
| China, it means food made by Chinese immigrants to The
| United States.
|
| Not even close. It means food that is sold in restaurants
| that are called Chinese restaurants. If it meant food made
| by Chinese immigrants, it would include Mongolian barbecue
| (which is Chinese food) and all Japanese cuisine (which
| isn't, but the Chinese like opening Japanese restaurants
| because the American price of Japanese food is higher).
|
| > America is a country made up of immigrants from _other_
| countries, so when they are here making the foods that they
| used to make in their home countries, we call it "Chinese
| food", "Italian food" etc.
|
| This seems to contradict the rest of your comment. Are you
| taking the position that "Chinese food" refers to food that
| is made by American Chinese for whatever reason, or that it
| refers to food that is made by Chinese in China? If the
| second, what are you objecting to in your parent comment?
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| On the topic, "Chicken Tikka Masala" is actually of British
| origin, and "Butter chicken", while purportedly developed
| in India, caught on more in the Western world as a
| representation of Indian food than it did in India.
| luca3v wrote:
| I don't think that this is how it works. In Italy almost
| all sushi restaurants are run by Chinese immigrants, but we
| definitely don't think of sushi as Chinese food.
| showerst wrote:
| I think in the past 20 years or so fusion food has started
| to gain more respect.
|
| Particularly as second and third generation immigrants gain
| adulthood, it's easier to recognize that Tex Mex, Cal Mex,
| UK Takeaway Indian, American-Chinese, LA Korean, etc. are
| their own categories of food worth celebrating. Yes Korean
| tacos from a truck aren't "authentic Korean" but they're
| not trying to be.
|
| I usually just tack Country-X on food when we're talking
| about the fusion version. It's a little unwieldy but makes
| the point clear.
| 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.
| 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.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Surprisingly their lettuce is a free topping
| 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.
| ska wrote:
| > If a buffet consistently runs out of items they wont be
| popular for long.
|
| All items? Sure. But enforced scarcity on the more expensive
| items is almost a given.
| chipsrafferty wrote:
| Places do do this. Lunch buffet has less options, is cheaper.
| Dinner buffet (basic) vs premium dinner buffet + crab legs
| and other premium seafood
| 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?
| 2023throwawayy wrote:
| If I kill you and take your land/stuff/body, did you give
| it or did I take it?
| tomrod wrote:
| Both.
| standardUser wrote:
| A question for the pedants.
| jrflowers wrote:
| No. That is why there is no word or concept for theft
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Yes, it can be "taken away from one". Frankly, quite
| forcibly. It's a rather simple concept to understand.
| 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.
| senkora wrote:
| Relevant SMBC: https://www.smbc-
| comics.com/comic/2011-10-09
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Kind of an interesting link. Another thing to keep in
| mind is that the rice patty being there means a natural
| habitat is now lost to make way for the farm. In truth
| there is no guilt free meal or anything else.
| eru wrote:
| Well, we can relatively easily put a dollar value on
| human lives, too.
|
| So any kind of waste that we can put a dollar value on,
| also has a value in human lives.
|
| Make of that what you will.
| jefftk wrote:
| I think this is an interesting idea, and people inclined
| towards veganism might be able to better achieve their
| goals by going for a suffering-minimizing diet, but the
| studies this is based on aren't very good. For example:
|
| _> 33 field mice were fitted with radio collars and
| tracked before and after harvest. The researchers found
| that only 3 percent of them were actually killed by the
| combine harvester (amounting to one mouse). An additional
| 52 percent of them (17 mice) were killed following
| harvest by predators such as owls and weasels, possibly
| due to their loss of the crop cover. It is unknown how
| many of these mice would have been eaten by owls or
| weasels anyway._
|
| That last sentence is key: without a control you can't
| draw much from this experiment.
|
| Additionally, while they say "animals" many times they're
| not clear on which ones they're including. The decision
| on whether to consider insects would be especially
| important.
| JohnFen wrote:
| All food waste is significant.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Quite the opposite
| adrian_b wrote:
| Not really.
|
| Carbohydrates are much cheaper than proteins and fat.
|
| Proteins and fat of vegetable origin are cheaper than
| those of animal origin, but they come accompanied by
| excessive amounts of carbohydrates.
|
| The most efficient way of getting food for human
| consumption for now is to dump as waste most of the
| carbohydrates from vegetables and retain only the
| valuable proteins and fat (this can be done at home for
| instance by making bread but washing the dough before
| baking in order to remove most of the starch, producing
| thus a protein-enriched bread, or by removing completely
| the starch by extra washing of the dough, converting in
| into gluten a.k.a. seitan).
|
| The high proportion of carbohydrates from vegetable food
| can be used completely only by those who do hard physical
| work, but not by those who have a sedentary lifestyle,
| who must necessarily dump the carbohydrates as waste,
| either directly or indirectly (by buying food where the
| carbohydrates have already been wasted in various ways,
| including as energy sources for animals that have been
| raised for becoming food).
|
| In the future it might be possible to develop better ways
| to use the carbohydrates that must be wasted now, by
| converting them with high efficiency into proteins or
| fat, by using bacterial or fungal cultures.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Are you arguing that wasting meat is more significant
| than wasting vegetation? I agree, but that doesn't
| diminish the fact that wasting both is significant.
|
| Are you arguing that everyone should be vegetarian?
| That's a topic I was not even remotely touching on.
| adrian_b wrote:
| No, I was arguing that wasting a fraction of the
| carbohydrate part of the food that is produced is
| currently a necessity for a healthy human nutrition, even
| if most people are not aware of this.
|
| For now, there exists no way of producing enough proteins
| and fats without also producing an excessive amount of
| carbohydrates, which must be wasted in some way or
| another.
|
| One way of using the excess amount of carbohydrates from
| vegetable food is by feeding animals or mushrooms, to
| obtain food with a more favorable proportion of proteins
| or fat (and this is a form of food wasting, as less food
| is obtained as output than it is provided as input), but
| another way is just dumping the excess carbohydrates
| (i.e. starch or sugars), after using food processing
| methods that separate the protein-rich or fat-rich parts.
|
| When humans eat the excess amount of carbohydrates
| instead of dumping them as waste, the result is obesity,
| which is a worse choice than wasting the undesirable
| food.
| mc32 wrote:
| It was rice but rice is a filler. Don't know that the ratio
| is but let's say 1:4 non-rice to rice. Dumping the rice
| skews that a lot.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Ironically the word "sushi" refers to the rice, not the
| topping. Rice properly seasoned with vinegar and sugar is
| the one essential ingredient in sushi. If there's no rice
| it's no longer sushi.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| The word has a broader meaning in English, though. We'll
| often refer to things like raw fish alone, ie sashimi, as
| sushi.
| Delk wrote:
| Rice has a significant climate footprint due to the methane
| produced by the agriculture. It also requires a lot of
| fresh water to grow. (How much of an issue the latter is
| depends on the local conditions, of course.)
| cm2012 wrote:
| There's few things in your life that will impact the
| environment less than not finishing a bowl of rice.
| serf wrote:
| you're right, but a lifestyle that makes a habit of
| adding those small things up left and right becomes
| impactful quickly.
| Delk wrote:
| That may be true, if done on occasion rather than
| regularly. But just because it's "only" rice doesn't make
| it insignificant, even though rice is such a staple that
| it may seem so. That's what I commented on.
|
| Food in general is a significant part of our ecological
| footprint. Rice has a relatively high impact for a crop.
| Of course it's still in a different ballpark than beef.
| ghodith wrote:
| Depends on the amount of rice obviously. Rice farming
| definitely has an impact on the environment in bulk. Now
| divide that by the amount of rice in a roll and we'll see
| how significant it is.
|
| I'm guessing it's very, _very_ small.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Don't forget as well that it's not only a case of them
| not eating the rice, they also massively increased their
| intake of fish by skipping the carbs.
| CaptainZapp wrote:
| It's a safe assumption that such all you can eat sushi was
| of mediocre quality.
|
| But, when it comes to the real deal. Sushi from a tier one
| or two Japanese sushi chef then the rice is actually the
| most important factor in making good sushi.
|
| Discarding the rice would be seen as comparatively
| barbarian as dunking a freshly made piece of sushi by a
| good chef into this mixture of soya sauce and ersatz
| "wasabi".
| easymodex wrote:
| Someone had to plant it, then water it and cultivate it,
| then harvest it, then package it, then ship it god knows
| how many miles, then the restaurant cooked it, prepared it,
| then they just threw it away. Then comes the trash
| processing chain.
|
| How is that not a completely useless waste of energy, time,
| money and resources?
| jstarfish wrote:
| This is a very human-centric view ;)
|
| I'm in the "every life is sacred" camp, but...even if you
| do kill one animal and leave it to rot, it's not a total
| waste, just a "cruel" one.
|
| Other things feed off of the carcasses of animals the
| same as you or I do. We just consider all other organisms
| beneath us, so if we kill and discard something, we write
| it off as a total waste. Birds, dogs, rodents and
| microorganisms disagree.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| More despicable than other kinds of wasters? Eating only the
| part of the food you like can't be that morally different
| from buying a sporty car that wastes gas, for example.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| They hacked the business model.
| 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.
| mulmen wrote:
| Yeah every conveyor belt place I have been to just charges by
| the plate.
| 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!
| m_0x wrote:
| The hardcover costs $5. I think it's the cheapest brand new
| hardcover price I've seen.
|
| Edit: It's $5 for a used edition. Then my comment is now moo.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Edit: It's $5 for a used edition. Then my comment is now
| moo.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62necDwQb5E
| 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!
| mosselman wrote:
| Thirded
| AH4oFVbPT4f8 wrote:
| I would subscribe to this too!
| dotancohen wrote:
| I'm sure you get the idea, but I'll go forth as well.
|
| (Pun intended)
|
| In my opinion you could teach both economics and common
| spreadsheet usage. Just please do not make it Excel-
| specific, many people here use Linux desktops. I would
| suggest LO Calc as it runs everywhere, or maybe Google
| Sheets as a distant second.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestion!
|
| I was planning Google Sheets, since I'm on Linux and
| don't have excel.
|
| I am hoping for something I can embed in the actual
| article.
|
| I didn't even know about LO Calc. I'll check it out.
| anjanb wrote:
| Please do. That would be great. Thanks
| vagrantJin wrote:
| Please do it .
| 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.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| It's often the starting point for me to investigate
| something further, even This American Life might mention
| something and I have to look it up for proper context.
| 3abiton wrote:
| Any better recommendations? I used to listen to 99%
| invisible, but the quality is not always sustained. Planet
| Money is rather entertaining still.
| euroderf wrote:
| Have pondered slurping down pizza toppings and discarding the
| crusts...
| CrazyStat wrote:
| I had an acquaintance about a decade ago who did this on the
| grounds that they were "gluten sensitive". It was weird.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| People eating "low carb" also do this. It's recommended in
| the Atkins book IIRC.
| eru wrote:
| My cousin who has Coeliac disease used to do this every so
| often. We also made pizza with a non-wheat base for her.
|
| Can't really fault her for this weirdness, she has it rough
| enough.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| My sister who has celiac wouldn't dare, way too much
| potential for contamination from the crust.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| I'd be interested in seeing a study on different health
| outcomes for crust-eaters and crust-avoiders in their 30s and
| 40s. Do crust-avoiders (or hambuger-bun avoiders) suffer less
| from obesity or type 2 diabetes due to getting that much less
| intake of carbs?
| 93po wrote:
| Pizza meats are incredibly high in fat, the cheese is very
| high in fat and sugar, and the sauce is high in sugar. It's
| possible the bread is the least calorie dense part of the
| pizza per unit of satiety.
| 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.
| 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:
| That's 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.
| buu700 wrote:
| That's certainly a possibility, but none of us have
| enough information to say for sure.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The sins thing is about as clear as you can get.
|
| Unless you're going to call the entire story fake, then
| yes we have enough information.
| harimau777 wrote:
| That's actually precisely the problem. People abusing the
| system make things more difficult for people who have
| legitimate reasons to be the exception to the rule (e.g.
| people with allergies).
| buu700 wrote:
| That's a problem, but it's not the problem. I'm not sure
| why you guys are acting like it's an unreasonable
| suggestion for a sushi restaurant to serve sashimi.
| 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.
| buu700 wrote:
| Sushi restaurants also selling sashimi is "bureaucratic"?
| That's a strange take.
| eru wrote:
| Why? Charging for leftovers and offering sashimi as an upsell
| is certainly one mechanism the restaurant can use. And so is
| reserving the right to refuse serving customers they don't
| like, and making use of that right every once in a while.
|
| It's up to the market (ie patrons and restraunts) to decide
| which mix of policies they prefer.
| buu700 wrote:
| They're free to use that mechanism, but it shouldn't come
| as a surprise to the customer. That accomplishes nothing
| other than wasted food, upset patrons, and credit card
| disputes.
| 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?
|
| Edit: Since I'm getting a lot of similar replies here, I'll
| point out that OP has since clarified that the conveyor belt
| sushi joint that they went to, contrary to how they are usually
| run, did in fact charge a "flat fee" for access to the sushi
| train. Hence my confusion - this is a deviation from the norm.
|
| Edit 2: Kinda interesting watching the up/downvote progression
| in this thread. My initial post, despite being incorrect, was
| decently upvoted. Now that I've clarified that I was wrong and
| tried to correct myself, I'm getting downvoted. Neat!
| 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.
| jjulius wrote:
| The confusion, as clarified elsewhere between GP and I in
| this thread, lies in the fact that you _don 't_ usually
| see an _actual_ "all you can eat conveyor belt sushi"
| restaurant - they traditionally charge by the plate but
| you're welcome to order as much as you want. In point of
| fact, the restaurant OP went to bucked that trend and was
| actually a flat-fee conveyor belt joint.
| eru wrote:
| As far as I can tell, most conveyor belt sushi places
| charge by plate.
|
| But most all-you-can-eat sushi places use a conveyor
| belt.
| 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.
| jjulius wrote:
| Correct. The confusion, as noted elsewhere in this
| comment chain, lies in the fact that _most_ conveyor belt
| sushi joints are not all you can eat, and the format of
| the restaurant that OP went to is rare.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| They clearly said it was all-you-can-eat and the behavior
| and reaction are very much fitting the context. Why are
| you assuming you know better than them the restaurant
| _they_ went to?
|
| Yes, flat-rate sushi conveys exist.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Why are you assuming you know better than them the
| restaurant _they_ went to?
|
| OP clarified, and I thanked them for clarifying and
| acknowledged I was wrong. I've further mentioned as much
| in additional comments[1, 2, 3], _and_ I 've edited my
| original post to clear things up. Care to continue being
| snarky despite my attempts to correct myself?
|
| >Yes, flat-rate sushi conveys exist.
|
| And are, by and large, less common than per-plate joints,
| hence the confusion.
|
| [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38562397
|
| [2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38563087
|
| [3]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38563030
| tsumnia wrote:
| I've visited two conveyor-belt sushi locations - one in
| Japan and one here in the US. The one in Japan followed
| the colored plate system, however the US one just worked
| off a flat $20 fee.
| 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.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Edit 2: Kinda interesting watching the up/downvote
| progression in this thread. My initial post, despite being
| incorrect, was decently upvoted. Now that I've clarified that
| I was wrong and tried to correct myself, I'm getting
| downvoted. Neat!
|
| Because people didn't know you were wrong before, and it's
| usually good to make factually incorrect comments be gray.
| 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/
| jancsika wrote:
| Sounds like a category error, confusing the sadism of
| extracting oversized value from restaurateur with the
| deliciousness of food.
|
| At least, I've never had a hankering for a water and a half
| pound of tiny slivers of sashimi.
|
| The prank of taking the same amount of sushi and leaving it in
| a neat stack would be closer to enlightenment.
| schneems wrote:
| I would love to know about the economics of theme parks. They
| require huge amounts of land, a massive upfront capital
| investment in the rides, and require a ton of logistics to
| coordinate the many workers required to run a place that often
| isn't open year round (thinking Carowinds or six flags, not
| Disney). They also have to advertise continuously and serve an
| extremely elastic industry (people will cut theme park visits
| before cutting down on grocery store visits).
|
| Like when do operators decide to invest in a new ride and
| what's the payback cycle like?
| alexhutcheson wrote:
| The Park Database has a great 3-park blog series on the
| business of theme parks. This is part I, the others are
| linked from there: http://www.theparkdb.com/blog/the-
| business-of-theme-parks-pa...
|
| They have a really interesting blog overall.
| schneems wrote:
| This is amazing. Thanks for the link! If someone else reads
| this comment please upvote this person.
| eru wrote:
| > They also have to advertise continuously and serve an
| extremely elastic industry (people will cut theme park visits
| before cutting down on grocery store visits).
|
| Of course, elasticity goes in both directions. Demand that
| can be cut quickly, can also expand quickly.
|
| Toilet paper is almost the opposite. And the extremely
| inelastic (and thus stable) demand means that competition is
| sharp and everything needs to be hyperoptimized for your
| business to stand a chance. There's almost no slack in the
| system, because that would be a needless expense.
| sofixa wrote:
| There's also this video from Wendover Productions on that
| topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oESoI6XxZTg
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > They require huge amounts of land, a massive upfront
| capital investment
|
| I believe I once read a quip in The Economist about golf
| courses being a good investment for the second owner (the
| first usually going bankrupt).
| rammer wrote:
| The closest thing I could think of was the economics of
| everyday things.
|
| https://freakonomics.com/series/everyday-things/
|
| Available as a podcast
| jorvi wrote:
| I mean, they are perfectly within their right if that behavior
| is not explicitly disallowed.
|
| Over here, all-you-can-eat Asian shops generally operate on one
| of two principles (sometimes combined):
|
| 1. You can only order 5 things per person per 10 minutes
|
| 2. For every X amount of weight left over you pay a penalty
| 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.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Honestly, the simplest pleasures are often not inherently
| expensive
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| In college me and a roommate would go to a cici's pizza on
| sunday. We usually got there _right_ before the tball groups
| came in. So you 'd see these 2 20 somethings in line ahead of
| an entire team of kids, and they would just watch us with
| concern and awe as we piled our plates high, lol.
|
| My roommate could eat so much pizza I'm sure some of those
| kids were worried they'd run out.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Sounds like Chuck-E-Cheese.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Chuck-E-Cheese doesn't give you all-you-can-eat pizza. But
| yes, there's a reason it was popular.
| vnchr wrote:
| That's literally Cici's. They have 300 locations in the US.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > They have 300 locations in the US.
|
| That implies a wide distribution, but digging a little
| deeper, about half of their 280 locations are in Texas.
| LtWorf wrote:
| 90s energy prices... cooking pizza costs much more now.
| sxates wrote:
| Heaven is a CiCi's Pizza or Mr. Gattis!
| eru wrote:
| > Definitely better than anything you could get at a Pizza Hut
| or Dominos or Little Caesars.
|
| It's a shame that bad pizza is so popular, when good pizza is
| relatively cheap to make.
| shiroiuma wrote:
| I feel like pizza is one of those things where the ingredients
| are really cheap, but much of the value is in the special
| equipment needed to make it really well. Normal people don't
| have a 600F pizza oven, so even with the same ingredients they
| just can't make the same kind of product.
| defrost wrote:
| For some definition of normal, to be sure.
|
| My normality has been surrounded by people that make their
| own stuff, from septic systems, to custom cars, to work
| sheds, to brick barbeques and to wood fired pizza ovens.
|
| There's an entire state here of people that wouldn't see that
| as much of a challenge to build or aquire if they wanted good
| pizza.
|
| For years we just used the annealing oven out the back next
| to the glass furnaces .. other people had other ways.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| A population able to build a massive pizza oven if they
| wanted to, is rather different than most homes actually
| having one.
| defrost wrote:
| I described a population of individuals each able to
| build a pizza oven, with those that _want_ one having
| one.
|
| There's not much challenge to a 320 degree Celsius oven
| (or 600 F in some parts of the world, apparently).
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| I agree that the oven made a huge difference. I wouldn't be
| surprised if its value was greater than the aggregate of
| everything else in the restaurant.
|
| It's none of the chains anyone mentioned. It was just a
| single place in a dying rustbelt town, and closed up a decade
| or more ago.
|
| In hindsight, it was obvious that this kind of place depended
| on being able to hire labor that it could pay less than it
| was worth. The dream around there was to snag one of the few
| steel mill jobs that was left, yet almost everyone I worked
| with went off to college and never came back. We all worked
| hard and used our brains. For example, they had tuned the
| oven such that a pizza was cooked in two revolutions of the
| stone. By using the peel to place the pizza in different
| spots on the stone you could vary the amount of time the
| pizza was actually in the oven without needing to set a timer
| or keep track of anything. Because, as you know, the perfect
| cooking time depends on the toppings ;). If you've ever
| watched a Pizza Hut/Dominoes/Papa John's/etc, you'll see that
| they just throw the pizza on a conveyor belt and forget about
| them. Everything gets cooked the same exact amount of time
| (in an over that looks horrendous for energy efficiency!).
| j-a-a-p wrote:
| Solution: 'slow' cooking at 250C. First put the dough in the
| oven, then put it back in with toppings.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| In Finland, a pizza-buffet chain has been one of the most
| common all-you-can-eat experiences. However, the catch is that
| you pay extra for drinks. I find the pizzas are so incredibly
| salty that I suspect they are intentionally made such to force
| drink purchases. (Like the old salted peanuts at a bar trick.)
| The pizzas might initially look enticing, but the magic wears
| off after just a few minutes of eating there.
| zkelvin wrote:
| Mr. Gatti's Pizza?
| 93po wrote:
| oh god i havent thought of this in a long time
| 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.
| ska wrote:
| > In most restaurants, the food itself is a loss leader.
|
| Food cost isn't typically a loss leader, but (American sense)
| entrees are often aimed to be around neutral because people
| judge mainly on that when they peruse menus. But that's neutral
| including loss.
|
| Desserts margins are similar to booze, often. Appetizers make
| them money, as do sides and upsells.
| askvictor wrote:
| I think that really depends on the place and the time. This
| used to be the case in Australia, but less so now. Particularly
| for pubs/bars - they'd have very cheap meals to get you in and
| get you drinking, but now the meals as are expensive as
| restaurants.
|
| Times have changed and more people are there for the food and
| not for the drinks, so the business models change.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| It's a good feeling when you check into a nice hotel and see a
| notice informing you about the "Free Breakfast Buffet".
|
| I can only imagine it would induce a little snickering from
| Warren or the late Jimmy though . . .
| mckn1ght wrote:
| I can't believe they didn't mention crab legs. This is my
| earliest memory of AYCE, sitting at the table for what felt like
| an eternity while my father went through plate after plate of
| snow crab legs. They also are the thing that ties most disparate
| AYCE places together: I've seen them at the Chinese ones, as well
| as Continental-style.
|
| I don't often find myself at AYCE places, but when I do, I always
| enjoy watching people line up and jockey for position for the
| next batch of fresh crab legs coming out of the kitchen.
|
| Given how much they cost at markets, this has got to be a higher
| cost than the highest cost they're accounting for of steak.
| 55555 wrote:
| In any sector with a 10% margin, there's businesses that are
| losing money and businesses that are taking home 30% margins.
| spencerchubb wrote:
| I love Golden Corral but when I took my snobbish Italian friend,
| he took one bite of the food and just walked out.
| cobertos wrote:
| I miss having on-demand cheap college cafeteria food. It's hard
| to find places that have the same slightly above average food for
| bargain prices.
|
| IKEA's food is the closest I've found. Food courts at malls
| generally are no different from just going to a fast food place,
| which have all raised prices as of recently. Costco is cheap but
| their options/taste isn't great. I've been bumming off a friend's
| college meal plan recently and it's so good. Pizza, pasta, a few
| really good vegetarian options, same with the allergy-free
| section. If only I was allowed to pay what he pays for that food.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| There are a lot of apps/rewards/loyalty programs now. Its kind
| of like two different economies for some businesses: those who
| use these deals and those who subsidize the others. E.g. at
| mcdonalds a big mac is still ~$3, but only if you use their app
| and use the buy 1 get 1 deal on the big mac.
|
| Taco bell is also good about having some high calorie per
| dollar foods on their value menu. There's a $2 burrito that
| comes out to like 600 calories. You could always swap out the
| meat for black beans if you want it a little healthier perhaps.
| xyst wrote:
| It's basically like how insurance companies determine premiums
| for people but this is on a much smaller scale.
|
| Personally, I liked going to buffets as a kid. But as an adult, I
| find them repulsive. In the back of my mind, instead of choosing
| a well balanced meal. I am instead motivated to just get the
| priciest items. Forget rice. Forget veggies. Protein. Protein.
| Protein. Steak, lobster, fish.
|
| Of course I regret it the night of or the following day as it
| exits my system
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| You have provided a compelling argument for not doing as you
| do. Thanks.
| cliffccc wrote:
| For ordinary people, eating a buffet to "enough money" may mean
| greater losses.
| vmurthy wrote:
| Didn't see anyone mention Indian buffets in India. In my hometown
| of Bengaluru , many restaurants offer buffets. Weightage is given
| to starters ( I'm vegetarian so I tend to eat paneer ones ).
| Desserts are a few Indian sweets and lots of cheap ice cream
| which seems in line with the economics mentioned. If you eat
| protein heavy starters it's unlikely you'll want to have more
| food for mains.
| eru wrote:
| > Buffets often break even on food and eke out a profit by
| minimizing the cost of labor.
|
| I'm not sure what's that supposed to mean. Addition and
| subtraction are commutative, aren't they?
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Kind of explains why there are no buffets in Spain. Spanish
| people eat very healthily during the week but when they eat out,
| it's gloves off. Meat with meat.
| mannyv wrote:
| In the Philippines, buffets are "eat all you can," which is not
| quite the same as the US' "all you can eat."
| globular-toast wrote:
| Ah, the all you can eat buffet, where you're either obese and/or
| borderline diabetic, or you're paying over the odds for shitty
| food.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Also discussed 2 years ago (268 comments):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22151891
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| I'll never forget the Simpson's episode where Homer goes to one
| of these places. They kicked him out when he was still eating
| long after closing time, and he sued them. "The sign says 'All
| You Can Eat' and I can still eat more."
| fishyjoe wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2dmfnSarDI
|
| Marge's courtroom testimony is my favorite part
| autoexec wrote:
| > Waste reduction is a key focus of any successful buffet and a
| frequent tactic is reusing food.
|
| I guess that includes hiding food that wouldn't pass inspection
|
| https://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-dd-golden-corral-d...
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