- All-you-can-eat buffets are back after closing dining rooms or going bankrupt during the pandemic.
- Golden Corral, Cicis, and Pizza Ranch are welcoming more customers, CNN reported.
- Diners are looking for a good deal as inflation keeps restaurant prices high.
All-you-can eat buffets are returning three years after the pandemic slowed down sales for some and put others out of business.
Foot traffic at Golden Corral, Cicis, and Pizza Ranch, the US's top three buffet chains, rose 125% in March compared to January 2021, according to data from Placer.ai reported by CNN.
Many buffets had to close or reduce capacity during the early months of the pandemic. Now, they're becoming destinations again, with society mostly open and inflation forcing consumers to stretch the money that they spend on eating out.
Golden Corral, which has roughly 400 locations in the US, grew its 2022 sales 14% over 2019, the company told Nation's Restaurant News in April. The chain started offering take-out meals and digital ordering in 2020 as many consumers stayed home.
But CEO Lance Trenary told NRN that when it asked customers about their interest in the in-person, all-you-can-eat option, "it was just overwhelming that people wanted the buffet back."
Now, with restaurant prices rising fast thanks to inflation, all-you-can-eat buffets are attracting diners looking for a good deal. "People are always telling us, 'We appreciate your value,' and we kept the lid on pricing and worked hard to maintain that value without cutting quality or variety of buffet options," Trenary said.
Golden Corral is one of the buffet chains that survived the pandemic. Some, like the company behind Furr's Fresh Buffet and Old Country Buffet, filed for bankruptcy and permanently closed locations.
But others are making a comeback. Salad buffet chain Sweet Tomatoes, which also operated restaurants under the Souplantation name, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and closed all of its locations in 2020 as visits cratered. But at least one Sweet Tomatoes location appears to be reopening in Tuscon, Arizona, Restaurant Business reported in March.
And Texas-based Cicis, which filed for bankruptcy in 2021, grew sales by 10.4% in 2022 over 2019, President Jeff Hetsel told Franchise Times in January. The chain is also adding bigger game rooms to its restaurants as patrons come back in-person, he said.
Buffets are back, but whether or not to tip the staff at these restaurants is up for debate.
Do you work at a buffet and have a story to share? Please contact Alex Bitter at [email protected] or via text/encrypted messaging app Signal at (808) 854-4501.