The guy is 6’5" 277. That’s not really that fat depending on his structure.
I’m 6’2" and around 270. Now, I’m fat, but still proportional. I ain’t that fat, I’m just fluffy.
The cost of doing business needs to get passed onto the customer or you no longer have a business. The buffet has only a few choices:
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Charge enough to everyone so that it doesn’t make any difference if you get 20 18 year old boys, the Packers defense line, and three sumo wrestlers - your business will still be profitable. This will probably mean you aren’t competitive with other buffets in town and will go out of business.
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Place reasonable limitations around your buffet and reserve the right to limit service or quantity, surcharge, or whatever you need to do.
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Simply chalk it up as “the cost of doing business” and wait until you declare bankrupcy because you’ve run out of money to buy more crab legs.
As a business model, all-you-can-eat buffet is going to be a tough one. The food is seldom really great - so its going to mostly appeal to people who want quantity and are looking for value. That’s likely going to mean slim margins. There is going to be an incredible amount of waste. There do seem to be some exceptions - I seldom see ridiculous gluttony at an Indian buffet - and the food is pretty good, too.
It’s been a while since I’ve been to an AYCE buffet but I’d started to notice a trend where these places would charge extra for food that you don’t eat. I suppose the logic is you pay the flat fee for what you can eat, but anything you take (and thus prevent anyone else from eating) but don’t eat isn’t covered. Under that logic, someone who takes a whole lobster, and only eats the claw meat would get charged a lot of money for wasting food.
As far as the model goes, I don’t really care if they limit certain items; I’ve seen plenty of places that would limit you to, say, 2 steaks or whatever. All I’d want is to make sure that such limitations of patently clear up front. Just make sure it’s on the menu or explained by the waiter before we’re set lose on the food.
All of that said, calling it “All you can eat” implies, at least in my experience, “eat as much as you can” to a lot of people. If a business fails to implement policies to keep the really expensive food from being devoured by a small number of gluttonous customers, it’s their own damn fault. Of course, being that it’s THEIR business, at least in this state, they’re well within their rights to ban anyone for any reason, as long as it’s not because they’re a member of a protected class; but, by doing so, they face the potential for whatever bad press and/or reputation it brings them.
In this case, based on the article, it’s impossible to say exactly what happened, but the guy got his meal free, and was then asked not to come back. I really don’t see what the big deal is.
Yup, exactly. They were perfectly reasonable about it, and we were perfectly fine about refraining from eating more. We had no complaints. The buffet had it set up so you could only take one half-lobster at a time, then they cut us off when we each had a pair of claws on our plates. So, essentially, we’d each had four servings. :eek:
There must be no greater sense of dread than when an AYCE place sees a pack of teenage boys wearing their team jerseys show up. The amount of food we could pack away was truly awe inspiring.
But they also didn’t insult us or surcharge us. They were polite, we were polite, no cops had to come to the scene, no one got banned from the restaurant, and we didn’t make the newspapers.
What makes me go :dubious: was that the “hefty patron” complained that the restaurant “only bregrudgingly cooked more seafood” when the buffet table ran out. Jeebus, what do people expect? Were they supposed to go grocery shopping too? Most restaurants plan ahead and prepare what they think they can actually sell. If you devour their stock for the evening then, like a toddler says: “All gone.” There is no more seafood because you ate it all. The pantries aren’t endless.
If I buy all the product at a store, I can’t get pissed when they won’t sell me more.
Gotta side with the restaurant on this one. “Only begrudgingly?” If I was the manager I would have refused to cook more just so they could stuff themselves.
People pigging out at buffets and then complaining about being cut off is nothing new.
I seem to recall a similar story a few years back, during the height of the Atkins craze. A couple freaked out after being cut off by a restaurant’s all-you-can-eat buffet because they were eating nothing but the prime rib (one of them had eaten a dozen or so slices, IIRC). Well duh… it’s a $9 buffet, and you’ve eaten your own body weight in meat. Sadly I couldn’t find a cite, but it stood out at the time because it was such a great cautionary tale about how low-carb could go horribly wrong.
Similarly, Red Lobster stopped the all-you-can-eat crab because patrons were literally eating away all the profits with ridiculous numbers of refills. (article here) Who in the hell orders 30 plates of crab legs? I hope to hell that group skipped the “wafer thin” mint at the end of the meal.
Restaurants are businesses. And as far as any business is concerned, it always makes more sense to overcharge abusers than to penalise your entire customer base with higher prices to cover the loss. They’re the kind of customers you can afford to lose. Literally.
I have zero restaurant knoweldge but even I knew Red Lobsters AYCE crab was doomed, when you consider the price per pound and that the average crab leg has about what, a half ounce of meat? The average person can eat a 16 oz. steak, and that would equal how many crab legs- 20? 50? Even light eaters I went with would get thirds, minimum, just to get reasoanbly full.
You may be asking the wrong crowd.
This guy at 77" would be the same proportions as a 70" (5’ 10") guy weighing three-quarters of 277lb - call it 210lb in round numbers. That’s a figure I can at present only aspire to, but no midget for all that. The doctors would probably prefer I was more down about the 175lb mark.
You, however, are a bit plumper, the same as that 5’ 10" guy weighing 234lb… you ain’t that fat, but you’re no string bean. 
wags finger reprovingly 
Unless the guy is a bodybuilder, that’s well into the Obese category of the BMI…just sayin’…
And if he IS a body builder, do you know how much those guys can eat? You should see what my old trainer could stuff down his gullet.
According to the story these men ate there 3 times a week for 8 months before anything was said. As far as I can tell they didn’t attempt to stop them or increase the amount they charged them or anything before this incident.
If they really don’t want them eating there that is fine, but to let it go on for months and months without posting a change in policy or talking to them before they sit down the next time to say, “Hey, we love that you enjoy our food but because you tend to stick to the more expensive fare we have to charge you X dollars, or you are welcome to eat these other items for the same price you have been paying.” and just hand them a bill that is double what they are normally charged is bad business. They could have and should have approached it more tactfully than they did. Of course, the men shouldn’t have tried to use the buffet as a way to gorge on expensive fare either so I think both parties are in the wrong here.
My biggest problem with the whole situation though is the focus on their size and the disrespect they were shown because of it. I don’t care if they are 4’5" and 277 lbs they deserve the same respect that any other patron would be given. The waitress mocking them and telling them that they look like they are pregnant was over the line. I have seen teenage boys eat more food than I thought the human body was capable of holding and if it had been 2 kids on the high school wrestling team in there 3 times a week for 8 months they could have easily eaten the same amount (or more) than these two men but they woudln’t have been subjected to the same ridicule.
Absolutely! If they’d been gracious to these regular patrons, they probably woulnd’t have needed to call the cops.
“If I’m curt with you it’s because time is a factor. I think fast, I talk fast and I need you guys to act fast if you wanna get out of this. So, pretty please, with sugar on top: get your fat asses out of my fucking restaurant.”
Just Sayin’, The BMI is pretty much bullshit. Any system that tries to pigeonhole and classify biodiversity is pretty much bullshit… one thing doesn’t necessarily signify another in such a wide range.
That oughta do it.
I was 277 once. I was not overweight.
I was undertall.
Here. The thread was inspired by the story Mahna Mahna mentioned about a man eating stacks and stacks of roast beef.
Wait… that is what all this “biodiversity” the media keeps chirping on is about? Fat people and skinny people?
Well. Good to know.