Some buffets have also had issues with people bringing in large purses or backpacks and containers, which they would fill up and take with them.
*“If your favorite restaurant is a buffet, yeeeeeeeeeew might be a redneck.” *- Jeff Foxworthy
I don’t think they’re waning in popularity, but that may be due to my living in Utah, where the drag-your-too-many-kids-to-the-steam-tables-full-of-beige-food business model is a perfect fit. On the few occasions I find myself in a buffet restaurant, I find that the real buffet is the wide and varied menu of unsavory human behavior on display.
There a really good Tibetan/Indian buffet near me, though. Something about the largely vegetarian menu seems to scare away the fried mayonnaise ball eaters.
Restaurant buffets were a trend, and like most trends they come and go. They started becoming popular in the 1960’s and were tried in a lot of restaurants that don’t have them anymore (or just don’t exist anymore). They started becoming less popular in the 1980’s. So your observation that there were a lot of them in the 1970’s is about right. Many of the restaurants that tried them decided that they didn’t produce as much profit as just having people order off a menu for everything. Buffets still exist, but the ones that kept going are a smaller number of types of restaurants.
Buffets are still popular in the Midwest, the South and of course in gaming meccas. However, my WAG is that people’s eating styles have changed. Most people don’t feel the need to go to a mediocre restaurant and gorge themselves on its bland fare any longer.
There’s also the fact that many Americans (despite our obesity issues) are somewhat more health conscious now than in times past. Most of us realize (even if we don’t accept it) that piling a heaping plate full of proteins, carbs,fats and starches is a waystop on the highway to Heartache City. And when you arrive there, your buffet days are probably done.
It frankly hilarious to me that $13 is considered pricey, but I guess it depends on the location. The aforementioned Hotel Del Coronado Sunday brunch is now $85/person (and I happen to honk it’s still quite good, but undeniably expensive). Many hotel breakfast buffets I’ve had have been on the order of $50-60/person. I’d consider a good breakfast buffet an unbelievable bargain at $13…
I’m in the San Francisco Bay Area and it isn’t hard to find a buffet restaurant, especially if you include Chinese and Indian restaurants. Heck, I probably have a dozen within a few miles of me in San Leandro counting Old Town Buffet, Sizzler, the Mountain Mike’s that does lunchtime pizza buffets, several Chinese buffets, several Indian buffets. And that’s flat rate all-you-can-eat buffets. Throw in by the ounce salad bar buffets and there’s more.
Seems like a boom time for “eat whatever you want in whatever quanitty you want from selection of mass produced steam-table warmed Sysco or Sysco equivalent food”.
I would expect a $60 fine hotel brunch to include items like cold shrimp, waffles made to order, and high quality cold cuts – and to be white-tablecloth service.
$13 can seem kinda pricey at a local diner when all they offer is basically eggs, potatoes, pork sausage and toast, with maybe a little fresh fruit.
So basically, you’re comparing two completely different things that can fall under the heading of “buffet.”
I can think of plenty of buffet options around here, so I’m not sure why you’re having a hard time finding any. There’s a Golden Corral and a similar Southern style buffet in my area, a CiCi’s Pizza, several cheap Chinese buffets and at least one kind of weird Chinese plus Japanese plus American buffet, and several better quality ethnic restaurants that offer lunch buffets. I know I’ve driven past a Shoney’s around here too, and according to their website they do still offer a breakfast buffet.
There are some still around. Back in my callow youth, we’d get the munchies first and then head out to the buffet to get our money’s worth. One time, I knew I was in the Southwest when at the end of the buffet at an Asian restaurant there was a taco bar.
We used to make regular Friday pilgrimages to the Chinese buffet place across the street; four or five of us would wander over, then stagger back and sleep all afternoon (sometimes sitting up, staring at our monitors). While I’ve had better buffet Chinese and other things, they had the best fried chicken I’ve ever had… which is a pretty weird combination but it worked.
Love me, love my mule.
Back in the day outside of Fresno Ca there were billboards on highway 99 for **Okie Frijole Mexican Smorgasbord **
No I never stopped, but sometimes I wonder just how bad the food was.
I remember Okie Frijole - IIRC, there was one up in Sacramento, too. I do remember a Mexican buffet place around 1970 that even by my youthful standards was pretty bland and greasy.
How have the relative costs of food and labor changed over the years? If food has gotten more expensive while labor has gotten cheaper, I’d expect a buffet restaurant to be less profitable compared to when food was cheap and labor was expensive.
There might be something to this, but I think all changes could be accommodated by other adjustments of menu offering, staffing and pricing. I think the real reasons have been hit: it’s too expensive to offer a wide variety of tasty food, so the offerings are lower-end, bland and tend towards whatever will cook and hold well under varying conditions. Sometimes the price and notion of selection make it a win; other times the blandness and unappetizing choices are losers.
But that’s presuming the OP’s observation is true. Is it? It doesn’t seem to be so in my experience. I think buffets are doing fine.
It seems like most of the buffets that were around here 10 years ago are still here, but a bunch that opened after that have closed. It could be local market saturation, the economy, or both.
I’ve noticed that the newer restaurants coming into town usually don’t have a buffet, even if the restaurant they are replacing did have one. I think that some restaurants were able to figure out the buffet and keep it, while others weren’t. New restaurant owners know how hard it can be and don’t try much.
The Shoney’s around here died out and was bought by some locals who tried to make it work, but still died out. Neither could keep the buffet option going, even when it was closer to a salad bar with a few entrees.
The skyrocketing cost of sneezeguards.
The people who are comparing Asian-style buffets to American-style buffets are also comparing two completely different things. And the OP started this with a reference to a third type, the buffet inside a restaurant. That type has largely vanished. American-style buffets have lost ground. Asian-style buffets are more easily found. But people are using buffet to refer to all of them and that confuses the subject.