Buffet restaurants are in the business of making money, of course, and that means using
tricks to make you think you're getting a killer deal when in reality, that might not
be the case. Here are some of the sneaky ways buffet restaurant chains are scamming you.
"Open your eyes Clyde! Don't you see what's going on here? The buffet's rigged!"
A big part of the draw of eating out is that someone else is doing all the work for you,
right? You just sit down, place your order, make any special requests you might have,
then wait to be served. At the end of the meal, someone else picks up your plates and
does the cleanup, too. But that's not the case at a buffet restaurant. Not only are
you possibly paying as much or more for your meal as you would at a standard restaurant,
but you're also doing a lot of the work that's typically relegated to a waiter or waitress.
Sure, you get to pick and choose from lots of different food options, and you can load
up multiple plates if you're so inclined, but buffets are saving a lot of money by getting
you to do some of the work yourself.
The Hustle points out that buffet management reduces the need for waitstaff while simultaneously
minimizing the costs of cooks because food is prepped in huge batches without specialization
for individual customers. The remaining staff simply replaces food as needed, washes dishes,
and wipes down tables. This work requires little skill or interaction with customers,
which means it comes cheap.
Here's a buffet scam you really need to know, the soup you're about to chow down on at your
favorite chain? It may just be made from scraps of yesterday's entrees.
All restaurants have to consider the high cost of food waste, it's a part of the business,
but it's especially costly at all-you-can-eat buffets. Customers often seem less concerned
with failing to finish their meals when they know they can go back and get something else
if they don't like what they selected the first time. Plus, it's hard to guess exactly
how much of each menu item is needed for the day. The Hustle says that between 5 to 25
percent of every food dish at a buffet ends up in the trash. When a restaurant is already
working in the margins to turn a profit, it's important to reduce this expense anyway it
can. Reusing food scraps is one tried-and-true method for turning leftovers into some kind
of soup.
To be fair, it's not like buffets are taking scraps of uneaten food from customer's plates
to repurpose in other ways, they're just reusing the leftovers that no one previously touched.
Still, customers may not be thrilled to learn that the food they're eating may have actually
been cooked days before.
Think for a minute about the layout of a typical buffet. You might first be met with a giant
salad bar full of fruits and vegetables. Then you hit the pasta, pizzas, and the many different
types of bread. Maybe you then reach the hot plates of various meat-and-veggie entrees
before you land at the finer cuts of meat and seafood. Sure, every buffet may be laid
out a little bit differently, but if you think this order of food items is by chance, you'd
be wrong.
An article on Babble Top points out that the starchy and inexpensive fillers of fruits,
vegetables, and refined carbohydrates all fill up your plate before you even see the
more expensive dishes. And The Hustle goes further, noting that 75 percent of buffet
customers select food from the very first tray they come to, with 66 percent of the
food they consume coming from the first three trays they encounter.
So by the time you get to the items that cost the restaurant more, you have less room on
your plate and you're more likely to take a smaller serving. This reduces the expense
of each customer's buffet experience.
"The big ticket items are right here at the back so that by the time dupes like you get
to the shrimp, your plate's already full."
If you'd like to try and "beat the system," tour the entire buffet before you fill your
plate, and then select the more expensive and savory items you're craving most.
Maybe you remember your high school economics teacher explaining the law of diminishing
returns. Basically, if you go to McDonald's and buy five Big Macs, with the goal of eating
all five in the same sitting, you're going to find the first Big Mac delicious, but each
successive Big Mac is going to be a little less satisfying. By the time you get to number
five, you probably won't want to take another bite, and trying to force yourself to chew
and swallow each bite is likely to feel uncomfortable, if not like downright torture.
Buffet chain managers understand this concept and Studenomics points out that this is one
of the ways buffets are able to eke out a profit. When you go into a buffet, you may
feel like you're starving and could chow down on three or four plates piled high with food.
But in reality, your stomach is only so big.
After your first plate, especially if you select inexpensive but filling bread, salad,
pasta, and rice, that second plate isn't going to sound or taste as appealing. If you happen
to finish your second plate, maybe you'll go for at least part of a dessert, but you're
unlikely to want that many more plates of typical buffet fare. Buffet management relies
on this concept, trusting that the majority of their customers won't end up wanting to
eat a week's worth of food in a single visit.
"Do these sound like the actions of a man who had all he could eat?"
Chances are the buffet you love to visit charges a flat rate for food, and a separate price
for whatever drink you choose. On top of that, they probably provide extra-large drink glasses,
and if they have servers delivering the drinks, these glasses are filled to the brim with
ice, cutting down on the total amount of drink in each cup. This is all by design.
According to a Reddit thread with a buffet manager, the cost to fill a fountain drink
in his restaurant is 12 cents and the sales price is $1.59. That means even if you get
12 refills, the restaurant still turns a profit on that drink. Of course, these restaurants
are counting on the fact that you won't want 12, 13, or 14 refills, and drink sales are
a good way to pad profit margins. Even if you do happen to drink a lot of carbonated,
belly-distending soda, an article on Studenomics notes that the more you sip down, the less
total food you'll likely feel comfortable consuming. Either way, the restaurant wins
when you order a fountain drink with your meal.
If a typical dinner plate is 11 inches, expect dinner plates at your favorite buffet chain
to be a little bit smaller than that. A big part of eating has to do with your eyes. If
your plate looks full, you're going to assume you're eating a lot, too. Also, by the nature
of a dish's size, you can only put so much food on a single plate. When you use a smaller
plate, you serve less food overall. Whether or not you realize it, buffets are instilling
portion control into your food choices. Babble Top points out that dishware manufacturers
even have special lines of dishware geared to buffets called "half-size" dishes. Buffets
want you to take less food with each serving.
Of course, you may notice the difference in size, but in the context of a buffet, you
also know you can always go back for seconds, so small plates are no big deal, right? Maybe.
Maybe not. Maybe you just find that you feel full after eating a plateful and be less likely
to go back for more, and that's exactly what buffet management is counting on.
Just as buffet restaurants are trying to control how much food you serve yourself by offering
you smaller plates, they're also subconsciously affecting how much you take of any given food
choice. For example, according to Dollars & Sense, buffets are likely to use oversized
serving spoons for inexpensive salads and side dishes, but smaller tongs or forks for
more expensive items, like filet mignon. It's all in an effort to subconsciously influence
your food choices, buffet management wants to "help you" limit how much you take of the
more expensive items while encouraging you to load up on the cheap stuff.
Think about it, if you're given a giant spoon to serve up mashed potatoes, you're likely
to take a piling heap of these inexpensive items. And in the same light, if you're given
small, awkward-working tongs to try to wrangle a piece of the pricier fish onto your plate,
you're probably going to stop at a single small serving. Especially if there are people
waiting behind you in line. None of this is by accident, it's all pre-designed to subliminally
influence your food choices and serving sizes.
It's definitely possible to find cheap prices at family-friendly buffets, but the trend
for low-ball buffet prices has gone by the wayside, and some buffets are even disappearing.
This is due in part to research published in 2014 in the Journal of Sensory Studies.
This study found that people who paid different prices for the exact same buffet ended up
feeling differently about their meals. One group paid $4.00 while the other group paid
$8.00, and those who paid more found the meal more satisfying, perceiving the food to be
of higher quality. Conversely, those who paid a lower price perceived the food to be worse,
ultimately enjoying the meal less.
The conclusion by researchers was that people associate a higher price with higher quality,
and they're more likely to experience satisfaction with their meal if they pay a little more.
For buffets, this is huge information. For one, it informs the pricing strategy. By marking
up prices to turn a profit, customers may perceive the food they're eating as better,
even if buffets buy the bottom of the barrel ingredients. And second, offering low prices
for all-you-can-eat may be a good marketing strategy to pull customers, but if people
ultimately perceive the meal to be lower quality, they may not return. You end up getting scammed
if buffets use low-quality food with a highly marked up price. Do your best to judge each
bite for how it tastes, not how much you paid.
"Know how much all that costs? I do."
The psychology of eating is an important subject for managers of all-you-can-eat buffets. As
a result, they employ tactics to get you to eat less of the expensive stuff while simultaneously
trying to improve the perception you have of every bite. They also use what they know
about social pressure to influence your food selection and the quantity of food you add
to your plate.
To paint the picture, Dollars and Sense points out that expensive items, like oysters, are
often served on smaller platters with more attractive plating strategies and fewer available
oysters. The idea is this: If there are only 10 oysters on a platter, and there's a line
of people waiting to add oysters to their plates, every person is more likely to only
take one or two, rather than 10, leaving oysters for those who are waiting. After all, nobody
wants to be the jerk who takes all 10 oysters and leaves everyone else wide-mouthed gaping
at the audacity.
Also, when items are plated beautifully with limited numbers, managers bank on the concept
of supply and demand. The more supply there is, the less demand, and the lower the perceived
quality of the item. Conversely, the less supply there is, and the higher the demand,
the higher the perceived quality.
If you make a few smart choices when you grab your plate at a buffet restaurant, you'll
be more likely to enjoy a killer deal and avoid being scammed.
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