Posts Tagged ‘hospitality industry’
“Too much of a good thing can be wonderful”*…
On the rise and fall of the Las Vegas casino buffet…
… With the May 31 closure of the MGM Grand Buffet, the Strip is down to about half a dozen all-you-can-eat buffets. It was once home to more than 10 times that many.
Excluding the sushi bar, the MGM Grand’s $44 Sunday mimosa brunch might have looked about like it did when the resort opened in 1993. It offered crispy brisket at the carving station, biscuits, scrambled eggs and sauteed vegetables. Most of the meats had a tub of gravy next to them, either dark brown or as beige as the decor. The anachronistic vibe at the 535-seat establishmentstood in contrast with more expensive buffets at nearby Caesars Palace and Wynn, overflowing with luxury offerings like turmeric grilled baby octopus, Peking duck and lobster toasts garnished with caviar.
“Young people complain that it looks old,” says Shaunell Samano, the MGM Grand Buffet’s assistant general manager. She has a job lined up at the nearby Luxor. All five of the servers hustling the floor had worked there since the resort’s opening. Most of the staff had been prepping the buffet for at least 26 years. Samano recalled guests even visiting twice a day, including retired boxer Evander Holyfield and his wife a few years ago.
The vanishing old-school Vegas buffet comes as Americans rethink their relationship to food and travel. A 2025 Cornell University study found that the proliferation of GLP-1 drugs is driving down demand for the kinds of indulgent foods available at all-you-can-eat buffets, and several studies show that gastronomic experiences are fundamental to choosing a vacation destination. Still, a 2025 Pew Research Center study indicated that even if consumers are more health-conscious than ever, taste and affordability remain the most important factors in deciding what to eat.
All-you-can-eat buffets may be receding from their spiritual home of Las Vegas, but the country isn’t abandoning them yet.
Golden Corral Chief Executive Officer Lance Trenary told Bloomberg Intelligence in November that his company’s restaurants were averaging the same number of meals served as they were pre-pandemic. The all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ and hot-pot chain KPOT had three locations in 2020; it plans to have more than 150 open by the end of the calendar year. Yelp’s 2026 Trends forecast cited a 252% increase in searches for “all you can eat buffet.”
“Customers like buffets,” says Eric Chiang, a University of Nevada at Las Vegas economics professor who loves using buffets as a way to explain economics. “It’s a flat price with no risk involved and no surprise at the end,” he says.
The novelty of all-you-can-eat dining is rooted in contradictory American lifestyles: One diner sees freedom and abundance, while another sees waste and gluttony. They’re rare restaurants where, at least for an hour or two, anyone can eat like royalty…
… the all-you-can-eat buffet is inextricably linked to the glamorous excesses of Las Vegas, where famed promoter Herb McDonald hired Norwegian chef Arne Hansen Rom in 1946 to tailor the European smorgasbord to the tastes of the Western Yankee. The Midnight Chuckwagon, later known as the Buckaroo Buffet, lured gamblers at the El Rancho hotel and its previous incarnation, the Thunderbird. Along with a lounge act came unlimited food ranging from deviled eggs to shrimp cocktail to Rom’s specialty: barbecue spareribs. The all-you-can-eat buffet evolved into a signature loss leader for resorts competing to attract a new wave of Las Vegas tourists: families and international travelers.
When John Curtas recalls his first visit to a Las Vegas buffet as a 10-year-old in the early 1960s, the veteran Las Vegas food critic remembers a haunch of beef that looked 12 feet tall manned by a chef wielding a carving knife like a scimitar. Beside the beef sat piles of shrimp, whole-cooked turkeys, potato salad and cowboy beans. It cost just $1, and he could return for more without embarrassment.
“Buffets gave you such a dazzle factor and eye candy,” Curtas says. “But they also gave a lot of perceived value for people and for families.”…
More on the social psychology and economics of buffets: “The Quintessential Old-School Las Vegas Buffet Bids Farewell” gift link from @bloomberg.com.
* Mae West
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As we go back for seconds, we might spare a thought for Edwin Traisman; he died on this date in 2007. A food scientist, he is best remembered for helping to create Cheez Whiz for Kraft, then for perfecting the method used by McDonalds standardize their french fries (by freezing partially-cooked fries for transport and storage). But relevantly to the piece above, he also helped initiate research on E. coli 0157:H7, which was at the time (1987) a little known pathogen.
“The golden rule when reading the menu is, if you cannot pronounce it, you cannot afford it”*…
Consider the restaurant menu.
By design, menus aren’t meant to spark conversation. But as restaurants take drastic steps to weather COVID-19, they are revamping their menus in a big way — and it’s hard not to think twice about the piece of paper in your hands.
IHOP is ditching its 12-page behemoth for a much cleaner 2-page menu. McDonald’s has slashed several items off its all-day breakfast menu. Applebee’s, Taco Bell, and Subway are all slimming down their offerings.
These high-profile shifts reflect what’s happening on a much more local level across the industry: 28% of restaurateurs are shrinking their menus because of the pandemic. That number is so large that New York Magazine recently asked, “Is It Time To Get Rid of Menus For Good?”
The underlying reasons for this are financial: Restaurants can’t bother with low-margin dishes. They have fewer employees on the payroll, so they want to be more efficient with a smaller set of meals. They’re prioritizing fewer — and cheaper — ingredients.
But rewriting a menu is no simple task. Every inch of text, from the typeface down to the order of items, must be workshopped for maximum profitability.
And when restaurants need help, they turn to a niche, little-known cadre of professional “menu engineers.”…
In a changing dining economy, restaurants are turning to a small group of experts who specialize in the science of menu design: “Meet the ‘menu engineers’ helping restaurants retool during the pandemic.”
* Frank Muir
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As we ask about the specials, we might recall that it was on this date in 1916 that Clarence Saunders founded the Piggly Wiggly grocery chain. His Memphis “flagship” introduced the the modern self-service retail sales model– for which he received U.S. Patent #1,242,872– thus initiating the development of the modern supermarket (and indeed of self-service retail in general). His Memphis store grew into the Piggly Wiggly chain, which is still in operation.
The first Piggly Wiggly store
Clarence Saunders
“Cuisine is when things taste like themselves”*…
“The destiny of nations,” wrote Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, an 18th-century French gastronome, “depends on how they nourish themselves.” Today a nation’s stature depends on how well it nourishes the rest of the world, too. For proof of this, consider the rise of culinary diplomacy. In 2012 America’s State Department launched a “chef corps” tasked with promoting American cuisine abroad. Thailand’s government sends chefs overseas to peddle pad Thai and massaman curry through its Global Thai programme. South Korea pursues its own brand of “kimchi diplomacy”.
But which country’s cuisine is at the top of the global food chain? A new paper by Joel Waldfogel of the University of Minnesota provides an answer. Using restaurant listings from TripAdvisor, a travel-review website, and sales figures from Euromonitor, a market-research firm, Mr Waldfogel estimates world “trade” in cuisines for 52 countries. Whereas traditional trade is measured based on the value of goods and services that flow across a country’s borders, the author’s estimates of culinary exchange are based on the value of food found on restaurant tables. Domestic consumption of foreign cuisine is treated as an “import”, whereas foreign consumption of domestic cuisine is treated as an “export”. The balance determines which countries have the greatest influence on the world’s palate.
The results make grim reading for America’s McDonald’s-munching, tariff-touting president. The United States is the world’s biggest net importer of cuisine, gobbling down $55bn more in foreign dishes than the rest of the world eats in American fare (when fast food is excluded, this figure balloons to $134bn). China comes next, with a $52bn dietary deficit; Brazil and Britain have shortfalls worth around $34bn and $30bn respectively. Italy, meanwhile, ranks as the world’s biggest exporter of edibles. The world’s appetite for pasta and pizza, plus Italians’ relative indifference to other cuisines, give the country a $168bn supper surplus. Japan, Turkey and Mexico also boast robust surpluses [see chart above].
Mr Waldfogel does not account for culinary hybrids such as the cronut—a cross between a croissant and a doughnut—or Tex-Mex. Nor does he consider authenticity; few Neapolitans would consider Domino’s Pizza a real taste of home. Despite this, some cuisines clearly have a bigger worldwide appeal than others. Foodies scoffing spring rolls in San Francisco or cheeseburgers in Chongqing should give thanks to globalisation. A policy of culinary mercantilism could make dining out very dull indeed…
Which countries dominate the world’s dinner tables?
* Curnonsky (Maurice Edmond Sailland; c.f. almanac entry here)
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As we contemplate culinary culture, we might send carefully-peeled birthday greetings to John Richard (“Jack” or “J.R.”) Simplot; he was born on this date in 1909. An Idaho-based agribusiness entrepreneur, Simplot, J.R.’s eponymous company, became the largest shipper of fresh potatoes by the outbreak of World War II. In 1967, Simplot and McDonald’s impressario Ray Kroc agreed by handshake that the Simplot Company would provide frozen french fries to the restaurant chain; by 2005, Simplot was supplying the (by then vastly larger) Golden Arches with half of its french fries and hash browns. Simplot also provided seed capital for Micron Technologies, a successful computer memory chip company.
“It requires a certain kind of mind to see beauty in a hamburger bun”*…
There may be no American institution more polarizing than fast food. Whether it’s wages, health, the environment or those Colonel Sanders ads, the problems associated with the all-American meal inspire lots of detractors. But for many millions, places like McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Steak ’n Shake generate fierce loyalty for their convenience, value, ritual, shock-and-awe menu items and community; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2018 that more than one-third of Americans eat fast food on any given day. As the summer season of road trips and Frosties enters full swing, here are five myths about fast food…
Adam Chandler, author of Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America’s Fast-Food Kingdom, enumerates “Five Myths About Fast Food.”
* Ray Kroc, creator of the McDonald’s franchise empire
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As we chow down, we might send beefy birthday greetings to Rex David Thomas; he was born on this date in 1932. After rising through the ranks at Kentucky Fried Chicken, then helping to found the Arthur Treacher’s fried fish chain, Thomas founded Wendy’s– the burger chain named for his daughter (whose real name was Melinda Lou, but who was called Wendy, since as young child she couldn’t pronounce her name).
“The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.”*…
There were, at one point, 305 Ponderosas (and sister buffet Bonanzas) in the US, and today there are 75 locations total — including 19 in Puerto Rico and a handful scattered in Egypt, Qatar, Taiwan, and the UAE. The Ponderosa parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2008, the same year as the company that owns Old Country Buffet (and four other buffet chains).
That company, Ovation Brands. filed for bankruptcy twice more by 2016, at which point USA Today noted that it had “the dubious and relatively rare distinction” of entering what finance guys like to “jokingly refer to as Chapter 33 — that is, Chapter 11 bankruptcy for a third time.” The same year, Garden Fresh Restaurants, which owns Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes, filed for bankruptcy as well, citing $175 million in debt.
In 2016, Eater’s Dana Hatic blamed the fall of the buffet on America’s “newfound focus on fast casual dining [and] farm-to-table menus,” as well as “widespread attention on the health effects of obesity and overconsumption.” This makes some sense, and at the same time, it does not.The buffet is a good idea. The buffet is a symbol of the American dream. The buffet is delicious. The buffet is affordable, and a lot of us love a deal. When did our hearts grow cold toward buffets, and why?…
Meditate on the mystery of the missing comestibles at “When did America’s heart turn cold on buffet chains?”
* George Carlin
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As we walk the line, we might spare a thought for Benjamin Eisenstadt; he died on this date in 1996. After a stint running a cafeteria in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Eisenstadt became a manufacturer, first (and briefly) of tea bags, then of an invention of his own– the single-serving sugar packet.
In 1957, he began mixing powdered saccharine (previously available only in a liquid form with dextrose, and created Sweet’N Low, a no-calorie sweetener available in (his) single-serve packets, which he colored bright pink to avoid confusion with (white) sugar packets.
Eisenstadt was also the first to packet soy sauce in single-serving packets.
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