Buffet or not to?

Buffet is a term for a style of food service where the food is placed on display tables and people are supposed to serve themselves from the dishes and consume as much as they want for a certain price.

Why are buffets important?

In the ever growing hospitality industry everyone needs to compete and get the biggest proportion of business. Buffets are the most economical way of producing food and serving to large crowds at the minimum costs.

Most of the food establishments control their Food cost majorly from buffet restaurants and banquets. Buffets helps to absorb higher food cost from other revenue streams such as speciality restaurants, cafes and lounges.

The manpower required to produce and run buffets are much lower as compared to other style of food services. Hence, it’s the most cost effective way of producing bulk food.

But…. With every achievement their is a concern!

And, the concern is huge in today’s World. The maximum amount of food wastage that happens in this industry, is from buffets style of service.

First of all almost every quality of ingredient(cheapest) can be used in buffets; some people might differ, but the majority would agree.

Every food establishment be it a hotel, restaurant, banquets, canteens they have buffet system. Well why not? The the most cost effective and efficient system for mass feeding and making bulk money.

Few styles of buffets; Staff canteens, theme dinner/lunch, Brunch, Breakfast and many more.

There is always extra quantity of food prepared for buffets since that same food can’t be produced a la minute if we fell short.

A basic thumb rule is 20% extra food would always be available just in case the guest numbers increase. And mind it, not all the food that is prepared for buffet is consumed. Even in normal situations when the guests numbers would be same as guaranteed, probably 10–20% of the food would be left unconsumed.

What happens to that food?

Now imagine, preparing buffet food for an event. The preparation starts 2–3 days in advance, prep and cooking of basic ingredients to a certain level. On the final day of event the food is finally cooked as a complete dish. Let’s take an example: Lasagna, The various sauces and fillings would be made almost 2 days in advance or at least a day. The pasta and sauces and fillings are layered and kept in the chiller for the next day. On the following day the pasta would be baked in oven almost 3–4 hours in advance. And then kept for hot holding in a hot box ir oven approx for 1–2 hours based on timings of event. The buffet would last for almost 3 hours. So almost for 9 hours it was cooked and kept for hot holding at or above almost 65•C temperature. What would be the condition of this pasta at this time? You would still keep it to serve to someone the next day? No.. it would just go in the bin.

This was just one dish. Have you ever counted total number of dishes in a buffet? It could be anything from 15–150. All the food that is left over from these mostly goes into the bin. All the high risk food items such as, cured meats, seafood, high protein food, high starch food, salads, pastries and desserts all go waste after the buffet is over. And believe me it is one of the worst things to witness, food wastage like that when we know many people in this world don’t get to eat a proper meal in a day. Have been seeing it for 20+ years.

Why waste?, let this food be available in the the world for everyone to buy at nominal price. Let them eat.

You wouldn’t believe, it was June 2018 and I asked myself why don’t we stop serving food in buffets? Heaps of food goes into the bins. Unimaginable quantities of food people take from buffets and probably eat 10% rest goes into the bin. We have become greedy!

It’s a waste of natural resources, money and time. But there was no solution, probably no willingness to stop it!

But then comes a time… when the whole world had to stop what they were doing, Stand still, I mean it! A pandemic had to happen to us humans.

We all discovered social distancing is a must along with few other precautions. The buffets stopped! The biggest food wastage stopped.

Like few movie sequels, the buffets would return, probably with different format, could be a served buffet, maybe your server would plate your food from the buffet. Hence, the wastage continues!

Save food, save life, save planet!