The Buffet Paradox: Tricks Buffets Use To Slow You Down & Stay In Business

There are people out there, maybe you’re reading this article right now, who are banned for eating too much at all you can eat buffets.

There’s a level of extreme gluttony we witness and partake in while buffet dining.

We go back for plate after heaping plate of disproportioned food madness mixing pizza, noodles, chocolate chip cookies, and waffles on a platter.

With unfathomable overeating and food waste, profit margins on the average buffet are slim.

What Happens At Vegas Buffets?

However, lavish Las Vegas buffets don’t worry about slim profit margins.

In the spirit of competition, many Vegas casinos offer buffets with extreme options including Wagyu steak sliced by an in house butcher, and Alaskan crab legs.

With such luxurious offerings, most Vegas buffets would go bankrupt if they were standalone operations.

However, their goal is to drive business to casinos.

Any losses from the buffet are recovered through gambling.

But what about standalone all you can eat buffets?

How do they stay in business year after year while making profits?

Especially with hungry customers who will happily eat them out of house and business?

Standalone Buffets Curb Your Appetite

The goal is to quickly fill customers for a low cost.

And to keep customers returning, buffets create the perception of variety and high quality foods.

Successful restaurants keep their food and beverage costs under 30% and successful buffets do the same.

They offer cheaper vegetables and meat to stuff customers.

Seasonal ingredients are also a go to.

For example, tomato dishes are cheaper in the spring when they’re in season, and customers believe they’re eating high quality dishes.

You’ll never find full sized plates or soup bowls at a buffet.

This encourages too much gorging.

Instead, half-sized plates are used, limiting the amount of food taken in a single trip.

Water and soft-drink glasses are huge.

Water is free and soft-drinks cost next to nothing, so buffets load you up on both.

At most modern Chinese buffets, chopsticks are standard.

Forks, spoons, and knives need to be requested.

Chopsticks naturally slow down your rate of eating, which fills you up faster.

As mentioned above, starches and vegetables dominate buffet lines; they’re cheap and filling.

There’s also immense thought behind the presentation of food items.

Expensive proteins are usually in-between an array of vegetables so customers won’t look twice.

And those expensive protein platters are sparsely filled as opposed to their starch cousins.

Why You Can’t Control Yourself at a Buffet

Most customers dine at all you can eat buffets for the wealth of options.

But these choices bring out primitive urges for excess in preparation for feast or famine.

You automatically go into gorge mode because you want to enjoy every dish and get the most for your money.

And if you want the most for your dollar, stay away from starches and layoff soda and water.

If you do this you’ll have room for at least 3 more excessive platters.

So enjoy those bouts of indigestion and make sure you load up on Tums and Pepto