The Future of Buffets, Salad Bars, and Self Serve?

klkla
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Re: The Future of Buffets, Salad Bars, and Self Serve?

Post by klkla »

storewanderer wrote: April 19th, 2020, 8:15 pm But I do think it will impact Whole Foods somewhat. The self serve food bars are a big thing for Whole Foods and have quite a customer following, and appear to generate a lot of revenue. Not sure how profitable they are but I suspect they make money there due to the volume and price point.
I agree. Their CEO has been on record saying it's the most profitable part of their business, but it will take consumers a long to trust salad bars and hot bars again. Whole Foods wasn't that great at keeping them clean the best of times in my opinion.
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Re: The Future of Buffets, Salad Bars, and Self Serve?

Post by storewanderer »

klkla wrote: April 20th, 2020, 3:52 pm
storewanderer wrote: April 19th, 2020, 8:15 pm But I do think it will impact Whole Foods somewhat. The self serve food bars are a big thing for Whole Foods and have quite a customer following, and appear to generate a lot of revenue. Not sure how profitable they are but I suspect they make money there due to the volume and price point.
I agree. Their CEO has been on record saying it's the most profitable part of their business, but it will take consumers a long to trust salad bars and hot bars again. Whole Foods wasn't that great at keeping them clean the best of times in my opinion.
Raleys installed hot bar and/or salad bar in some remodels recently and it is "in line" with the service deli case. All they have to do is put up glass sheets on the customer side (which they already put up) and those can become employee serve cases. So far they are just closed entirely and were not converted to employee serve at least at the two Reno Stores with this set up. This is a departure from the early 00's where Raleys installed hot bars and salad bars and they were island style.

Probably best case here is to only operate these areas during certain hours of the day with a "break" in the mid afternoon to do a 100% clean and 100% replenish. I have seen some grocers do that (Hannaford and Harris Teeter come to mind).

Some casino buffets pre-plate certain items, usually desserts (and if you pick that unpopular cake, the edges may be a bit dry), then you just take a plate that has the item on it already. I wonder if we could see more of that in the buffets.
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Re: The Future of Buffets, Salad Bars, and Self Serve?

Post by klkla »

storewanderer wrote: April 20th, 2020, 6:59 pm Raleys installed hot bar and/or salad bar in some remodels recently and it is "in line" with the service deli case.
I've always wondered why more stores don't do it this way. It makes it much easier for the employees to keep it clean.
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Re: The Future of Buffets, Salad Bars, and Self Serve?

Post by storewanderer »

klkla wrote: April 20th, 2020, 8:31 pm
storewanderer wrote: April 20th, 2020, 6:59 pm Raleys installed hot bar and/or salad bar in some remodels recently and it is "in line" with the service deli case.
I've always wondered why more stores don't do it this way. It makes it much easier for the employees to keep it clean.
I assume it is a space issue. But you can angle the cases, bring cases out a bit more from the wall to create space, and you probably end up using less space than you do with the islands. Employees can restock from the back too; much easier to rotate food.
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Re: The Future of Buffets, Salad Bars, and Self Serve?

Post by Alpha8472 »

Souplantation, operating as Sweet Tomatoes outside of Southern California is closing all locations permanently. The owner/operator Garden Fresh Restaurant Corporation was purchased by Cerberus Capital Management in 2017.

New Food and Drug Administration guidelines recommending an end to self serve stations in restaurants would prevent local health departments from granting permits to restaurants with salad bars and buffets.

This could mean a drastic change for all buffets. It would mean that employees need to serve everything. This will mean reconfiguring to a cafeteria style and no more self serve drinks or ice cream machines.
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Re: The Future of Buffets, Salad Bars, and Self Serve?

Post by marshd1000 »

Here’s what Golden Corral has planned:

https://www.goldencorral.com/
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Re: The Future of Buffets, Salad Bars, and Self Serve?

Post by Alpha8472 »

Golden Corral will do cafeteria style or deliver the dishes to your table. This is going to require many more employees to serve you. It will take more space to set up cafeteria style counters. The restaurants will have less space for tables and there will be fewer customers. How is this cost effective?
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Re: The Future of Buffets, Salad Bars, and Self Serve?

Post by BillyGr »

Alpha8472 wrote: May 9th, 2020, 11:41 am Golden Corral will do cafeteria style or deliver the dishes to your table. This is going to require many more employees to serve you. It will take more space to set up cafeteria style counters. The restaurants will have less space for tables and there will be fewer customers. How is this cost effective?
Having not been recently, I was thinking their counters for the buffet were set up where you took food from one side and the employees could fill from the other? If that's the case, there would be little change to do cafeteria style - just block off the access from the public side.

Not sure on the rest, but if there are less customers, you'd need less people to help them so that offsets somewhat.
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Re: The Future of Buffets, Salad Bars, and Self Serve?

Post by Alpha8472 »

The new locations have self serve islands that are really wide. It is difficult to reach over to the other side. They would need to replace these islands with narrower ones. All new equipment is needed and they would need a major remodel to even arrange the counters.
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Re: The Future of Buffets, Salad Bars, and Self Serve?

Post by Knight »

reymann wrote: April 19th, 2020, 5:38 pm i don't see hometown buffet and sweet tomatoes surviving too much longer once restaurants reopen, they were already shuttering locations before this happened. sizzler may do away with the salad bar once they reopen and it will be interesting to see if other buffets do go to more of a cafeteria model.
Hometown Buffet's parent company, Ovation Brands, has had issues for years. It closed most Ryan's locations years ago. Golden Corral exists, but it has not expanded into localities previously served by Ryan's.
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