Endless Thread - Encore: All You Can Eat... And Then Some (Updates!)

Episode Date: November 27, 2020

Chicken patrol. Tiny plates. Purses lined with plastic bags. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, Endless Thread re-releases "All You Can Eat," an episode that peeks behind the curtain of the strange world of all-you-can-eat buffets, from the strategies buffet owners use to protect their profits to the hungry customers who try to game the system. Listen until the end for an update with Jordan, the Redditor and restaurant consultant featured in the original episode, to hear an insider's perspective on how the pandemic is changing the food industry.

Support for endless thread comes from Mathworks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? And, of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. What was your immediate reaction to that ladle thing that I sent you this weekend? That post with the guy.

I think I sent you back the little barf emoji, right? Yeah, yeah. That barf emoji gets me. By the way, hey, everybody. Hope you're doing well. Didn't see you there. Amory and I were just talking about a Reddit post that I sent her on the weekend of a guy drinking out of the soup ladle at a buffet. He might have been drinking salad dressing, but he was definitely...

Whoa. That is a new interpretation. I'm just saying he's clearly a little wacky if he's drinking from the ladle at the salad. Like, that's not accepted societal behavior, right? But sadly, he is part of society. And that's the problem is that there are people out there who are ladled sippers. And it wasn't okay in 2018. It wasn't okay in 2019.

But in 2020, it is unthinkable. Also, he wasn't, like, sipping, too. Like, he was, it was like he was a calm. miner. It was like he was a coal miner coming out of the mine in Texas in the 1800s getting his water rationed. Do you know what I mean? That was his drinking situation. This is more information than anybody wanted about this. But there's a reason why we're bringing this up. It's because we have done an episode about the phenomenon that is the all-you-can-eat buffet.

And we did that episode in 2018, right? Quaint in 2020. It seems quaint, quite quaint. Imagine all of us sitting down together after all dipping into the same food together. Yeah, so in this season of eating a lot, which we hope you all have a lot of delicious things to eat right now, we thought we would revisit this episode.

But the actual inspiration to rerun this episode, I don't even think was like the season of eating. I think it was a post that was made in our endless thread subreddit. Did you see this post, Ben? I remember looking at it briefly, but then I saw the ladle drinking post and it just, I don't remember anything now. I just see red. Okay, well, I'm going to bring it back to a redditor who goes by, A Flame is Fitful. Okay.

I think that's what it says. I feel like my eyes are getting bad, and now the username looks so tiny. My eyes are getting mad. So a user, A Flame is Fitful, posted on the endless thread subreddit, subject line, dire prediction from All You Can Eat episode. Now, I don't know how many of you would remember this dire prediction, but it has to do with the percentage of people eating restaurant food in their home, homes by 2020.

So I don't want to give it all away because we're going to rerun this episode for you right now. And you're going to hear this prediction and go, what? This is like a Simpsons did it, except this restaurant industry person that we talked to called it. Yeah. So we've got a good reason for rerunning this episode. And also for updating this episode and make sure. At the end of this episode, you listen all the way through the credits because afterwards, we have an update for you.

So, without further ado, we'd like to play you our episode from the past that predicted the future all you can eat. Bon Appetit. Amory. Benny. I think we better skip the appetizers on this one, like skip the amuse-boosh. You're saying let's just dig right in to the main course? Yeah, let us.

in this holiday month of gluttony drink from the cup that overfloweth, let us mull the cornucopia, chipmunk our cheeks. Let's fill our plate at the buffet. Okay, so we're going to talk about this briefly famous Reddit post about an all-you-can-eat buffet in Ohio, my home state, the Buckeye state. Yeah, allegedly from Ohio, admittedly, this was a post on the legal advice subreddit, which delivers a lot of, you guessed it. Legal advice. Granted, this subreddit is run, or moderated by human lawyers and some little software programs pretending to be lawyers.

I mean, there's only, I think, just under 20 of us, and that includes some bots. So the moderators are very good at the old disclaimer. We do not want to create anything approaching the appearance of an attorney-client relationship.

This, by the way, is one of those 20 moderators, not a software program or bot, but a real-life human named Shane, known on Reddit as Zanktmau. And Zanktmau caught wind of this post from Ohio because he's not just an attorney who is also a moderator of the legal advice subreddit. He is all of those things with an extra special skill.

I became a moderator because I was exceptionally good at identifying trolls. Zanktmau is good at spotting shenanigans before things get out of hand. And in the larger communities on Reddit, there can be some shenanigans. The legal advice subreddit is huge. 170,000 subscribers. And there are maybe 400 questions that can ask there every day with 10 times the number of responses.

And there's just no way to actually read every comment or post that comes through. So generally, you know, we only find out about something like this when people are reporting it. People were reporting this post from Ohio for shenanigans. Would you mind reading the post out loud? Sure. Today, I went with a few friends to an All You Can Eat Chinese buffet for lunch. There were six of us. Me and one other person are both overweight.

When we came in, the wait staff seated us, but when we said we'd be doing the buffet, she told us that he and I specifically weren't allowed to have it. She didn't speak much English. We're going to spare you some of the details here, but you get the idea. The proprietors of said All You Can Eat buffet were supposedly worried about the customer's capacity to eat. So it's about this basic question. Are businesses allowed to refuse certain services on the basis of weight? If this is illegal, what is my next step?

But something about this post just didn't taste right. So to me, what jumped out was that it was almost the exact plot of a Simpsons episode. And for the gentleman. All you can eat. All you can eat. It may have been an all you can eat fish buffet. I can't actually remember. You're talking about Homer. Oh, yeah.

With like the kid, the captain. that like sea captain guy, and he's like, Arr. Tis no man. Tis a remorseless eating machine. Also, Zhangtmow says there's a comedian that did a, shall we say, not politically correct routine, which we are not going to play, that was like the Simpsons episode, but in a Chinese restaurant. So it was kind of a combination platter, if you will, of plagiarism.

The Post, the whole story about these people in Ohio getting kicked out of the All You Can Eat Buffet, It was fake. All you can eat buffet story, we barely knew ye. Except here's what's weird. There are versions of this story or stories like it all over Reddit. It's almost a Reddit trope. People who claimed to have eaten buffets out of business, other people recounting stories of beasting a bunch of food at a buffet

before the manager kicked them out. There echoes of this all over the site, almost like the crumbs of an epic meal. A myth of the mouth that keeps on munching. And after looking high and low, we found one of those people who says the story, the real thing, happened to him. I thought this was an all-you-can-eat buffet. And she was like, well, it is, but generally people aren't in here this long. And I was like, you're kicking me out because I ate too much food.

Yep. Today's episode, in honor of a weird American tradition of sorts, all you can eat. I'm Ben Brock Johnson I'm Amory Severson and this is Endless Thread The show featuring stories found on Reddit We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station Amory, is it strange that I find this topic fascinating? No, I mean you love to eat, I love to eat,

the all you can eat buffet is like the food lover's dream. Yeah, and I think this feels very American in a way, like the idea of a no-holds-barred, anything you want, situation, this mix of indulgence and volume eating. Like, why do we think it's so attractive, though, as consumers? It's a good question, and it leads us to Chris Dubuque, aka Morfeng, a guy we found on Reddit who says he got booted from an all-you-can-eat buffet. Now, Chris grew up in Alabama and currently lives in Georgia, and he's painfully aware of his

tendency to overeat. I have been known on more than one occasion to eat a disgusting amount of food. Now, Chris is six feet tall, weighs just 150 pounds, and I asked him why he loves to eat in such large quantities. I was spent a lot of time being homeless, not eating, things like that. You know, I've experienced having a big breath of air for dinner. You know, it's a very unfortunate thing. And so I think as an adult, I have a bad habit of overeating to having to go through that, I guess. One of those occasions took place a few years ago when some of Chris's friends wanted to,

to go to the American buffet chain restaurant, Golden Corral. You know, I knew it was like, hey, I want to go to Golden Corral. But someone said it, and I was like, all right, maybe it's not so bad. Let's give it a chance. And so I get there and I pay for everything and it's like $15 plus tax or something like that. It's mostly home-cooked food, well, home-style cooked food, steak and ribs. And I don't play about salad either. I want every freaking vegetable they have in there.

You know, I love vegetables. Do you have a strategy when you go to an all-you-can-eat buffet? Oh, absolutely. This is the secret master plan that I'm revealing the first time of my life. We're honored. So here's the strats. You go in, and the first thing you do, you get a ridiculously heavy food. There would be meat and vegetables and mashed potatoes or whatever.

That plate better weigh five pounds. I mean, there's no. other acceptable way. And then you go in there and you just speed eat that first plate. You know, it's your stomach doesn't have enough time to process. Holy crap, I just ate five. You shovel that first plate down as fast as you possibly can. And then you go for a plate of like maybe salad or something like that. And then, you know, for like plates three and four, I generally try or something, you know, something that's soupy or like liquidy or just soft that you can sort of shovel down.

And then, you know, after that it's kind of a gamble, you know, depending on how hungry I am going into said buffet. Chris's strategy, perfection. His execution, flawless, except... So, you know, I was enjoying the hell out of myself. So I get nine plates in, and then I had a manager walk up to me. And she was like, hey, so we see you've been, We appreciate your business and all of this, but we need this table for other patrons,

and you've been here two hours or so. What did you say back? I just sat there for a minute, and I realized what they were doing and that they were about that. Are you asking me to leave because I ate too much food? And she was like, well, no, we just, we need the table for other patrons that there was so many tables for you. Like, I thought this was an all-you-can-eat buffet, and she was like, well, it is, but generally people aren't in here this longer. They don't eat this much food.

And I was like, that's the confirmation I was looking for. They don't eat this much food. You're kicking me out because I ate too much food. And that's fine. Just call it what it is. Did you feel sick after eating nine plates of food? Oh, my God. Absolutely. I don't always make the smartest decisions.

My stomach gets very mad at me very frequently. Chris says that after that experience, aside from that one time, He went just to try dipping steak in the chocolate fountain. He did pretty much stop going to Golden Corral. And other than that one detail about steak in a chocolate fountain, I'd say Chris's story is perfect. It's like all you ever wanted to know about the all-you-can-eat dining customer and then some. Appropriate for a conversation about all-you-can-eat buffets, right?

Like we went there and then we kept going and that was only like plate two. It's time for plate three. No. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're going back to the buffet bar. But for good reason. More, so much more. Piles and piles of more.

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Well, originally from Sweden in the early 18th century. Zsmorgasbord? The smorgasbord. But one of the key differences between the Swedish smorgasbord and the American buffet is, is that there's an order to the smorgas board that's supposed to prevent you from grabbing all the food at once. But here at America, whole different story. Speaking of which, Amory, have you seen any of the Chevy Chase vacation movies? No.

Okay, so these movies are comedy classics, and they star Chevy Chase as this guy Clark. And in this scene, a penniless Clark is going to a All You Can Eat Buffet, Vegas style, with his kind of trashy brother-in-law, and Emery, I'm going to ask you to describe what is happening. Eddie, thanks for buying me dinner. Best buck 49, booth a minute. The kids are scooping large amounts of slop onto their plates. We only need one plate.

This guy has pulled a bag out of his pockets. He's got this large bag that he just had stuffed down his pants. He is shoving rolls into the bag. They're sharing a plate. Which is hilarious to me. Why are they sharing a plate? Because that way they only have to pay for one. Oh, okay.

And now they're eating. Oh, you can hear those noises. Now they're eating some of their various slop. Oh, this is foul, Ben. This is... It's pretty foul. Yeah. I think I'm fine, never going to another all-you-can-eat buffet.

But forget the eating part for a minute, Amory. When it comes to running a buffet business, there's a whole science involved. A science we know, thanks to this guy. Hi, this is Jordan. Jordan's a Redditor and a connoisseur of Reddit's food-related communities. He's worked for years in restaurants and restaurant management, and now he is one of those food industry jobs that you might not even realize exists.

At his current job, he works for a food supply company, but his actual day job is advising the customers of that company, which are restaurants. He helps restaurants run their business better so that his company can do better. And he covers a pretty big region. From northwest Kentucky, down to Jackson, Mississippi,

over to Little Rock, Arkansas, and just west of Nashville. Since Jordan covers a lot of ground, he's a good person to answer the question of whether all you can eat is a popular business model. They are extremely popular, mainly because I think the ease of entry.

It doesn't take a lot of specific training. You're basically cooking the food in the back of house, setting it on a line, and charging customers as they come in or as they leave. Okay, so that's pretty straightforward. Restaurants are complicated businesses to run. That's part of why so many of them go under. Buffets seem less complicated. They also make this argument to the consumer,

that they make it easier to please the whole family. Pretty much buffet started. as a trend in the 70s and 80s is just kind of a more of a family restaurant as opposed to fine dining. Look what the sizzler has for you. Alaskan crab claws. And the idea there being, hey, like, you can get lots of different kinds of things. It's kind of more sexy in that way. It's sort of like a decadent option, but at a reasonable price.

Right. I think you hit the nail on a. head there is it's diverse options to make everybody in the family happy she finds ponderosa's endless salad bar it's endless because you can always start over again and again and again and again and of course the tagline of all you can eat or as they say now all you care to eat i did not know there was a new phrase all you care to eat oh yes yes because you know buffets are healthy now didn't you know healthy or not there's still a question here about how buffets can do business by offering people in a limited amount of food for a static price.

Like even if our Beast Eater Chris is the outlier, isn't this just a crazy business model? Jordan, how do they do it? You're saving money on labor. That's why most buffet chains exist is because they've cut out that whole piece of a service staff. So if they have a little bit higher food costs because of, you know, some unforeseen gluttoning or theft, they've made it up on labor cost. Unforeseen gluttony and theft is like a title of something. My memoir, Unforeseen gluttony and theft.

That is their biggest concern, is food waste, theft, and people kind of overindulging. Abusing the system. Correct. If they're going to send out beverages for a person to, take to go or, you know, hey, would you like to take that drink to go? They actually, instead of giving the customer just the cup, they fill the cup with a liquid to prevent people shoving food into the cup and taking it with them. This is nuts.

It's one of those things where you expect humans to act with decorum, and they just don't. And it gets worse. Apparently, there are also cases of little ladies lining their purses with grocery bags and shoving food in there. Oh, my God. The little old lady lining the purse with the grocery bag move. Yep, just think of the golden girls. I thought I was the only one who used that.

This is giving me ideas. Yeah. So it's, I mean, they, they're, it's turned into, in some of these areas, more of a policing operation. Another preventative measure for buffet owners, what Jordan calls, chicken patrol. What's the chicken patrol? That's what everyone's stealing off the buffet is either chicken strips or catfish strips. Oh. How come?

Just because, like, protein? Exactly. They know where the big food cost item is. That's what they're taking home. I just want to say I bet little old men steal things, too. It's not just the old ladies. Well, little old men don't have a lot of purses, though. You can only fit so much of the old man wallet.

It could bring backpacks or fanny packs. I bet there are some fanny packs full. of chicken wings out there. In fairness, Chris was a young guy, so let's not be too agist about the profile of buffet food maximizers. Also, Amory. Yes.

Chicken Patrol was the name of my band in high school. How'd that work out for you, Ben? Needless to say, we're not famous. No. Oh, it's weird. I'm just kidding. But this is fascinating, right? There's this whole game of cat and mouse where the buffet runners and the buffet eaters are trying to outsmart each other. And it's wild how detailed this game of cat and mouse gets.

Not just in terms of buffet abuse, but like right down to the actual buffet line itself. It's there in plain sight, right under the glass sneeze shield. It's a little bit like the carnival. You know, if you've ever played the basketball game and you're trying to shoot the ball into the hoop, well, that hoop is actually not a regulation. And most of the plates that buffets buy are strictly from plateware lines called buffet lines, and they're actually smaller than your typical plate, so that a customer is less likely to overeat. Another thing that's right under your nose but may not be obvious is that the high-cost stuff is at the end of the line.

Sometimes you'll see buffets with snow crab legs or beef. And so the front of the line is going to have things like, potatoes, coleslaw, so that by the time you get to the end, well, you've already filled your plate, let me just have one or two of these things rather than starting the other way around. And I would just start at the back of the line. Whoa, sweet. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You go to wherever the buffet line is instead of just going where everyone else is going. You go the other way.

You go to the opposite. Start with the proteins, man. Swim upstream. There you go. Whether or not you're clued in enough to game the system, one question that remains is why haven't all-you-can-eat-eat-a-can-eat-a-cathes completely taken over? Because of buffet-specific challenges, like food waste. Even with their ease of entry and advantages like not having to hire a highly-trained weight staff, buffets are still a tricky business, and it's a business where standards have declined over time. Yeah, food quality is also a way that buffet owners combat cost. And that's kind of what has led to the overall decline of buffets.

I'll give you an example. I did a little research for you guys. Between 1998 and 2017, the number of buffets dropped by 26%, while the number of actual restaurants overall rose by 22%. Whoa, why is that? Well, because of the rise of Applebee's, TGI Fridays, Olive Garden, Outback, all those kind of casual dining concepts. It's got to be Applebee's.

Worth saying here, though, that even though they're different, these concepts do have some buffet moves, like at Olive Garden, which has unlimited breadsticks, or as I like to call it, endless bread. Ew. By that time, buffets had kind of gotten, you know, the stigma attached to them, deserved or not, of not having as good a quality of food.

I recently saw a video of a guy sampling soups at a buffet by drinking them straight out of the ladle. Straight out of the ladle. But Jordan says at the end of the day, it might not be a stigma that kills buffets off. It might be something even more American than gluttony. Convenience. Well, really, the biggest threat to buffet owners is actually the rise of mobile ordering. They're currently projecting the National Restaurant Association. It's currently projecting that up to 70% of restaurant items will actually be eaten in people's homes by the year 2020.

So very hard to accomplish buffet eating and ordering if you're eating at home. Says you. I mean, if I just line my purse with a bag, then I'm all good to go. Jordan, thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you, guys. It was a lot of fun. Of all the bites we've taken out of this story, Ben, there's still something we've chewed on a little bit, but have yet to fully swallow and digest.

I see what you did there, and I like it. It's the question we started with. The question on that fake Reddit post, can you be kicked out of an all-you-can-eat buffet because of your size? Right. And Chris got himself booted for other reasons. So let's hear it from Zankmau, the legal advice moderator. Have you ever dealt with discrimination suits?

Like, did this feel like, even though it's clearly plagiarized, did this feel like it could have been a real scenario? No, not even close. I mean, it could have happened for sure. But being morbidly obese is not a protected class, I believe, in any state in the union. You know, you could deny service based on that. Ben, I think there's only one thing left for us to include here. Hmm. Just desserts. Hilarious. No.

Though, yes, I do believe that is what the true buffet pro should really start with. But no, I'm talking about our trip to the All You Can Eat Lunch Buffet. Oh, yeah. Where are we? Shana Punjab. What is it? Why are we here? Indian restaurant. Okay.

They have a lunch buffet. All you can eat buffet. So wait, wait, wait. What's your, before we go in, What's my technique? Yeah, do you remember the techniques? I just go in. I do like a mental taste of everything where I just, you know, I just eyeball it all. Okay.

I don't know. This is weird. Okay, go on. I like it. Okay, I go in. An eyeball taste of everything. I do the eyeball taste. And then I just, I decide what I'm going to prioritize.

Right. So that if there's room for anything else. Endless thread is a production of WBU. are Boston's NPR station in partnership with Reddit. Our show is a dream realized by Jessica Alpert, and when we asked her to come to a buffet with us, she said, Not my job. Iris Adler is our executive producer,

and her strategy for tackling buffets is to get motivated. Got some soup. I'm just going to ask. Do you remember this? They said avoid the soups. Oh, very wise. Change of plan, moving on. I'm avoiding the soups, and I'll tell you why later.

Mix and sound design by Paul Vicus, who described all-you-can-eat-restraint says, mildly awesome. Our web producer is Megan Kelly, and when she is not on chicken patrol, she is looking out for wholesome memes. Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit and his friends were kicked out of a buffet for acting like... Animals being bros. Josh Swartz is our producer, and he found his lawyer on a subreddit called Just neck beard things.

Extra production assistance from James Lindberg. Our intern these many months has been Candace Lim. Woohoo. Candice's internship is over, but she is on to big, exciting things. Candice, good luck, farewell, thank you. Our theme music is by Squelcher. Thanks to Redditor unique username 935 for this week's artwork. It is called Dinner by the Wayside.

Also huge thanks for Shauna Poonjab and Brookline for letting us record in there and letting us eat. They're all you can eat lunch buffet. The food is really good. You should go, even if you're just a buffet eating amateur like Amory. Now that we let the amateur go, we're going to do this pro. I'm going to go double chicken right now. Double chicken?

Double chicken, because I'm not a chicken. Okay. On Reddit, we are endless underscore thread. If you want to contribute art for an upcoming episode or give us a juicy story tip so that we can tell it like we did today, get us up there. By the way, when you do and you go to our page, hit that follow button so that we can be in touch with you on Reddit. My co-host and producer is Amory Sievertson. I'm senior producer and host Ben Brock Johnson.

I'll let myself out. I've made a mortal strategic error. How? What'd you do? Two things. One, I got really excited about the deep-fried items. Yeah. And I just, I had some of those. And then you went back.

You've had a second plate. I did. You're the only person of the three of us, Josh, our silent partner. You're the one person of the three of us who went and got a second plate. You know, some people just can't handle the all you can eat, and others can. I started with the vegetables. Oh, come off it with the vegetables. I did.

I started with the vegetables. You're a vegan. That's the only place you could go. You didn't start there. I started. I started, middled and ended with the vegetables. as pre-usual. Meanwhile, I'm just rolling around in chicken teakamasala,

which is basically like honey and cream and chicken. So what we really need to do is to check back in with you at a couple hours. See how I'm feeling? See how your stomach's doing. I'll be asleep in five minutes. I'm like looking for a place to be prone right now. This bar would do. There's a big booth over there.

just tuck you in. Take you back up tomorrow. Give me a little tablecloth. Wrap it around me. Tuck me in. Yes, you did it. You made it through the credits. And now you'll be rewarded with an update. Almost two years after we released this episode

about all you can eat buffets, our world and the restaurant industry both look very, very different. So we reached back out to the Redditor and Restaurant Consultant that you heard in this episode, that guy Jordan. to get an insider's perspective on how the pandemic is changing the food industry. You joined us, I think it was December of 2018, so going on two years here in an episode that we did called All You Can Eat, about the All You Can Eat Buffet.

And you made a prediction in that episode, or you shared with us a projection in that episode about the restaurant industry in 2020. Do you remember what that was? Man, yeah, I do. So the National Restaurant Association had originally predicted that by 2024, 70% of all restaurant meals would be eaten outside the restaurant, which looks like their prediction has come true about four years ahead of time. Yeah. And I think in the episode, you actually said it was by 2020, by the year 2020, 70%. Yeah, I mean, it's just crazy. And I think really coronavirus just kind of spes. sped up everything, everything from, you know, those meals being outside the home to a little bit smaller menus we're seeing now. And then many, many of the large, you know, brands are kind of going with more of drive-through-only concepts or take-out-only concepts. So I think, you know, you'll see brands like McDonald's, KFC, Taco Bell, going to a much smaller footprint with maybe

just a few people cooking there. And I think we'll see less cooks and more drivers in the future. Where would you say things stand in the restaurant industry overall right now? Well, I mean, it's not good. I firmly believe in a prediction that I heard earlier that at least 30% of restaurants that we know today will not be around by this time next year. You know, from mom and pops on up to, you know, I get news every day that large corporate concepts are just losing units by the hundreds sometimes. I think that we will see kind of a somewhat diminished landscape to where we'll have probably some very high-end restaurants and things like that that exist, you know, your fine dining.

and then we'll have everywhere else it's going to be closer to drive-through takeout kind of stuff because those are the only places where they can either use margins like a fine dining restaurant or a steakhouse or volume through drive-through and takeout to continue to generate business. I think a lot of the middle is going to be taken away.

Just being another hamburger place or a place that just has good sandwiches may not necessarily be enough anymore. What about the all you can eat buffet? Do you think this is the nail in the coffin for the all you can eat buffet, the pandemic? You know what? I thought that they'd be down for the count. We'd never see them again. Why in the world would I want to go shoulder to shoulder with somebody where they're touching

food, I'm touching food, let's all get as many hands touching this food as possible. And so they were down, but they're not out. Really? So it really just depends more on what the local kind of restrictions are on buffets than it does, you know, people's willingness. I mean, scares the bejesus out of me. But what they are able to do because of some state health department codes is as long as they put gloves out and they put sanitizer on one end, you can do it. Are there any hopeful predictions you can share with us?

Yeah, I mean, really something that I've been enjoying is just seeing how creative restaurant operators, chefs can be during this. I know that a friend of mine who lives in Chicago ordered a Mexican meal from one of the top restaurants in the country who you would never think to get a Mexican meal from. And, you know, she was able to get an order of tacos, a pitcher of margaritas, all this stuff from, you know, a Michelin-starred restaurant just because they needed to make money. So I think we'll see places that have, they might just put out one menu a year and leave it at that. And I think we'll start to see more seasonal menus. I think we'll start to see more specials because restaurants have learned that they can do these things faster than they thought they could before.

I think restaurant owners, restaurant workers, we've always been kind of able to multitask and come up with different ideas. All this has shown us is that that's a good thing. Keep working on that. That's what diners want. And I think it will be a more exciting landscape out there, even though it may not be as many owners as there used to be. What are some of the particularly innovative strategies that you've seen restaurants take? up during this time? Well, one of my favorites is ghost kitchens. Ghost kitchens? So a ghost kitchen is a virtual kitchen. You'll, you can never walk into it.

It's not an actual place. They are concepts and sometimes multiple concepts inside a building that's closed to the public except for Grubhub, Door to Ash, Uber Eats drivers. to where a operator may have an Asian place, a Hispanic place, Italian, all underneath one roof, because it just lives digitally on the web. So he can have menus for all these different places, different Facebook pages, Instagram pages, all this stuff where people can find them in order from them. But it's all being produced in one space. and they may only have, you know, a little, just a burner and a fryer and someplace to quickly prep things.

You may have ordered from one already and never known it. A good example of one that got a little bit comical after people figured it out was Pascuali's Pizza. You know, people would go online, see this Pascuali's Pizza. Oh, I can order it right now and be ready for me and, you know, come to me in 15 minutes. I'm all about it. well, Pascuali's pizza was actually Chucky Cheese. So eventually, that went south pretty quickly. But now other places like Chili's opening up, it's just wings inside of their units,

are learning people are going to figure it out. Let's just kind of ally ourselves with that. And, you know, people are going to know that it's coming from us. Hopefully we'll be able to kind of turn our. all the goodwill that people have had at Chili's over the years and say, all right, well, you know, you're used to getting our food at Chili's, try, you know, it's just wings. We think you'll like that, too. When I'm talking to people about Ghost Kitchens, I always come up with, hey, here's a concept that you can go with. And it looks like chicken, pizza, and kind of Cajun-style seafood are concepts that are

doing extremely well, doing, you know, tens or 20 percentage points better than they did last year. So I think you will see a lot more of those type of restaurants for a while because it's just they're craveable items that are hard to make at home. Cravable items. I like that. I think we all do. And people have figured that out is that, you know, I don't have a pizza. of it at home. And I mean, chicken wings are going through the roof in terms of the prices on them

right now because every other concept wants to open up a wing place just because it's easy to do if you have a friar. Not many of us have friars at our homes that we can do big batches of wings. So if you like chicken, go ahead and buy some up because it's only going to be more expensive in the next few months. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I was glad to talk to you guys again. Amory, I think you failed to ask the most important question. What didn't I ask? Do you have a time machine?

Why didn't you ask him that? You're right. I blew it. Damn it. Get Jordan back on the line. Jordan? We have to wait another two years to talk to him again. That's his deal with us.

Only once every two years. Right. Or we just, actually, we throw a party for Jordan now, and we don't even tell him. But we see if he shows up. All right, we'll see you at the party, Jordan.