Stuff You Should Know - How Buffets Work

Episode Date: December 22, 2020

Buffets are every kid’s dream – until they grow up enough to realize how gross communal spreads of food shared with strangers actually are. Then the dream is dashed, for most of us at least. Learn about the golden age of buffets and more right here! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryan out there.

Jerry just left to go get some food. We're guessing at a buffet. Although probably not. I don't think she actually is going to a buffet, Chuck. I can actually hear Jerry laughing for the first time. I can't do. I don't know if that's gonna make it in the final edit, but it was creepy and otherworldly disembodied Jerry laugh,

kind of sinister. It's almost like we're in the same room again. Almost, man, almost. Someday, less than a year, I'm thinking. Less than a year. Yeah, let's just call it that. And we're talking about hitting the road again, huh? Eventually.

Yeah, I mean, if things go great, maybe next fall, but if they don't, then the next year. We talk about stuff way early. Yeah, I mean, those theaters are gonna be jamming. That's the big thought is that when things truly get better, everyone in there, people have never even performed live are gonna book theaters to get up on stage. It's gonna be a lot of fun.

There's gonna be a lot of pent-up energy, right, to be released right in our direction. Boy, talk about it, easy crowd, man. I can't wait for that. I know, I know. So, speaking of talking about things, Chuck, great segue, because it turns out we're talking about something today,

and specifically, we're talking about buffets. That's right, the old Jimmy Buffet. Do you have good... I hadn't even thought about that, good joke. Do you have good memories of buffets from when you were a kid or an adult? We certainly went to buffets more than a little bit growing up, and it kind of jibed with everything

that our household believed in, which was value for the dollar. Sure. I learned from my dad that you should eat until you're physically uncomfortable and then eat a little bit more. Oh, that's good. Didn't have good food examples for my dad.

And, you know, my mom has been known to stuff a roller too in her purse. No. Sure, dude. She falls under the section titled Problematic Customers? Yeah, and I think, boy, I hope she didn't hear this. She can be so mad, but it was usually under the guise of like, well,

I don't feel like I came in that hungry, so I didn't eat as much as I usually do. That's awesome. Well, I'll make you feel a little bit better. My mom, I don't think ever once in her entire life bought candy at a movie theater. She would always bring in those bag of bulk candies in her oversized giant 1980s purse.

Yeah, yeah. It was always great. Like she always had the good candy, but, you know, if you wanted like snow caps or something, you were S-O-L, you know. I will say this, I haven't been to a buffet. I was really trying to figure out the last time. And I don't know, man, like it literally

may have been 20 years ago in Las Vegas or something, a town that I do not enjoy going to. Yeah. But I think maybe, I can't think of any time, I used to go to this sort of super Asian buffet where when my sister and her husband lived in North Carolina with them. Yep.

And it was one of those weird ones that had like this great Chinese food, but then like pasta and seafood, and it was, but not like in the Asian style of seafood. Right, right, yeah. That's like a typical. Fried cod and stuff. That's a typical Chinese buffet.

They have lots of Chinese food, but they have everything. And they'll have like eight different buffets all in one. Is it like that? Yeah, but actually now I do remember the last time I went to a buffet. I did go to one of those KFC buffets, but it had to have been more than 15 years ago. Was it the one in Valdosta?

That's the only one I know about. No, and I remember I literally went because I saw it on the sign, said the buffet. And I was like, I've heard of these. I gotta do it. Yeah, well, it's still around. There's one on exit 18 on I-75 in Valdosta, Georgia. There's a Bonafide KFC buffet.

I can personally attest to its existence. When was the last time you went to a buffet? I hadn't thought about it. And I was thinking about it while you were talking. I was listening to you as well. But do you remember when we did that live catastrophe in Erie, Pennsylvania? Oh, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So the next day. The wind being performed at a school in front of like 19 people? Yes, yeah. And like 10 of them had to be there for like course credit, I think. Yeah. The next day, so there's airplanes fly in and out of Erie

a couple of times a week. And the flight that I happened to have didn't leave till late the next afternoon. So I went and saw, oh, Cure for Wellness, I think was the movie I saw in the theater. And then I went and ate at one of their local buffets in Erie. So you stayed on an extra day, huh? An extra two thirds of a day.

Very, very long two thirds of a day. I think I drove and flew out of another town. You did, you did. And I didn't have that foresight. But before that, I have to say one of my favorite buffets that I went to sometimes was Panahar. You remember Panahar over on Buford Highway? Sure.

The late Panahar, it just shut down, I believe, in the last few months. I don't think I ever went there, was it Indian buffet? It was Bangladeshi. You know, like the average American would just be like, oh, good Indian food. But it was just magical. There was something that they put in the food

that made everything really good, but they would do a lunch buffet and it was fantastic. I bet you would pay for that though. I would pay a lot, especially now that it's gone under. Oh, I see what you mean. You know what I mean? No, they had very good food. It was well made too.

It didn't just taste good. It was well made. They had some 150-year-old grandmother back in the kitchen overseeing things. Yeah, I don't mean that it would be made bad, but Indian food is the love and bane of my existence. I love it so much. Oh, is that right?

But it tears me up. It never gets to me that bad. Yeah, it doesn't get to me that bad. But that's part and parcel with buffets though, Chuck. It might not just be Indian food. It could just be the fact that it's a buffet because buffets make you super-duper sick. All right, so should we talk about the smorgasbord?

Yeah, because that's where the whole thing originated. Yeah, I did not know the origin of that word, so it's kind of cool. In Scandinavia, in the 13th century, they had smorgasbords, but it was smorgasbords and bronzebords. And it sounds a little more like, if you were to put out a nice meat and cheese tray

with some butter and spreads, maybe a little smoked fish. But the key here is vodka on that brand-vitz board. Right, so that's what everybody was there for. But they would lay out these spreads for travelers who came to visit, guests who came over long distances, and they'd be like, here, restore yourself with these. It's lovely. You know, this spread of light food.

And over time, the Swedes said, you know, this is a really great idea. Let's just make this the meal. So from what I can tell, it began as the Bronvins board, and then later became the smorgasbord. And in addition to the fact that it was like this awesome spread of great food that everybody loved, the aristocracy, like the fact that the staff

would just be attending to the smorgasbord, that it wouldn't be waiting on the guests. So if you kind of wanted more privacy or whatever at your dinner party, a smorgasbord was the way to go. Yeah, that makes sense. Keep them out of our hair, tend to the food. I think it was a little more of a refined experience

than just go like stuff your face with everything. Yeah, that's still a big difference between a Swedish smorgasbord and an American buffet. Yeah, like very well laid out on like a round table in a specific order that's not necessarily just an order to make you fill up on cheap food first, which we'll get to later. But yeah, it sounds kind of cool.

And then in the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games, I think the rest of the world saw the smorgasbord and was like, we need to bring a little piece of that back home to the good old USA. Yeah, they're like, you've served yourself from a table in the same room where you sit down and eat. This is amazing. And there is something amazing about it that I still,

despite researching and writing this whole thing, I cannot put my finger on what it is, but there's just something about buffets or smorgasbords. So something did capture the world's attention at that 1912 Olympics. And then in America in particular, the smorgasbord really got a boost at the 1939 World's Fair. That's the one where that big globe

is over in Flushing, Queens, right? Oh, sure, yeah. So at that one, there was a Swedish pavilion and they had a restaurant there called the Three Crowns Restaurant. And they put out a real deal smorgasbord and the Americans just went bonkers for it. And as a matter of fact, they said,

just give us a couple of years. We're gonna figure out how to turn this into basically the most American thing anyone's ever invented in the history of food service. Right, so from there, we moved to Las Vegas, which is, you can't talk about buffets without talking about Vegas, of course. And early, early on,

what would become the Las Vegas Strip before Benny Siegel even was dreaming of the Flamingo. Was it the Bugsy Siegel, right? Yeah, Benny's his real name, Bugsy was it. I was wondering that the way you said it, I've been correcting you lately and just putting my foot in my mouth every time. So I came at it a little more trepidatiously than before.

Have you seen? Definitely more trepidatiously than the Sacajawea correction. Did you get the supercut of that from the basically exact same conversation we already had years before? No, I did see people mention it. Yeah, someone spliced.

It was in the Lewis and Clark, it was really funny. You gotta hear that. Please, will you forward that to me? I got it, I don't know. Yeah, I'll have to dig it up. It was good stuff. I wanna give him his due too. Okay.

So, Herb MacDonald was this guy's name, he was a publicist, and he was kind of one of the very first people to start working on one that would become the Vegas Strip. And he's given credit as the guy that came up with his El Rancho Vegas, or I guess where he worked at the El Rancho, which is the first hotel there on the Strip,

what would become the Las Vegas Buffet? Yeah, the legend has it that one night in the late 40s, he was hungry and he went to the kitchen and came back with a bunch of cold cuts and cheeses, kind of laid him out to make himself a sandwich. And some of the gamblers who were there late at night were like, hey, I'm kind of hungry, can I get some of that?

And he's thought, huh, this is not a bad idea. If I lay out some food that isn't a sit-down meal that the gamblers can serve themselves, they're going to spend more time here gambling. So maybe I will create what's now known as the American Buffet in Las Vegas. The cheap all-you-can-eat 24-hour buffet had its origins from that little Eureka moment.

Yeah, the Midnight Chuck Wagon was the name of the first deal, I guess, at $1.25. And they became known for the 24-hour version, which was the Buckaroo Buffet. I love that. Which was a buck, it was a dollar, the buckaroo, of course. Right.

And yeah, I mean, it's, everyone kind of knows the history of Vegas and like cheap food, cheap or free food and cheaper free drinks and fairly cheap or free rooms. That was sort of the old days. It's not a cheap, cheap town to visit these days. I think they still run a lot of deals and stuff like that cause gambling is where they make, you know,

where they want to make most of their money, but they did wise up at some point and they were like, hey, listen, we're not just gonna keep giving away steak dinners and stuff. Well, people started coming for the shows and stuff like that and weren't necessarily gambling. Time was, if you went to Vegas, you went and emptied your pockets there.

So they could afford to lose money on like the buffet or whatever. But the Vegas all-you-can-eat all night buffet that started in the late forties and became synonymous with the town actually kind of lent a bit of cache to buffets in general in the United States, as we'll see. Like they kind of spread from there.

It started in Scandinavia, moved to the World's Fair in 1939, then to Vegas and then from Vegas, it just kind of spread like a spider web of, I don't know, like Apple turnover all the mode. Okay, yeah, I thought you were gonna say something like a five-gallon pan of Hollandaise sauce. Oh, that is so much better than what I said. Man, that was amazing, Chuck.

All right, let's take a break and we're gonna dive into the golden age. We love golden ages, the golden age of the buffet right after this. We love golden ages, the golden age of the buffet right after this. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper

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Chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug. Okay, so there's long been in America restaurants that have been like, all you can eat blank for blank amount of money. Yeah, we used to do that some. Sure, I mean, like, did you ever eat at Buffalo's Cafe for wings?

Oh no, did they have an all you can eat? Yeah, but it was, it was like, all you can eat wings for like, say, eight or nine or $10 or whatever, right? Yeah, we went to a place called Rio Vista on Memorial Drive, which was, it was like, all you can eat catfish on Tuesday nights, that kind of thing. Right, yeah, yeah, and that's still very much around.

And that apparently is where the whole idea behind Buffets finds its other footing, its other origin in the United States, was this, these kind of deals that were meant to kind of generate new business, like you would go try out a restaurant. There's this really great site called Restauranting Through History, terrible name,

but a great site. And the person who runs the site found this ad for the city restaurant in Ellyra, Ohio. Yeah, from 1896, and it was all you can eat oyster stew for 25 cents. So it had been around for a little while. But when the depression rolled around, all of a sudden people were like,

oh, all you can eat sounds kind of good because I haven't eaten in a week and a half. And I've got this whole family who's starving too. So let's go try this, and they did. Yeah, that surprised me. I was surprised to see them turn up in the depression. Just because of value and stuff. But food prices were low.

So I guess they could afford to charge people 50 or 60 cents or something for all they, well, not all they care to eat. That wasn't really a thing yet. But people did love it. And apparently desserts during the Depression era buffets was really where they, because I guess that was just a rare treat.

So they would really load up on the sweets. Yeah, they definitely would. But it taught people who ran restaurants like, wait a minute, wait a minute. If you order people, or if you offer people, what all they can eat of something. Like some people do like overindulge, but a lot of people just eat like a normal amount,

which is weird. And that kind of gave this like confidence, I guess, to restaurant tours to kind of start to move into the like changing their restaurant entirely over to and all you can eat set up. Yeah, so we go now to the 50s and 60s where legit chains started opening that were very cheap or let's just say inexpensive buffets.

And this is where you start to see, mac and cheese and carb heavy meals and fried chicken and salads like Jell-O, the little kind of festive looking Jell-O mold salads that you're not quite sure what's inside. And then chain said, you know what? The smorgasbord word is kind of weird. Like I don't think they were using the word buffet at all

at that point, were they? I'd started around the same time in like the 50s or 60s. Okay, but they were using smorgasbord sometimes or smorgi or other variations like smorget or smorgah. And this is when they kind of started leaning away from these nice round tables of food to the long sort of cattle style grazing. Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, like I said,

that Vegas buffets kind of gave buffets everywhere else in the United States this kind of cachet. And part of that was presentation and that is more and more chains kind of grew and took over the whole buffet style food. Yeah, they did away with the presentation part really quick and just said like, eat your slop. You know, there was more about that.

They'd shove you into lying, that kind of thing. But the idea, like you said, smorgasbord was kind of taking off. It seems to have been like out west and in the Midwest smorgies and all that, but then elsewhere, buffet started to come to be used. So by about the 50s or the 60s, you had smorgies and buffets proliferating

across the United States, like a pan of apple turnover all the mode. Yeah, and that word buffet, you know, comes from the furniture piece, the French furniture piece for like, we call them sideboard sometimes. It's what, we have a couple in our house from Emily's grandparents,

but people call those buffets as well. We call them bed spreads. Bed spreads, I call them comforters or afghan. Remember those growing up? Did you have afghans in the house? Yeah, yeah, they were always too small. It was like, why'd you make this? It's also the itchiest way to keep warm.

Why'd you stop making this? The itchiest way to keep warm of all time, probably, besides like a wool blanket. Yeah, yeah, I'm not big on afghans. I like things to be bigger than that, softer. I don't know about small afghans. What was going on there? They were always just slightly too small.

So like they couldn't, wouldn't cover from chin to foot? No, no, never. Never has there been an afghan that has covered from chin to foot successfully. Even if you do the little diagonal trick? Yes, I've even tried that. And then it's like too short on the sides.

So like my love handles will be cold. Oh no, get at that. The thing that I remember growing up with is what comes next, which was a lot of these, but the Western Steakhouse sort of buffet, which was actually, one of them was started by Dan Blocker who played Hoss Cartwright on Bonanza. He started the Ponderosa Steakhouse,

which I must have known that back then because we went to Ponderosa's and Bonanza was the big one that we went to. Ponderosa was the buffet I grew up with too, up in Toledo. Yeah, I love those Bonanzas. It's sort of, I mean, the same company, right? Yeah, as far as I know, I'm not sure what the difference was.

We didn't have a Bonanza. Like I said, it was just Toledo, but we did have that Ponderosa. It was wonderful. What about Sizzler? Sizzler we didn't have, but I was aware. You know, when you think of like the Steakhouse theme buffet.

You were Sizzler aware. It comes to mind. Yeah, I was Sizzler aware. I don't think we ever went to Sizzler. That seemed like a cut above, if I remember correctly. Yeah, I think it always, at the very least positioned itself,

if not was actually a cut above. There's also one called Chakkarama. That I never heard of. And then Golden Corral, everybody knows about. It's been around since the 70s. And Golden Corral is like the last man standing from what I can tell. It's actually doing rather well.

I think there was still one over by the North of Cab Malth. I'm not mistaken. They're everywhere. They're still building them now. Yeah, well, but they're not everywhere around where I live. I got you.

What about, did you ever go to Western Sizzlin? Cause it was, Yeah. Oh really? It was established in Augusta. So I would guess you had been there before. Yeah, I went to Western Sizzlin and then the other big ones,

and they are in fact next on the list, or when they went sort of a farmy home spun. There was an old country buffet near where I lived. And there were also hometown buffets, Ryan's Grill, and then bakery and buffet, all owned by Ovation Brands, which was just pumping out garbage food to buffets all over the country.

You're right. Yeah, Yumi said that the worst case of food poisoning she ever had was the first time she ever tried a buffet and it was a Ryan's. Oh really? And she just, she can't even say that word. Like she can't even be friends with somebody

named Ryan now, cause she'll just get sick at the thought of it. Oh man. She can't even watch Ryan Gosling or Ryan Reynolds movies. No, no, I have to call her, I have to call him Gosling. If I call him anything else.

I like and was a big fan, and we as a family as well, of the, of I guess ethnic buffets with, we didn't do many Mexican ones, but there were definitely, there was definitely one we went to sometimes on Sunday morning that had,

I think it was kind of even before they started calling things brunch. But I can't remember the name of it, but it had a really nice taco station, and they would make you like a fajita station, and that stuff was so good. Where you don't remember the name of it? No man, I can't remember the name.

I don't think it was Ponchos. I don't think it was a chain. I gotcha. We went to Chichis when I was a kid. I don't remember being a buffet strangely. I don't know why, but- I didn't know it was either. Yeah, that's where I was introduced to the chimichanga.

Oh, God, the best thing. I'd love to eat and I'd love to say, but Chichis was like the olive garden of Mexican restaurants, you know what I mean? Yeah, I think so. I didn't really go to those that much, but we did go to Mongolian barbecue in the 80s.

There was one another on Memorial Drive near where I live that, you know, that's where you pick out all your, and I can't imagine the health codes, because they literally had like raw meat that you would pick out. Yeah. And then hand to a person to cook. Yeah, with just your bare hands cupped.

Man. Filled with raw meat. It was so good though. There's a chain called Hu Hut. It's a Mongolian grill. It's like make your own stir-fry buffet. And they just, they're newcomers, they've been around for about 20 years,

and they're actually doing rather well as far as buffets are going. Well, good for them. There's also this little bit of history that I found on that restauranting through history site, Jan Whitaker's site. She turned up a couple of gyms that I just thought you have to mention.

Like that whole smorgasbord thing, when people were trying to figure out how to Americanize it, there was a hilarious collision between ethnicities when like an Asian proprietor took over like a smorgasbord or opened a smorgasbord. Yeah. Where you would have like Gong Lee's smorgie or Johnny Hom's Chuck Wagon Hoffbrough and smorgie.

That's great. I just love that. I think that's the cutest thing ever. I'll bet Johnny Hom and Gong Lee were very happy welcoming gentlemen. Yeah. Pizza buffets was something we did a lot as well. There was one called Village Inn Pizza Near Us.

And I guess it could be akin to like a Shakies who I think is kind of the king of the pizza buffet. But boy, those pizza buffets, I remember it was like, like you always had a plan at any buffet, like a game plan. You didn't just like casually eat. You like, you had a game plan. But those pizza buffets, I remember people sitting around in the restaurant with like one eye

on when they're bringing those pies out. And it was like people would attack it. They would swarm, swarm. Yeah. Yeah, pizza huts had buffets for a very long time and they still do from what I understand. But those, it's the dessert pizzas that are like the bomb. Yeah.

I think keep pizza buffets going. And there's always the sad pizza too that no one wanted that just sat and sat. Right. If you're looking for a pizza buffet, they have CCs now. They're kind of all over the place. I don't need a pizza buffet.

There's this, I think we all need a pizza buffet once in a while Chuck. But there is this site called Mashed, which I hadn't heard of, but they had a lot of good stuff that I ran across for this article. But they were rating buffets and they got to CCs and they said, do you like eating cardboard? No.

Then stay away from CCs. I was like, that's mean. The funny thing is now as an adult to like, I go to New York and like, I'll grab a slice and that is the meal. All right. And not like, I would like nine more of these and then a dessert one.

Yeah. Yeah, that's nice. It's crazy. Yeah, but every once in a while it's, I don't know, just going berserk on food is kind of, there's something about it. Maybe that's the thing that couldn't put my finger on. Going berserk on food is the allure of buffets.

I liked this in high school, my hack for school lunch was the salad buffet. Well, it actually wasn't a buffet, but it was a build your own salad that you might as well have, you know, you didn't need to go back because I would build these huge salads just stacked with like ham and turkey and cheese and bacon bits and very little lettuce was going on in their croutons

and then drench it with ranch dressing. And that was a really good value at my high school cafeteria. That's awesome. Yeah, once you drench it with ranch, it's like, goodbye nutritional value. Hello, love. But salad buffets were really big in the 80s and 90s.

Yeah, they were. People were trying to eat a little better. And so I think in 1978, the two big salad buffet competitors, super salad and soup plantation. And soup plantation also was known as sweet tomatoes for a while. They were both founded in 78

and they had a pretty good run up until the 90s. And then people were like, I don't think this is actually very healthy. And they said it's never been. And they started to kind of go away little by little. My favorite name of all time of those style of restaurants. I don't know if you remember lettuce surprise use. Yes, yes, they were good.

I loved lettuce surprise you actually too. All of those super salad, soup plantation. I mean, like they're, I like the idea behind them, but they're, you know, not actually healthy. No, of course not. Like I said, my salad was probably worse for you or worse for me than whatever was in the regular lunch. And Big Mac and speaking of Big Macs, it turns out Chuck,

I read this really great article on, oh, I can't remember, maybe eater, but it was like the history of fast food buffets. And there's like this whole subculture where all they want to do is talk about fast food buffets. That's it. And there's like legendary ones that may or may not have existed.

Like McDonald's supposedly had a buffet for a little while or Taco Bell, but the impression that I have is that that might've been like a local franchisee trying something out, it wasn't necessarily, yeah, just completely lost their S and they're like serving McDonald's or Taco Bell buffet style. Well, I was a Wendy's super bar adherent.

Yeah. I think I've told the story before for newspaper staff, you were allowed to check out and go quote unquote, sell ads or take pictures or whatever. So all the newspaper staff would always hit the super bar near the high school and eat pasta and a little Mexican taco salad. And my favorite thing was they used,

don't even remember, they used their hamburger buns as the bread and they would griddle those hamburger buns. Yeah, it's garlic bread. Yeah, it was so good. It really was, yeah, cause like their stuff was legit. Like even their little salad bar was good, but they made like a baked potato bar and the whole thing was, and it was like three bucks

or something like that. Although the key here is it was not all you can eat. And from what I gather, that was one of the downfalls of the Wendy's super bar. How was it not? I don't believe it was. I believe it was just one big fat trip, much as you could fit.

That's my memory though. I'm not 100% sure, but I'm pretty sure that's what it was. And I also saw somewhere that that was one of the reasons why it went away is because they just had so much trouble keeping people from going back for seconds or thirds or whatever. That also explains now what looking back why I always had pasta and enchilada sauce

and a baked potato. Right, exactly. Cause you're like, where can I put this? Right. Oh, there, there we go. You want to take one more break and then come back and talk about how buffets make any money at all. Yeah, let's do it.

Okay, we'll be right back. We'll be right back. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips?

Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper cause you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling

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Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck, so there's this thing, like the fact that if you're a Las Vegas buffet and you're offering things for cheap, you're actually losing money. It kind of shows you, it points out that buffets have a really narrow profit margin. Apparently restaurants have, you know,

one of the narrowest profit margins of any industry, but then the buffets are the narrowest of the narrow. Like they really have trouble making money. And so there's actually an entire economic theory called adverse selection that predicts that buffets just shouldn't exist. And yet they do in the face of economic theory. Yeah, so this is interesting.

Adverse selection basically is if you have a case where a buyer has more information than the seller does, you're gonna be in a distinct advantage as the buyer. So the seller's gonna set their price at a price point that's low enough to attract the worst customer they can get and high enough to chase away the really good customer, which I guess in this case would be a really heavy eater.

So the good customer to the buffet owner is a low capacity eater. The low capacity eater. And it basically means you're not gonna be in business very long. Yeah, because you're gonna set your price high enough that the low capacity eater is gonna be like, this isn't worth it.

I don't eat enough to justify paying this. But it's gonna be low enough so that a high capacity eater with a huge empty belly is going to say, oh, that's a great value. So you're going to attract nothing but high capacity eaters and your business is just gonna go away. And yet buffets still managed to persist despite that very logical economic theory

predicting that they shouldn't. And it turns out that when you start digging around in the business of buffets, that there's a lot of like tricks that they use that you don't find elsewhere in the restaurant industry to kind of protect that very razor thin profit margin any way they possibly can. Yeah, and obviously if you're looking at a buffet

and how they made or make money, the family unit is a really big deal because and I know it's very sort of lazy and reductive to paint it in such a kind of a king of Queensian way. But that's how buffet runners and managers and restaurateurs looked at it was, you've got this big horse of a father that's like,

I need to eat at a buffet tonight. And this like diminutive little wife is just like, well, I don't eat very much. And the kids are like, well, I love the dessert. So the only one in that family is, that's really putting a hurting on the buffet is the dad. Yeah, Kevin James. Kevin James.

And again, this is not how we look at things. It is super lazy. But if you're talking about the buffet industry, that's exactly how they looked at it. Yeah, I mean, like all of those cliches about like, oh gosh, here comes a football team or something like that. That's actually like part of the buffet industry.

They worry about stuff like that. Oh, totally. Yeah, so some ways that they try to balance out that, they're fine that balance between low capacity and high capacity eaters or to kind of protect their profit margin in the face of, more high capacity eaters than low capacity eaters. In one way, they'll just straight up kind of fly

in the face of established all you can eat ethos, ethos, which is all you can eat, no strings attached. And some restaurants say, you know what? No, we're not going to do that. We're going to basically use nudge psychology to kind of get you to not be wasteful, to be a little more mindful, because that's kind of part and parcel

with going to a buffet is being like, I don't have to use my brain at all for the next hour that I'm going to this buffet. And so they'll try to do things like, they'll say like, take all you want, eat all you take is a very common sign you'll see. And in fact, Chuck, I mentioned this restaurant called Grandpa's Down in Cocoa, Florida.

It's in a train, which is just that in and of itself is worth going to, right? But they have a salad bar and on their salad bar, it has a sign that says if you waste food or if the waiter or server determines you have wasted food from your trip to the salad bar, you haven't eaten enough, you'll be charged $2. There's a $2 charge for wasting food from the salad bar.

And I can't tell you how many arguments you me and I have seen between like old couples about whether or not that they're going to get charged that $2 because the husband or the wife didn't eat enough of the salad from the salad bar. We know how that ends. It's like, is it buffets weren't gluttonous enough? That ends with some old man saying, oh yeah, watch this.

Yeah, fine. Shoving whatever food is on that plate down his throat right in front of the manager. Yeah. Oh man. Yeah. Other places do that too. I've heard of plenty of places when I was a kid

that supposedly like the rumor is, I don't think ever saw it happen, but they would charge you for wasted food. Yeah, I don't know if they actually do. I think it's just a threat. Yeah, you know, it's kind of like a mandatory mask policy. They're not going to put you in jail for not wearing a mask, but the fact that it exists is going to make more people

go ahead and do it than otherwise would. Yeah, another trick they will lay on you is to not clear your plates away because I guess there is real research that says that people are not prone to go up for more food if there's like three sort of half-eaten dirty plates sitting in front of them. I guess the shame accumulation keeps them from going back.

Yeah, that's happened to me. I realize I've been a target of that kind of harassment now that I've done this research. Are you okay? I had no idea. And now I'm a little bitter about it. I mentioned earlier about the front loading it with carbs. And that is true.

They have done studies that show that, I think Cornell University, I don't know why they did this, but they do- Well, they have a huge like food industry program here. Oh, okay. They're like the national leader in it. All right, well, I'm glad you said that because I thought it was a strange thing to study.

But 75% of people in a buffet line, they found got the first thing in the line no matter what it was. And so the idea is that you put like, if it's a Chinese buffet, that's where you would put the fried rice or old country buffets. That's where you'd put the mashed potatoes and gravy maybe.

And you want them to fill up on that stuff. And by the time they get to the real high dollar amount, which is like the bagged beef that we're gonna talk about in a minute, that you're not as hungry. Yeah, that same study, I believe, found that two thirds of the stuff that is on the plate after you've made your rounds on the buffet

were the first things that you encountered. Like you just go up and you start behaving in this really predictable way. So, buffets protect their bottom line by catering to that. They also, like if you ever noticed when you go to a buffet, it's like 5.99, but then when you go to check out, it's like 10.99 because your Coke, your fountain Coke was $5.

Yeah. That fountain Coke costs them next to nothing. So to make $5 on it is a really good way to boost their profits whether otherwise losing it, you know, hemorrhaging money. That's why we drink water. Yeah, so I've read some stuff about people getting kicked out of buffets, which we'll talk about in a second,

but some buffets are like, we don't serve tap water. Like sorry, you have to pay for a drink no matter what it is. They also have to watch their price point with pricing it too low so that people don't think they're eating garbage food. So they've done studies on that and a pizza buffet for $4.

I think people who paid the $4 considered the food 11% less good or desirable than people that paid literally twice as much, paid $8 even though the food was the same. Yeah, double digit difference. Yeah, and you know, I guess the might as well say it here, I worked on a job as a food stylist, not as the food stylist, but when you're a PA

sometimes they would just say, hey, food styling needs you for this whole job, just go be one of them. And I did that for a job on an unnamed major chain, you know, sort of one of those bar restaurants is all I'll say. And literally every single thing on the menu comes bagged and most of it comes pre-cooked.

Yeah, that's why like a lot of restaurants will say we're a scratch kitchen because they're saying like we don't use Cisco, like we actually use ingredients that you would use at home. But yeah, so many restaurants just use Cisco or some other food service where all that stuff is pre-cooked by Cisco and it just shows up in bags

and your job as the cook is to put it together and heat it up and then that's what you do. That's actually one way that buffets save money is by not having to employ actual chefs or cooks. And they also have to employ far fewer wait staff because, you know, they're just coming over to make sure your drink is refilled or something like that.

They need way fewer people because you're serving yourself, which saves them money. And then there's one other trick that kind of falls in a little bit with the, you know, take all you want, eat all you take kind of sign. And apparently Sizzler led the charge on this, that whole all you can eat idea.

If you stop and think about it, it sounds a lot like a challenge to some like, you know, the reptilian part of your brain takes it that way. Watch this. And so, yeah, yeah. And so Sizzler said, well, we're gonna change that to all you care to eat, which is much more genteel

and it's much less of a, it's much less hostile or aggressive sounding. And it never took off, obviously, but you can still see that every once in a while. You'll see it on like a buffet sign or something like that. And you're like, oh, that's a fancy buffet. Yeah, there's another place here. I can't remember the name of it.

I think Jason's Deli. That I think they got like a salad bar and a dessert bar, but you also order sort of the main portion of your meal. And like soup and salad and dessert can come with it though, right? Yeah, and it's so good. I love Jason's Deli. Is it good stuff? It is.

I mean, it's a big honkin salad bar and soft serve ice cream, chocolate, vanilla and swirl. Yeah. They have this really great look, kind of like molasses bread. Like it's really good. Chuck, you should go check it out. And their sandwiches and soups are pretty good too.

All right. So problem customers, you know, we've talked about people that would stuff food in there. Like they would come in with like the ziplocks ready to go inside the purse. Yeah. Or they have like special plastic pouches in their coats. In Britain, there were people at this one place,

a buffet called Gobi in Brighton, in Britain. They were banned for life in 2012 and they made the news. They're like, you can't come back here anymore. They did. And I read this business insider article where this person was like, oh man, you know, I wonder how easy it is to get kicked out of a buffet. So they went to a different buffet called Mr. Woo's.

And they said they tried so hard to get kicked out and just eating and eating and eating that they were basically crawling out when they finally left. And they finally asked the manager, like what do you have to do to get kicked out? And the Mr. Woo's manager was like, we would never kick anybody out.

It says all you can eat, you know, you eat as much as you like. And they were like, okay, I wish I would have gone to a different place to try to get kicked out because it sounded like they really paid the price for it. I also like the story from the Chakkarama when in 2004, a couple that was on Atkins were kicked out because they went to the carving station 12 times

and they were just loading up on meat and they were like, you can't do it. That's the most expensive thing here, get out. Yeah, so the restaurant was like, they had to issue a statement because apparently the position was we're a buffet, but we're not all you can eat. And that's like basically a contradiction in terms.

You have no business owning a buffet if it's not all you can eat, you know? Yeah, look it up. So, and that's actually a pretty fairly routine thing. Like you can get kicked out of a buffet pretty easily. And if it's particularly egregious, you're banned for life. I'm realizing now that Yubi has a lot of buffet stories for somebody who doesn't like buffets,

but she lived in Japan for a while and she and our friend Raimi, who she met there, he is a big strapping dude. And he actually got, I believe banned from a Japanese sushi buffet because he would show up and like this poor couple who own this restaurant would just be like, please, please sir, no, please stop going back to get more food.

I could do some damage at a sushi buffet for sure. Yes, yes, yeah. I could too. So now the dark side of buffets, I mean, a lot of this has been dark, yet we're salivating somehow still. Yeah. Our buffet's gross is how you titled this next section.

And the one sentence you have is, that answer is resounding, yes. It's true. It's gross, you know, when you're sharing utensils, your food or your body germs are gonna be all over that when that those tongs fall in the meat and gravy and the guy behind you just picks them right on up and they maybe wipes them off of the paper and napkin.

Like who calls someone over and says, sir, the tongs fell in here. That's what you're advised to do if you're a patron of a buffet. That's what you're supposed to do. If there's tongs in the food, that food is toast. It should not be served anymore because Mr. Poupan's who just touched the tongs last

and is threw it into the stir-fried beef has now corrupted the entire pan of stir-fried beef. But you don't wanna wait on the stir-fried beef. So you just get it and wipe it off and you use it. It's gross. That's why buffet patrons tend to be more rugged than the average restaurant goer. It's also gross

because that food is just sitting out there for a long time sometimes. No, it's as dangerous. It's dangerous. They try to do what they can with ice and chafing dishes and steamer tables, but you know, let's get real. Some of that stuff is well

out of the required temperature range. Yeah, and so that range is 40 degrees Fahrenheit to 140 degrees Fahrenheit and anything in that 100 degree window is fair game for things like E. coli and Shigella and Salmonella to grow. And apparently the most prolific bacteria can double in population size in 20 minutes

within that temperature range. So it's actually, it's not just gross. It's kind of dangerous. Like if you read, I mean, these don't get published very frequently beyond like local areas. So you would have to do some research, but if you just look up food poisoning and buffets on Google,

you're gonna find that it happens a lot because you're gonna be able to search a bunch of small town and cities, papers all at once. And it seems like it happens quite a bit and that's why. Yeah, we all need to pay, we all owe a debt to Johnny Garneau. He is the restaurateur and germaphobe who in 1959 patented the sneeze guard.

It was known as the food service table at the time, but those sneeze guards, they went from not there at all to they're everywhere and required by law now over the course of 20, 30, 40 years. I remember by the time we were kids, they were pretty much in play unless you went to maybe one out,

if you went to a buffet that was a little more rural area, it might be kind of wide open, but I remember there usually always being sneeze guards. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's definitely like law now. Speaking of law, by the way, I forgot to mention with those utensils, the shared utensils that buffet patrons serve themselves with, there's no law regarding how long those can stay out

and how often they have to be replaced by the way. Yeah, does not surprise me. So yeah, God bless Johnny Garneau, who was like, this is just gross, but this is the business I'm in, so let me try to improve it however I can. And he came up with the sneeze guard. Food waste is obviously a big problem.

If you are an ovation brand, a big, big company with lots of buffets, they I think they filed for bankruptcy in 2016, but they had 330 buffets nationwide. They had real computer modeling and data driven insight into exactly what to bring out and when to bring it out and how to really cut down on that food waste, because that's a big cost for them.

Not only is it just wasteful and terrible to throw big pans of food away, but that's like you said, the margins are so thin, they have to do everything they can, including computer modeling to really see if they can get that down to the very, I guess minimum amount. Yeah, and like they had it down to a science man,

like they knew to the store, like based on that location's data, what food they should put out at what time and in what amounts to try to cut down on food waste as much as possible, which is pretty impressive. But despite that, they still found that between five and 25% of every pan of food, including apple pie all the mode was going to waste

and there's just nothing they could do about it. And from what I could tell, that doesn't take into account the waste that was being sloughed off of like the customer's plates who took all they wanted, but did not eat all they took it. I'm trying to think of those phone calls about this computer modeling, you know, and like restaurant managers arguing with corporate.

Right. I'm telling you, Frank, Buffalo doesn't move Salisbury steak after two. They just don't stop putting it out. Just face it. I love it when people say face it. Face it. Face it.

They can't move Salisbury steak, Frank. So some places are allowed and some communities are allowed to pick up this food for people who need food, but, you know, I think that's probably kind of rare, sadly. We talked about that and that. Why is that dude in that dumpster episode about gleaning? There are communities that definitely allow gleaning,

but there's some that expressly prohibit it, which is sad because that is a lot of wasted food. And food on the plate, the patrons don't eat. That's wasted as well. Yeah, supposedly two hotel buffets are the champs of food waste for not just buffets, but the entire restaurant industry. They throw out about 50% of all the food

they put out on any given day, which is just shameful. But the silver lining of the whole thing is, is you don't have to worry about this food waste for much longer because buffets probably won't be around that long. Or if they do, it's going to be in very limited small amounts. Because like you said, that Ovation Brands,

that was the leader of the industry for a while, they went bankrupt. Right now it's Golden Corral, but Golden Corral's up against the wall because not just restaurants are in trouble, but phase were specifically singled out by the CDC guidelines as saying these should probably shut down until the pandemic is over

because they are COVID nightmares as far as restaurants are concerned. I think Golden Corral would be up against the fence now. I guess so. They'd be up against the barbed wire. Yeah, I mean, people are eating healthier these days. Millennials are certainly not unless there's, I'm sure there's an ironic millennial

that loves a good buffet, but generally, that's not their bag. Even baby boomers, which was a big part of the buffet generation are eating healthier as they age, they don't want to die. So everyone's trying to do a little better and it's been narrowed down to sort of the local mom-and-pops. You know what, I have gone,

my dad lives up in the mountains and I've gone to the mom-and-pop buffet there within the last like 12 years. Now that I remember. Nice, that's awesome. But there are those and then sure, it's great. And that stuff is cooked. Like that's like grandma's fried chicken

and like the real deal. Yeah. It's not backed food. Yeah, I love that, no. But yeah, they are, I mean, they're gonna, the salad bar will be around. They'll always be buffets, probably on cruise ships and there'll be some at casinos.

The best buffet I ever had was in Vegas with Yumi. It was a breakfast buffet and they had a no joke of donut making station where they made donuts in front of you. It was like, I can still imagine myself there right now. Happiest day of my life. Like the little fryer? Yeah, it was so good, dude.

It was so good. But they also had frosting too. It wasn't just like, here's some cinnamon sugar on it. It was amazing donuts. But so there's always going to be like buffets here or there. But the idea of just buffets being everywhere, their heyday is over and they're definitely going the way of the dinosaur.

Face it. Face it. But I mean, I think it's sad because I think the kids are gonna miss out on an experience. Because it's kids who enjoy buffets, you know what I mean? Kids love them, man. That swirled ice cream that tastes like acid rain

will never get old. Yeah. And I mean, the one of the things you can say about buffets that we'll lose is this ability to try new things, you know, like you don't risk it all on ordering something that's your entree and then it's terrible and you just wasted an entree. Like you can go try stuff at a buffet.

Like I tried frog legs when I was a kid at a buffet at a dinner theater that we used to go to. I probably never would have tried frog legs in my entire life had it not been for that buffet. So there's something to be lost with buffets. It's true. I think I might've tried frog legs. And I don't know if you ever went to this place

but my final plug, it's not open anymore. So it's a worthless plug. But Athens, Georgia had a place called Charlie Williams Pinecrest Lodge. Oh yes. I remember the Pinecrest Lodge. It was out, I guess, somewhere on the east side. It wasn't like close to campus or anything.

And that was a really kind of quote unquote nice buffet where like that's where the parents would always take the kids when they're in town. Right. You wore your jeans without the holes in them for that thing for Sunday. Yeah, I think they had frog legs there. Yeah.

So that's an on frog legs, right? You got anything else? No, I feel like I would do myself to check out a buffet at some point soon. Well, not soon, but like next year. Yeah, after the pandemic passes for sure. If there's any left. Right.

Well, since we talked about the pandemic passing, everybody, that means, of course, it's time for listener mail. Let me see. I got a few good ones here. I'm gonna call this changed life. Kia ora, guys. I'm writing because an episode of your podcast

helped me discover my life's passion in dream career 10 years ago. I was a science obsessed 12 year old listening to stuff you should know frequently. And the episode that changed everything was how molecular gastronomy works. Remember that one? Yeah, that's a strange life changing when go on.

The concept of breaking down a food to its molecular basis and reconstructing it into something unrecognizable from a sensory level blew my mind. You planted a concept in my head that inspired me ever since. That year I did a presentation on H-E-R-V-E. What is that?

Hervé Viches? No, I don't know what that is. I don't either. We'll say Hervé. Oh, no, wait, Hervé this. H-E-V-R-E this. I don't know what that is. It sounds like it's a play on curb this

starring Hervé Viches. Okay, I had this presentation for my class. I saved up until I could afford a kit of food activities the following year. As fortune had it, a school teacher informed me that the more practical version of molecular gastronomy is food technology. Through a science fair, I was linked

with a group of mentors with the New Zealand Institute of Food Science and Technology through the ages of 14 to 16. My early networking from six years prior helped me secure an amazing first internship at one of New Zealand's largest food manufacturers this summer. I still get giddy with excitement, I felt from that episode every day from studying non-Newtonian fluid mechanics

to experimenting with new stabilizers. A single episode has led me down a STEM path that I wouldn't have discovered otherwise yet suits me completely. Man, that's amazing. Yeah. The gift of knowing what I am meant to do early on has pulled me through severe mental and physical illness.

I'm not sure I would have continued to pursue a field in STEM had I not known what was waiting for me. I think about how you guys changed my life often. I'm sorry for not letting you know sooner. That's okay. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for pointing me in the direction of food technology.

It is an invisible yet highly important undercoat of modern life that I would have never known without you. And that is from Kizzy. Man, Kizzy, thank you. That was an amazing email. That Chuck is exactly why we take every topic as seriously as the last, isn't it? Yeah, I think so.

Because I mean, you never know what it's gonna mean to somebody. And like even if we're like, oh, that was kind of interesting. There's somebody like Kizzy out there who's like, well, that episode just changed my life. So congratulations, Kizzy, on figuring out what you want to do in life so early. Best of luck and best wishes.

And thank you very much for letting us know that. That was great. You never know, the next great Buffeteer might be listening to this very episode. All right, very nice. Well, if you want to get in touch with us like Kizzy did or you think you're America's next great Buffeteer we want to hear from you,

you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called,

David Lacher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.