Speaker 1: Oh boy.
Speaker 2: We learned a lot of a lot about the buffet,
Speaker 2: a lot about overeating. Is it buffet or buffet comedy?
Speaker 2: I say, bouffe, yeah yeah, He says buffet.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah b o f a y.
Speaker 3: So I said, actually, I actually have the answer for you.
Speaker 1: Why really.
Speaker 4: Now, really, really.
Speaker 5: Now? Really?
Speaker 6: Hello and welcome to Really No Really, with Jason Alexander
Speaker 6: and Peter Tilden, who would like to suggest that nothing
Speaker 6: is as delicious and satisfying as subscribing to our show.
Speaker 6: And speaking of delicious and satisfying, today's episode is all
Speaker 6: about buffets and America's insatiable appetite for all you can
Speaker 6: eat gluttony. Also why post COVID buffets have returned, perhaps
Speaker 6: bigger than ever. So join us as we explore the history,
Speaker 6: appeal and economic superfets, as well as their secrets, their horrors,
Speaker 6: and whether it's safe to eat those oysters. Here's Jason,
Speaker 6: Peter and one of the country's most knowledgeable restaurant experts,
Speaker 6: Restaurant Business Magazine editor in chief Jonathan Meades, Everybody.
Speaker 3: This is going to be a fascinating I think going
Speaker 3: to be a fascinating but I want to preface it
Speaker 3: by saying, Peter and I just ate lunch before we
Speaker 3: recorded this episode, and we I thought we ordered very well.
Speaker 3: We ordered a chopp salad, chicken chopp salad, but somehow
Speaker 3: I decided that I had to have also an egg
Speaker 3: rap and Peter finished his salad, walked out in the
Speaker 3: studio so that there was a pizza there and went, hey,
Speaker 3: can I get.
Speaker 1: A slice of that? Wealthy?
Speaker 3: And it was solid, was not gonna appetite, No good,
Speaker 3: no good, and you know, it didn't have enough variety.
Speaker 1: It was cold. It was well intended, but it was
Speaker 1: not what I wanted to get.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it just didn't put us over the edge.
Speaker 3: So yeah, and we got we got the birthday cake
Speaker 3: coming up after this. We both ate so much that
Speaker 3: we didn't side. And I'm miserable now I'm sitting here
Speaker 3: and I'm not how it starts at type, that's how
Speaker 3: it does that.
Speaker 1: It is so the really, no really of this episode
Speaker 1: is all you can eat buffets. They're back. They're back.
Speaker 1: Especially we thought.
Speaker 3: The one upside of the pandemic was that we had
Speaker 3: in the phenomena the gluttony.
Speaker 1: There would also rest stop.
Speaker 5: There's a fascinating part to this too with increased food
Speaker 5: closs and delivery systems and you know the supply chain.
Speaker 5: You go, well, wait a minute, wouldn't it be more
Speaker 5: expensive to do because you've got to guess how much.
Speaker 3: Economics and I never understood how the buffet works.
Speaker 1: How if you're charging me twenty dollars and go you
Speaker 1: know anything you want?
Speaker 3: I am going to break you because my fac I
Speaker 3: think everybody leaves the house if they know, especially my
Speaker 3: family was not wealthy.
Speaker 1: You're want to win, You're going it's a competition, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: all right?
Speaker 3: I want to see when I'm gambling of the casino,
Speaker 3: can I consume you are in cost?
Speaker 1: They're winning for me? So we got to know.
Speaker 3: We wanted to find out how is it possible that
Speaker 3: the buffets are a thing?
Speaker 1: And you found the guy you want to do it? Expert?
Speaker 1: Would you like to do it? Jonathan Mays?
Speaker 5: First of all, Jonathan was fascinating to me because I
Speaker 5: watched his different podcast and he's a food expert in
Speaker 5: a journalist who investigates all different areas and those the
Speaker 5: economics and the finance, and he's well versed in this
Speaker 5: for a lot of years. Those the economics and he's
Speaker 5: written for New York Times, Washington Post, and he's been
Speaker 5: on a lot of chief of.
Speaker 3: His own restaurant business magazine.
Speaker 5: Right, so I figured I wanted to and I was
Speaker 5: really impressed by him in the scope of topics that
Speaker 5: he can talk to in the restaurant industry. So we
Speaker 5: wanted to have you on, Jonathan, So welcome.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me on, and thank you for,
Speaker 3: by the way, you took a little break from your
Speaker 3: own podcast, which a deeper dive, which is really very
Speaker 3: much on theme for what we're talking about today, because
Speaker 3: people do tend to dive into these.
Speaker 5: So the buffet thing, when I saw that they're coming back,
Speaker 5: I saw a lot of them went out of business
Speaker 5: during the pandemic. I saw that there were thousands in
Speaker 5: America that went down by a lot, you know, the
Speaker 5: number went down. But now all of a sudden, the
Speaker 5: ones that were not the middle price ones seemed to
Speaker 5: be coming back. So there's so many questions regional.
Speaker 3: Who the Golden Corral is back on the sort of
Speaker 3: more economic and then the the Vegas buffets are back
Speaker 3: is a thing again too, and that's the higher end.
Speaker 1: So how did this happen and why what's the economics.
Speaker 4: Never underestimate Americans' desire to stuff their face.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow, Yeah, that is.
Speaker 4: The fundamental lesson in all of this. Uh, I mean,
Speaker 4: I mean, I guess the thing is, it's not really
Speaker 4: the pandemic didn't kill a lot of those buffets. A
Speaker 4: lot of those buffets were just garbage. I mean, the
Speaker 4: just face it. I mean, that's that is the real
Speaker 4: issue there. People of I mean, they like going to buffays.
Speaker 4: They always probably will. There's always going to be a
Speaker 4: segment of the American population that just really loves that
Speaker 4: stuff and can't get enough of it. What happened was
Speaker 4: really a lot of those buffets were owned by investors.
Speaker 4: They took on a lot of debt. If you take
Speaker 4: on a lot of debt, you can't do a lot
Speaker 4: of the stuff that you need to do to make
Speaker 4: a restaurant actually worth going to. And they went out
Speaker 4: of business. Oh and that's basically what happened. They couldn't
Speaker 4: withstand the.
Speaker 1: Pandemic, and the better ones were able to just tough
Speaker 1: it out.
Speaker 3: And you said, Americans, is this just an American phenomena?
Speaker 3: Are there buffets worldwide or is it just this country?
Speaker 4: No, it's not just this country. I mean, I think
Speaker 4: we love them more than other countries. But you know,
Speaker 4: I was I was in Dubai last year and I
Speaker 4: had breakfast at a buffet every morning.
Speaker 5: Is what's the history? I would you know the history
Speaker 5: of the bfet? Where it started? Was it Swedish?
Speaker 4: No, actually it was just like a sweetish Swedish mortgage board. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I think it's something like that. I actually am not
Speaker 4: really well versed on the now.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, you hear about those Bacchanalian feests back
Speaker 3: in the break and Roman days where they would you know,
Speaker 3: they basically threw every kind of food that was available
Speaker 3: at that.
Speaker 5: Were meats and there were fruits well, because the wealthy
Speaker 5: wanted to show they were wealthy. So that's one of
Speaker 5: the ways that you do wealth. But I know that
Speaker 5: the buffets are for families. They are about variety, the
Speaker 5: kids can eat this. And it's about control too. Right now,
Speaker 5: you go to a restaurant, the chef and the place
Speaker 5: is in control. What the portion hol you're you feel
Speaker 5: in control for the twenty bucks or thirty or fifty
Speaker 5: or seventy whatever you're paying that I can I can
Speaker 5: pick and choose what I want to eat, and you're
Speaker 5: not going to tell me what I want to eat
Speaker 5: for the price. But because it was venture capital, what's
Speaker 5: the price? Is a restaurant still thirty percent profit margin basically?
Speaker 5: And buffets what five percent or ten or that out
Speaker 5: the window?
Speaker 4: That's kind of out the window really, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's kind of kind of out the windows. So yeah, really,
Speaker 4: if you do a thirty percent profit margin, if you're
Speaker 4: a restaurant, you're going like you're golden. You're yeah, your
Speaker 4: gold And that's no nobody, very very few, very few
Speaker 4: restaurant chains thirty percent margin at the press, you know.
Speaker 4: Now it's more like, you know, really, if you're you're
Speaker 4: doing pretty well. If you're doing fifteen to twenty percent, wow,
Speaker 4: that's a lot of one balance. Yeah, it's a lot
Speaker 4: of work. And in buffets generally lower than that for
Speaker 4: the most part.
Speaker 5: So the buffet economics is what that they're buying. In bulking,
Speaker 5: you have to guess, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's roughly how that works. Yeah, you just you know,
Speaker 4: I mean, and you have to just be sophisticated in
Speaker 4: terms of how much food you put out there and
Speaker 4: and that you're making on a regular basis and yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean every restaurant chain actually has to compute how
Speaker 4: much food they have to buy for a certain percentage
Speaker 4: is not terribly different. It's just how much you make
Speaker 4: at any one time.
Speaker 1: And it'll seems like the labor is to my mind,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a wash.
Speaker 3: I know, you have less servers, but you must have
Speaker 3: more kitchen staff to prepare that kind of quantity of food.
Speaker 1: Doesn't it kind of balance out?
Speaker 4: It balances out, Yeah, because you don't have you do
Speaker 4: have some servers, depending on the I mean, it really
Speaker 4: depends on the buffet. Some of them have servers and
Speaker 4: some of them really don't. You're doing a lot of
Speaker 4: a fair bit of the work yourself. Oh you met here,
Speaker 4: you're going to to get the food.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but but you know you got you got a
Speaker 5: got so many choices. I also read that one of
Speaker 5: the jobs of the buffet is to refill your water glads.
Speaker 5: They come out a lot, and I realize that to
Speaker 5: fill everything's about filling you up. Brec Is the layout
Speaker 5: all about pilling you up? I'm guessing the stuff, the
Speaker 5: stuff that you see first is the stuff that they
Speaker 5: hope you eat to fill up and leave.
Speaker 7: Yes, yes, yes, you're you're going to make your most
Speaker 7: expensive food items harder to find, and then you know,
Speaker 7: a good buffet, to your point, is actually going to
Speaker 7: re failure drinks because the more water you drink, the
Speaker 7: fullery are you the less?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: But now some way, so explain something to me, and
Speaker 3: I guess I'm thinking Vegas specifically. But if if they're
Speaker 3: trying to make the more expensive items harder to find,
Speaker 3: are we just sick with shrimp? If they're trying to
Speaker 3: make the more expensive items harder to find?
Speaker 1: Are we just sick with shrimp? In this world?
Speaker 3: I go to Vegas, I go where there's no water anywhere.
Speaker 3: Where are they getting Where is the shrimp getting the
Speaker 3: shrimp to Vegas? And into these buffets, into these restaurants.
Speaker 3: You can't you can't shrimp. I mean there's there's nowhere.
Speaker 3: How isn't that? And rab legs and I mean there's
Speaker 3: like lobster tales there. They're in plain sight as far
Speaker 3: as I can see.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Vegas buffets are actually in sort of a
Speaker 4: world of their own because they because they do have
Speaker 4: some of these yeah items, and they charge you for it, right,
Speaker 4: you know that's not golden corral.
Speaker 3: No, it's not a twenty dollars oil you can need.
Speaker 3: It's a seventy dollars when we're watching.
Speaker 5: I'm also guessing that because of the Vegas buffets. The
Speaker 5: history of Vegas buffet was just keep people in the casino.
Speaker 5: They do not want you, so they'll lost, but they
Speaker 5: don't want to keep you in the restaurant. But do
Speaker 5: they lost leader? Do they lost leader items in Vegas?
Speaker 1: Is that? Are they losing or they win?
Speaker 4: I think those days of lost leaders in Vegas are gone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let me tell you they're gone. Let me tell you.
Speaker 1: So they don't look all right.
Speaker 5: So, how much of the food that I'm seeing it,
Speaker 5: even a nice buffet, is repurposed the next day into
Speaker 5: something else?
Speaker 4: I hope not much of it?
Speaker 5: Actually, Oh really, they donate or get rid of most
Speaker 5: of it. They don't chop this into a park pie
Speaker 5: or something else.
Speaker 4: I mean, some of them might do it, but I
Speaker 4: don't think that they're is a ton of as much
Speaker 4: repurposing in the restaurant space as you think.
Speaker 3: Really, the turkey from one day is in turkey tutras
Speaker 3: any the next day.
Speaker 1: I know That's how my college cafeteria work I know.
Speaker 1: That's how my mother worked the turkey that we have
Speaker 1: for Thanksgiving.
Speaker 5: It was sharewiches, then soup, and then with a bicycle
Speaker 5: helmet for.
Speaker 1: It lasted forever.
Speaker 4: You know, that's what Wendy's does with its old birders.
Speaker 4: Is that is that they make it into chili waiting.
Speaker 1: WHOA, I.
Speaker 3: Didn't even know that Wendy's offered a chili really yeah,
Speaker 3: Well I don't have a lot of But here's here's
Speaker 3: the other thing. I mean, the only thing that scares
Speaker 3: me about buffets, and specifically, it's just the health question.
Speaker 3: I mean, temperature swings, people look touching, people are sneezing,
Speaker 3: They picked something up, they put it back to sharing
Speaker 3: tom sharing time. I mean, I mean I've literally seen that.
Speaker 3: I'm sure people have got horror stories of you know,
Speaker 3: somebody picking something up, licking their fingers and grabbing something
Speaker 3: else and put you know it just I don't know how.
Speaker 3: I don't know how they stay above on the hell
Speaker 3: do you mean? As far as the health scale? Yeah,
Speaker 3: is that an issue?
Speaker 4: No, not any more than it is for any other restaurant.
Speaker 1: Change.
Speaker 4: Really mean, I think the pandemic really sort of highlighted.
Speaker 4: I would say that buffets are probably a lot safer
Speaker 4: even today than they were three four years ago, for sure.
Speaker 4: One of the things that they also do, you know,
Speaker 4: they portioned things more likely these days than they used to,
Speaker 4: so you can't just load your plaid up with a
Speaker 4: bunch of prime rib and stuff like that. So that's
Speaker 4: one of the ways they do it, you know, more
Speaker 4: carefully portioning and that that kind of also helps with
Speaker 4: with health and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So are they growing?
Speaker 5: Are are we opening more and more all you can
Speaker 5: eat affes across the country or no, it's just kind
Speaker 5: of I.
Speaker 4: Mean, it's just what those buffets that are left there
Speaker 4: are a lot fewer buffets than there were four years ago.
Speaker 4: I mean, you Men's mentioned Soup Plantation. They closed within
Speaker 4: a few weeks, and they just shut everything down within
Speaker 4: a few weeks of the pandemic, which you know is
Speaker 4: more indicative of an owner that says, we're not we're
Speaker 4: not putting any more money behind it, and so they
Speaker 4: decided to go chapter seven closing everything else off. We
Speaker 4: lost a handful of buffet chains, and I can't tell you,
Speaker 4: by the way, it is really really hard to kill
Speaker 4: a restaurant chain. Very few restaurant chains were killed during
Speaker 4: the pandemic. It actually was one of the biggest surprises
Speaker 4: that I had was that we didn't see many many
Speaker 4: more get killed. But almost all of them that did
Speaker 4: was a buffet concept, and so there are a few.
Speaker 4: Even Golden Corral, which is doing pretty well right now. Yeah,
Speaker 4: they actually closed twenty five percent of their locations. You know, Really,
Speaker 4: the types of buffets that are actually doing very well
Speaker 4: are tend to be more targeted or more expensive, like
Speaker 4: the types in Vegas or like places like Myrtle Beach
Speaker 4: or whatever, vacation spot type places, or you know, Chinese
Speaker 4: buffet or things like that. But a lot of these
Speaker 4: general phase that we did see, I mean, there's just
Speaker 4: fewer of them today than there was before, and so
Speaker 4: those that are are left are doing pretty well.
Speaker 3: Jonathan, if I was if I was looking to just
Speaker 3: financially open a single location restaurant, and I had the
Speaker 3: choice between opening your sort of standard diner versus a
Speaker 3: lower end buffet. Which one is going to be easier
Speaker 3: for me to open. What's the cost of it? How
Speaker 3: difficult is it to do one over the other.
Speaker 4: You mean, like a twenty four hour diner. No, Well, well, kids,
Speaker 4: you don't open one of those.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I guess not.
Speaker 3: No, I'm just you know, I'm thinking like when I
Speaker 3: lived in New York, it seems like on every corner
Speaker 3: there was like a little Greek diner and they were
Speaker 3: they did have crazy hours, but they also had these
Speaker 3: menus that were like eight pages and anything that you
Speaker 3: ordered was out on the table.
Speaker 1: Are they keeping all this going back there? Yeah?
Speaker 4: I I can neither.
Speaker 3: Be an answer, neither's a good idea.
Speaker 4: I don't really like I'm not a huge general as
Speaker 4: a you know, because I all, you know, my things.
Speaker 4: I look at the numbers all the time. That's I mean,
Speaker 4: I can't go to a restaurant chain at all without
Speaker 4: seeing the numbers that I know that they have. It
Speaker 4: drives my wife crazy. And the best restaurant companies today,
Speaker 4: and that's actually true if they're a buffet or not,
Speaker 4: are or targeted so they don't have the eight page menus.
Speaker 4: That's increasingly rare in the restaurant space because you know,
Speaker 4: in the challenge and one of the challenges with some
Speaker 4: of these buffets is that they have such broad menus.
Speaker 4: They have to buy so much food and they're going
Speaker 4: to buy food that people don't necessarily eat. You know,
Speaker 4: the best, you know, the best restaurant chains right now
Speaker 4: only serve like one or two items, you know. And
Speaker 4: if you think about like raising canes, for instance, sells
Speaker 4: chicken tenders, and that's it. That's it. That's the only
Speaker 4: I mean, chicken tenders, fries and texas toast and drinks,
Speaker 4: and that's roughly it. That's the only thing you could get.
Speaker 4: And they do five million dollars per restaurant just chicken.
Speaker 4: You know, people line upper room.
Speaker 1: Yes. Next.
Speaker 3: I was part of a Broadway show this summer and
Speaker 3: on the corner of our block. I've never seen it before,
Speaker 3: I never I don't know. It was a raising canes
Speaker 3: and chicken ten they sent over just as a hey,
Speaker 3: welcome neighbor thing. They sent over food for our crew.
Speaker 3: You never know what chicken tender could be like this.
Speaker 1: It was. It was fantastic.
Speaker 3: So and that was the and we said what else
Speaker 3: did they do?
Speaker 1: And they went, that's that's one thing, great better than
Speaker 1: anybody else. Fascinating the chicken thing.
Speaker 5: What are the other trends aside from just several items,
Speaker 5: Is there a trend you see coming and happening now.
Speaker 4: Spicy food for instance, So uh, you know there's a
Speaker 4: chain out of California called Dave's Hot Chicken.
Speaker 1: Hot Chicken.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Dave's Hot Chicken and yeah, and they're they're sort
Speaker 4: of like spicy raising canes. Actually they're going gangbusters. That's
Speaker 4: one of the fastest growing restaurant chains in the US
Speaker 4: right now. Cookies cookies are really popular.
Speaker 1: Really cookies change that Cookies.
Speaker 4: Yep, Crumble it's a cookie chain. There's Insomnia Cookies, which
Speaker 4: is owned by Krispy Kreme, although that's for sale, but
Speaker 4: that you know, they do very very well. I you know,
Speaker 4: from a business standpoint, I love cookies. It's very profitable.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but so hold on a second. We had Missus
Speaker 5: Fields was big and then gone. You had what was
Speaker 5: famous and it's gone. Are those things like get in,
Speaker 5: invest get out because people's taste is going to change
Speaker 5: and you're not going to see those cookie places in
Speaker 5: ten years. Is there a cookie place that lasted?
Speaker 4: Ah, you know, there are, There are a few. There's
Speaker 4: like Great American Cookies. You know, I know franchises that
Speaker 4: own cookie concepts and they love them. You know. Part
Speaker 4: the problem with a lot of the cookie concepts that
Speaker 4: you mentioned is that they were they grew up in malls,
Speaker 4: and in mall traffic in the last few years have
Speaker 4: been yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 5: It's a cupcake things still huge lemon dollars for a cupcake.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean no, no, that was a fad that
Speaker 4: was bad, but the high end cupcakes. But you know,
Speaker 4: you can get bunk cakes. You know, there's nothing bunk
Speaker 4: cakes that's actually doing real well. They sell a little
Speaker 4: bunk cakes.
Speaker 1: They're delicious business. You know.
Speaker 3: What one of this is making me think is that
Speaker 3: I'm just putting this thought together.
Speaker 1: We seem to.
Speaker 3: Like gimmicks when we eat. I'm remembering Benny Hannas. It's
Speaker 3: not the most extraordinary of Japanese menus, but there's something
Speaker 3: the experience of watching the guy flip the shrimp tail
Speaker 3: into his hat, and you know, but it's communal onion
Speaker 3: volcano's communal.
Speaker 1: It looks fresh and it's cooked fresh, so that you get.
Speaker 3: I also think there's something about there's the there's a
Speaker 3: wow factor to it. There's it's not just a meal,
Speaker 3: you're you know, and I'm wondering how much of that
Speaker 3: is going to.
Speaker 4: Be We can probably do an entire episode of That's
Speaker 4: Chain is hilarious. But the reason why, But I think
Speaker 4: the point is why do I mean, why do we
Speaker 4: eat out at restaurants? We eat our restaurants to have
Speaker 4: fun and h So what you have here really is
Speaker 4: is almost too diverging trends. You have, on one hand,
Speaker 4: everybody's going to convenience and they are ordering a lot
Speaker 4: more delivery, they're ordering on apps, they are going through
Speaker 4: the drive through. But then on the other hand, you
Speaker 4: have people want to have fun and so I mean,
Speaker 4: you have Anny Howdy does fine as far as I know,
Speaker 4: but you have like rapidly growing generation of chains that
Speaker 4: we call entertainment, which is combining like food and game.
Speaker 4: So if you've ever been to top Golf, for instance,
Speaker 4: top Golf is you know, you go and you have
Speaker 4: a meal with some friends and then you it's like golf,
Speaker 4: but it's like bowling but it's golf, and so.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's like a David Busters kind of thing
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and David Busters does find there's like a bunch
Speaker 4: of pickleball concepts right now that are rapidly going because
Speaker 4: every all the millennials are suddenly playing pickleball now all
Speaker 4: the time. And now there's a bunch of restaurants that
Speaker 4: have that. So that's that's one of the things that's
Speaker 4: going on there.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 5: So actually acts throwing, they're as throwing bars and stuff
Speaker 5: like that.
Speaker 4: Puzzle puzzle bars. There's I can't even get track of them.
Speaker 1: Thank you, sir, Thank you.
Speaker 4: This is fun.
Speaker 7: Thank you coming on this as a blast.
Speaker 3: Here's what I get from this, honestly, And this is
Speaker 3: not I'm not I'm I don't mean to shame anybody,
Speaker 3: because I'm certainly in the category, but we are doing
Speaker 3: things with food in our country.
Speaker 1: That are not healthy for us. They're not healthy for
Speaker 1: our bodies.
Speaker 3: And and I just wonder if this whole buffet thing
Speaker 3: just plays right into whatever that thing is. And maybe
Speaker 3: it was food and security for people for many years.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's the only way that we, you know, in
Speaker 3: this crazy world, the only way we have time with
Speaker 3: people we care about is during meals, and so we
Speaker 3: stretch them out more.
Speaker 1: We are we are consumed with consuming.
Speaker 5: My father used to say, he says, as a restaurant good,
Speaker 5: He'd saying no, But the portions are large, right, because
Speaker 5: you grow up with scarcity and what we want that,
Speaker 5: and I try to figure out when do we start consuming,
Speaker 5: like really being consumers, whether it's food, and we want
Speaker 5: more about stuff. It was doing a great depression, right,
Speaker 5: great pressure. What got us out of the depression was
Speaker 5: the war.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: So the war came and all these companies started making
Speaker 5: tanks and they started making all of the right and
Speaker 5: then and then and then, and then the government started
Speaker 5: promising and pushing after the war because now these companies
Speaker 5: are geared up, they're going to stop making tanks, they're
Speaker 5: going to stop making all this stuff.
Speaker 1: What do they do, appliances?
Speaker 5: So they start started pushing right after the war, the
Speaker 5: dream home, use all those commercials. Everybody has to have refrigerator,
Speaker 5: everybody has to have the TV.
Speaker 1: Everybody.
Speaker 5: So everybody was pitched the same stuff. All right, you
Speaker 5: have to have the same stuff. So America then bought
Speaker 5: all of that stuff and pushed it and pushed it
Speaker 5: and pushed it. Then you got in today's world. Now
Speaker 5: you've got people taking pictures of tech, not only of
Speaker 5: your food, to show what you got. But here's what
Speaker 5: I have, Here's what I have, Here's what I have.
Speaker 5: And consumerism exploded and I can get delivery in twenty minutes.
Speaker 5: But it all started in the thirties. The push was
Speaker 5: to get the economy going up and then and then
Speaker 5: you're showing off all that as well as good.
Speaker 3: But do do me a favor, all right, because we
Speaker 3: all pushed consumerism, Do me a favor.
Speaker 1: You're ready.
Speaker 3: Describe now, go sense memory, describe because I've seen you
Speaker 3: do it.
Speaker 1: Describe yourself with a buffet. What's your plate? Oh?
Speaker 5: Oh, that's strategic. What you do is you get you get.
Speaker 5: I hate it because they downside the plates. But if
Speaker 5: you're smart, what you want to do is you want
Speaker 5: to get Steve food right away because it's expensive. And
Speaker 5: then you want to get a couple of ribs because
Speaker 5: a rib acts as a wall or a break, like
Speaker 5: a short between the fact. They're gonna have then tacos,
Speaker 5: you're gonna have some sushi. You can have some noodles, sausage,
Speaker 5: whatever the featured pork item is. Then you can have
Speaker 5: some mac and cheese yeah, some corn yeah. And then
Speaker 5: you can put more ribs in there, and.
Speaker 1: You can layer it. You can layer it way up.
Speaker 5: And then of course you have a couple of meatballs,
Speaker 5: and then ambrosi.
Speaker 1: And bro and then a half hour later, you go,
Speaker 1: I can't go, do you know?
Speaker 5: Okay, So I got ready. I gotta read you this.
Speaker 5: This is this is har stories of make it quick.
Speaker 5: The guy managed a BUFFETI and reno. Once this person
Speaker 5: would perge. They come in the bathroom and perch that's
Speaker 5: and come back out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Another worker worker.
Speaker 5: Fay said, the woman could not figure out how to
Speaker 5: do the salt magging around you we fall out, so
Speaker 5: she put her mouth under the thing and started sucking
Speaker 5: lovely man sucking up. There was another one where they
Speaker 5: actually caught a guy getting pizza and dipping it into
Speaker 5: the onion soup and standing and eating at that.
Speaker 3: I thought of that, that's a fantastic idea.
Speaker 1: That's that's very good with this cheese and the onion soup.
Speaker 5: And then one of my favorite is the guy who
Speaker 5: comes up and takes his shirt and falls it so
Speaker 5: it's a bucket because you know not to take ste
Speaker 5: and he would knock around an empty chicks. But they
Speaker 5: said he wasn't covert. It was like, let me put
Speaker 5: five in here.
Speaker 1: He would lad the whole thing.
Speaker 5: And then the other person who used to come up
Speaker 5: and ship out of the ladle to take, not not
Speaker 5: for me.
Speaker 3: Not for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the fun of it, mister Live. What did
Speaker 1: we learned today? What did we Oh?
Speaker 2: Boy, we learned a lot of a lot about the buffet,
Speaker 2: a lot about overeating, actually a few things. Number one,
Speaker 2: you know, I found it interesting. Is it buffet or buffet?
Speaker 1: Comedy? Okay, I think the comedy? How do I say?
Speaker 1: If I don't think about it, let's go to the buffet?
Speaker 2: I say, yeah, yeah, he says buffet, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: B O O f A y.
Speaker 3: It's derived from the French word.
Speaker 1: I believe. I believe, so I say, I actually I
Speaker 1: actually have the answer for.
Speaker 2: Fascinating because I was I was going to, like say, Jason,
Speaker 2: but yes, obviously the buffet is the table, right, the
Speaker 2: buffet table. That's actually where the word comes from, as
Speaker 2: far as where you put the food on. That's what
Speaker 2: it's called that in French. So, Jason, you're saying, it's
Speaker 2: more in the French.
Speaker 3: Way, this is right, this way, this morgas board. You're wrong,
Speaker 3: it's mortgage your favorite. I'm gonna sit next a Dutch
Speaker 3: country it's logs. I lived near Pennsylvania, Dutch africat Wonderland.
Speaker 1: What they mean, I probably can some of the demon that.
Speaker 5: But here's what I want to do in the next
Speaker 5: episode of Really Really, I just I went the whole episode.
Speaker 5: You're calling furniture stores and saying, we're looking for a
Speaker 5: buffet table. I mean what they say?
Speaker 1: What I got?
Speaker 3: I got a few other things we had.
Speaker 2: You guys had had wondered what is the history of
Speaker 2: the buffet and you are correct it is. It is
Speaker 2: from the Swedish or origins, and it actually became more
Speaker 2: popular outside of Sweden after the nineteen like thirteen or
Speaker 2: something Olympics held there, So that's sort of where it became.
Speaker 1: It's distink why.
Speaker 3: Because the weightlifters went to the schmorgasboy and went, we
Speaker 3: should do this back home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: It was sort of like in the era of like
Speaker 2: the world's fairer things, and so they would bring the
Speaker 2: culturally eat things and they think they're world travelers.
Speaker 1: My father was like this, how he would do the world?
Speaker 3: Never traveled to Europe, but you've got out a slice
Speaker 3: of pizza.
Speaker 1: He went there. Otherly had a neg drop soup like
Speaker 1: the giant. All right, No, two more quick things.
Speaker 2: Peter is actually absolutely correct.
Speaker 1: Don't say the condescending He's.
Speaker 3: Gonna correct, by the way, fact, that's Peter's ringtone.
Speaker 5: Now, after seven hundred episodes, I've never been correct for
Speaker 5: Peter today was actually correct.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, well, I haven't even told you the subject.
Speaker 2: When you were talking about depression era, that is actually
Speaker 2: when the buffet became popular in America. In the United States,
Speaker 2: it was during depression era because they had less servers, right,
Speaker 2: they didn't have money for the servers, and they could have.
Speaker 1: People just go and get the food.
Speaker 2: And of course people really appreciated it back then because
Speaker 2: they made their you know, their dollars go a little
Speaker 2: bit first given choice. And then the final thing I
Speaker 2: will say is Golden care row.
Speaker 1: How much is there buffet?
Speaker 2: It depends on when you go. If you go on
Speaker 2: the weekend, you're going to be spending more. If you're
Speaker 2: going for dinner, you're going to be spending more. They
Speaker 2: offer they do do offer little things, but it's generally
Speaker 2: between twelve ninety nine and sixteen ninety depending well and
Speaker 2: depending on your specific We didn't.
Speaker 5: Get to ask what I wanted to ask was was
Speaker 5: regionally what works better? I'm guessing because down south we
Speaker 5: know that food's different, but what the buffets must look
Speaker 5: like in Mississippi is different than it looks like a
Speaker 5: New Canaan kinectic.
Speaker 1: Best buffet you.
Speaker 3: Ever went, seriously, remember I can I know exactly which
Speaker 3: one that is?
Speaker 5: Vegas probably the best buffet I think I went on
Speaker 5: you once ever.
Speaker 3: Ever it's a breakfast brunch buffet on the Queen Mary.
Speaker 3: Oh it is. It's not cheap, but boy it is
Speaker 3: endless and spettacking.
Speaker 5: Really, you know what breakfast buffets are better than lunch
Speaker 5: and dinner phase? I think, yeah, I think, I say
Speaker 5: there's something mentally well and also you can not to
Speaker 5: eat the rest of the day.
Speaker 1: Sure you do a different you've already had two meals
Speaker 1: and no, yeah, and you'd speaking of that. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give David you can play along.
Speaker 3: I have before me the top twenty buffet foods, The
Speaker 3: top twenty things you'd find in the buffet, excluding a
Speaker 3: breakfast buffet, if you can.
Speaker 1: Get all twenty. The top twenty things that people eat. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: prime rib, prime rib is one M shrimp, shrimp correct?
Speaker 3: Salad, salad salad is salad is correct?
Speaker 1: Crab le crap no, no, not crap no, no, because
Speaker 1: that's regional. Okay, m.
Speaker 3: Pork line, pork line, Yes, roast roast, what's the park like?
Speaker 1: Roast, mac and cheese, mac and cheese. Yes, Oh we're
Speaker 1: gonna now we're going to eat rolls, roll bread. Yes, soup,
Speaker 1: what don't make a face sitting out? No soup? No soup.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, you've gotten five sick. Then this is
Speaker 1: a bogus squad. Here they go.
Speaker 3: Here are the top twenty Top twenty baked potato, chicken fry, chicken, barbecue, chicken, wings, chocolates, pastries,
Speaker 3: fruit salad, french fries, ham, hummus, mac and cheese, oysters, pasta, pizza,
Speaker 3: pork loin, pork ribs, potato salad, prime rib sausage, rolls,
Speaker 3: shrimp and soft serve ice cream.
Speaker 1: That yuck. You know what? You know what's really good
Speaker 1: for me?
Speaker 5: When you go to a budget buffet and suck down
Speaker 5: those oysters.
Speaker 1: That's what i'm That's what I'm trust And I had
Speaker 1: to sixty oysters. That's gonna work out. That's gonna work out,
Speaker 1: really really wrong. Peter Shick, what happened? We don't know.
Speaker 1: I have no idea.
Speaker 3: It must have been the shrimp yeah, I gotta go
Speaker 3: throw up. Thank you everybody, announce it, take it away.
Speaker 4: Really now, Really, really.
Speaker 1: No Really.
Speaker 6: That's another episode of Really No Really comes to a close.
Speaker 6: I know you're wondering what was the most expensive party ever?
Speaker 6: Thrown the answer in a moment, but first let's thank
Speaker 6: our guest, Jonathan Mays. You can follow him on the
Speaker 6: web at Restaurant Business Magazine and on his podcast A
Speaker 6: Deeper Dive. His blog is the bottom Line and all
Speaker 6: of his other social media info is available on our website,
Speaker 6: and you can find us online at reallynoreally dot com.
Speaker 6: We're also on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and threads it really
Speaker 6: No Really podcast. Please check out our full episodes on YouTube,
Speaker 6: hit that subscribe button and take that bill so you're
Speaker 6: updated when we release new videos. If you ever really
Speaker 6: know really let us know and if we use it,
Speaker 6: we will send you a thoughtful gift and thank you
Speaker 6: for listening, sharing, and most importantly, subscribing to our show.
Speaker 6: We release new episodes of Really No Really every Tuesday,
Speaker 6: so make sure to follow us on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 6: Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And Now,
Speaker 6: the Most Expensive Party Ever thrown was easily. Shah Mohammad
Speaker 6: Raisa Pallavi of Iran's two thousand, five hundredth anniversary celebration
Speaker 6: of the Persian Empire, thrown on October fourteenth, nineteen seventy
Speaker 6: one tenths were erected over one hundred and sixty acres
Speaker 6: to house the festivities and all the celebrity guests. Catering
Speaker 6: was provided by Maxims of Paris, as well as one
Speaker 6: hundred and twenty waiters, forty chefs, and over eighteen tons
Speaker 6: of food, including six thousand pounds of beef, pork and lamb,
Speaker 6: three thousand pounds of chicken and fowl, and sixty six
Speaker 6: pounds of caviar. All that washed down with two thousand,
Speaker 6: five hundred bottles of champagne, one thousand bottles of Bordeaux,
Speaker 6: one thousand bottles of Burgundy, and twenty five thousand bottles
Speaker 6: of whiskey and other liquors, and the cost a mere
Speaker 6: ninety million dollars or in today's economy five hundred and
Speaker 6: sixteen million. And how was the shaw thanked for throwing
Speaker 6: this historic shindig, Well, they threw him out of the
Speaker 6: country and he died in exile in Egypt. Some have
Speaker 6: suggested it may be because he egregiously undertipped, but who's to.
Speaker 4: Say, really, no, really
Speaker 6: Really no really His production of iHeartRadio and Blase Entertainment