Bourree Lam wrote about the business of buffets:

• Studies have indicated that the more people pay for an all you can eat buffet, the higher patrons rate the quality of the food.
  • The buffet business is lucrative since restaurants don’t have to pay much for wait staff – people serve themselves.
  • At some specialty buffet places customers are presented with a range of ingredients and encouraged to cook their own food, further reducing costs.
  • All you can eat places are usually family or group affairs which is good for the restaurants as there are usually only 1-2 “super-eaters” in the group while other family members eat much less than what they paid for.
• One company inputs metrics about food that was wasted into a computer program. This is then used to figure out how much food to prepare.
• Salads, for example, are particularly popular at the beginning of a new year.

Read more about the economics of the business over here. Read our earlier coverage about all you can eat places here.

Source: The Atlantic