Great Moments in Fat History Vol. 3: Old Country Buffet

By Merton Sussex, Grand Poobah of the Mundane




Man...Who DOESN'T love a buffet, huh?!? It's positively un-American to not want to belly up to a plethora of ready-to-go grub, and eat to your (cholesterol-crippled) heart's content! And such VARIETY!

Of course, the granddaddy of them all is Old Country Buffet. With its headquarters right here in the Twin Cities, Old Country's parent company, the creatively-labeled "Buffets, Inc." operates almost 650 restaurants in 39 states. That's a lot of mashed potatoes.

You'd think with that sort of market penetration, Old Country would be pretty well set, serving up steam table after steam table of bland, mediocre food, and a lot of it, to everyone, everywhere. However, on January 22nd of '08, prior to the most recent round of financial woes to plague businesses large and small all over the country, Buffets, Inc. declared Chapter 11. Seems they had a tough time making ends meet. There are a lot of theories as to why this might be, but I have my own.

See, whereas the normal person sees the buffet as a nice occasional dinner alternative with a lot of choices, no waiting, and a reasonable price structure, there is a large-and-getting-larger contigent among us who sees it as more of a food amusement park: Pay a flat entrance fee, and play until you drop.

Have you ever BEEN to the Old Country? Have you SEEN the sort of people who eat there? Sure, there are plenty of families, looking to get the most out of their food budgets. Single people, maybe striking out on their own, and who don't know how to cook yet. And, depressingly, a lot of single old men, who look lost, and who probably ARE since their wives died, and they never even learned how to boil water. But by far the largest group, and I mean that in every sense of the word, are the ones who are even more depressing than the widowers: The corpulent mounds of barely-human flesh, waddling their way back and forth to the feed troughs, rolls quivering and undulating, plates loaded to critical mass with mounds and mounds of whatever couldn't run away from them.

In and of itself, this really isn't the problem. The Buffet business model is meant to absorb the cost of the gluttons, and make it up on those who DON'T eat their own weight in gravy every time up.

However, that being said...It's NOT calibrated to account for two things that have become rampant: 1) Waste, and 2) Over-consumption of the loss-leading entrées.

You know what I'm talking about. You've seen 'em with the prime rib hanging over the sides of the plate, because they wouldn't budge from the line until the hapless chap working the carving station slapped enough beef on their plate to feed a Guatemalan family for a week. Hell, go to any buffet on seafood night. If you don't see some sumo-sized mass sucking down plateful after plateful of peel-n'-eat shrimp, crab legs, or whatever that stuff is that's passing for "Lobster Thermidor", I'll skip the always-untouched salad bar and eat my hat instead. These assholes view the humble buffet as "Chuck's All-You-Can Inhale Crab Leg Shack," and they're not shy about it. "Well, HELL, Marg'rit. It's cheaper'n Red Lobster. Besides, it ain't even our annivers'ry anyway." So there they go, getting the only exercise they ever do, humping back and forth with boiled crustacean...and leaving half of it on their plate every time they go to get more. Which brings me to point 2...

WASTE. The amount of food these places have to buy in order to keep up with demand is positively obscene. The only thing MORE obscene is the amount they're forced to toss out. Whether it's the fact that the stupid lazy fuck with the crab legs is only eating 10% of the actual meat in the shells because it's not worth the effort to extract the other 90%, or the gaping rectum with the prime rib who eats three little bites of a one-pound slab and throws the "fat" away, the rampant food waste these places put up with is quite literally shameful. The stuff they throw away in just about a month is more than the aforementioned Guatemalans will likely see in a lifetime. And it's all because the spoiled chubsters in their sweatpants and vintage "Coed Naked" t-shirts just cast if off like it's trash, beneath their contempt. THIS is why Buffets, Inc. filed for bankruptcy. Because when they opened in 1983, they simply coundn't DREAM of having to put up signs reading, "Take all you want to eat, but PLEASE eat all you take!" Or, "Please don't waste food!" Having to ask someone, much less GROUPS of someones, not to waste food? This, to me, is the #1 indication that Western society just has too goddamn much. Imagine having to tell someone in Gambia or Ethiopia not to waste food. That'd be like telling them, "try not to punch your children in the throat." It simply would never have occurred to them otherwise.

However, weep not for poor Buffets, Inc. Something tells me they're gonna be just fine. Early reports are that they'll be emerging from Bankruptcy protection sooner rather than later. And besides, it's hardly like they're completely faultless. Remember when I said they opened in 1983? Well, dig these couple of charts I found that plot out the average U.S. obesity rates over the last few decades or so. Pay special attention to the rough year when they start to creep northward:







If you notice anything interesting, please come over to my table and let me know. 'Cuz this fried chicken, bread pudding, pizza, beef vegetable soup, mac and cheese and soft-serve sure as hell ain't gonna eat themselves.