How many old country buffets are there

Restaurants are still struggling, but see hope on the horizon. How grocery stores are handling rising food prices. Food waste apps are battling to sell your leftovers. Plant-based shrimp? Barbecue restaurants feel the pain of soaring meat prices. McDonald's reveals answer to decades-long mystery. These robots are filling open jobs at restaurants.

Cameron Diaz explains why she started a 'clean' wine company. Applebee's brings back popular dessert after song goes viral. Today's healthier eating trends are better for us, but horrible for all-you-can eat chains like Old Country Buffet. Farm-to-table menus full of sustainable, locally sourced ingredients are all the rage now.

Since buffets tend to cut as many corners as possible when it comes to buying their food, it's safe to say they aren't exactly making eggs from local farmers their number one priority. More people are choosing farm to table or farm to fork restaurants because it's arguably better for the planet. There is less environmental impact if you transport produce from the local farm instead of trucking it across the country. It also creates a sense of self-reliance and food security within communities.

Old Country Buffet doesn't advertise where it's food is sourced from, but it's probably safe to assume their cooks aren't hitting the local farmers market to stock up on veggies. Anyone who wants to eat local is more than likely going somewhere other than Old Country Buffet — and the number of people that applies to is steadily rising. Remember when you used to have to put on pants to go pick up take-out at your favorite restaurant?

Life before food delivery apps was archaic! Long gone are the days when you can only order pizza or Chinese food to your front door. Now the world and its many cuisines is at your lazy fingertips. Just like streaming services and at-home theater systems make you never want to leave your house to see movies anymore, delivery apps are making dining at restaurants, including Old Country Buffet, seem obsolete.

Even if Old Country Buffet did start partnering with Uber Eats, it seems like something that wouldn't work well. After all, a buffet's most enticing factor is the one price, all you can eat aspect—and, of course, the endless opportunities to go for second helpings.

It's not very likely you'll get your delivery driver to bring you seconds — unless, of course, you pay him a second time, too. That means. You know how sometimes there are so many choices of shows and movies to watch now, that you can't even make a decision and end up not watching anything? The endless scroll struggle is real. Choice overload is a thing, which is why niche restaurants are so popular in a time period when our choices are endless. These days there's a restaurant for pretty much every kind of niche food you can think of, from chicken and waffles to Indonesian stew.

If you're craving something specific, there's a place to get it. Yes, they do have a wide variety of food choices at Old Country Buffet For this reason, a couple craving steamed pork dumplings would probably prefer to get them at that specialty dumpling hole in the wall than at the local all-you-can-eat buffet.

And who could blame them? Buffets have always been a family favorite for after church so it makes sense that with the decline of church attendance in the U.

Anyone who grew up going to church remembers the agonizing wait for that last processional hymn at the end, and the promise of a delicious plate of hot food on the horizon. Can you believe there was a time when you donned your Sunday best to go to Old Country Buffet?

But if more families are opting to sleep in on Sunday mornings, it's probable they're just eating lunch at home. According to Gallup polling , the 42 percent of adults polled said they attended church in By , another poll indicated that the rate of weekly church attendance was down to 38 percent.

In May, San Diego-based Garden Fresh restaurants, which owns buffet chains Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes, announced that all 97 of its restaurants would permanently close. At a time when restaurants are scrapping physical menus for QR codes and offering individual condiment packets rather than shared bottles, a model based on shared access to food is difficult to execute, said David Portalatin, vice president and food industry adviser for NPD.

Many buffet restaurants relied on people dining on-site and were ill-prepared for the massive shift to takeout and delivery, he said. The buffet concept already had been struggling before the pandemic — with a sales decline of 3.

Long-term, restaurants will have to focus more on takeout, delivery and other off-premise dinner solutions for families, he said. VitaNova Brands pivoted during the pandemic to accommodate the new reality by introducing all-you-can-eat meals served directly to the table at its restaurants.

It also launched takeout and delivery service at some of its restaurant brands and a marketplace where customers can buy prepared and packaged foods to go, as well as cooked sides in bulk.