The Red Apple, quoted in the story, closed their original location (that had been open for 30 years) last summer to make way for condos. At 5% margins it's pretty easy to see how a builder could make them a great or even life-changing offer.
The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets
21–30 of 272 posts
Re: The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets
#22The only thing I found more interesting than all-you-can-eat buffets actually turning a profit is that there are business people who are apparently content running a business with such slim margins. This article quotes a 5% margin. I know food industry margins are low in the first place, but as a business owner in a different field I'm left wondering why anyone would even bother. The same business prowess and attenti…
Most industries have low margins.
You can see net margins for US public companies here:
http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/...
The average is 7.7%
Re: The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets
#23I've seen a number of instances where "all-you-can-eat" rapidly devolves into "all-you-can-find" - where expensive items simply don't get refilled until the big eaters go away. We went to a Churrasco place one time with my startup team and the staff more or less spent half the allotted time essentially hiding from us. It was comical, but expensive.
The other aspect of buffets is that frequently the food is quite dreadful; they may have steak, but it's cheap cuts, cooked to the consistency of a Frisbee. Even if you're "beating the buffet" economically, you're just eating bad food for no reason.
Re: The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets
#24While very occasionally a buffet can be fun, I usually consider them not so great an experience. Yes, it is nice to be able to decide yourself the relative composition of ingredients, like adding the extra piece of meat or a lot of your favorite vegetable, but too often you end out with a strange mix of stuff on your plate. A plate, which as described in the article, usually is to small of this. So while you might ge…
> but too often you end out with a strange mix of stuff on your plate Bingo. When presented with a buffet, people (myself included) usually have a fear of "missing out" the good stuff, so they just load a little bit of everything to their plate. At a buffet, you usually don't have the information about (1) how filling an individual ingredient is and (2) how well they go together. So each and every time, you end up wi…
And even if you had perfect knowledge and would combine an exact replica of what was on the standard menu the fact that it is a buffet means the food has been out for a while. It seldom will be as good of an experience as just ordering the same thing.
Which I sometimes do. At which point people will look at you funny.
But you can't in many places and unless everyone does the same (unlikely) you end up getting your food when everyone else is about done.
I'm generally not a fan of buffets.
Re: The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets
#25This article links to two (!) different Wansink studies.
For context: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/?s=brian+wansink (he's a Cornell prof with dubious research/PR tactics)
You’re being kind — He’s a former Cornell Prof who was removed from his position for making up data to fit PR-able conclusions. None of his work should be cited as evidence of anything.
Re: The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets
#26This article links to two (!) different Wansink studies.
For context: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/?s=brian+wansink (he's a Cornell prof with dubious research/PR tactics)
A quote from the Brian himself illustrating how he is able to "publish" so much junk research.
> P-hacking shouldn’t be confused with deep data dives – with figuring out why our results don’t look as perfect as we want. With field studies, hypotheses usually don’t “come out” on the first data run. But instead of dropping the study, a person contributes more to science by figuring out when the hypo worked and when it didn’t. This is Plan B. Perhaps your hypo worked during lunches but not dinners, or with small groups but not large groups. You don’t change your hypothesis, but you figure out where it worked and where it didn’t.
This is horrifically bad research practice and basically guarantees that all of your results will be completely p-hacked.
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2018/09/23/tweeking-b... is another hilarious example.
Re: The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets
#27While very occasionally a buffet can be fun, I usually consider them not so great an experience. Yes, it is nice to be able to decide yourself the relative composition of ingredients, like adding the extra piece of meat or a lot of your favorite vegetable, but too often you end out with a strange mix of stuff on your plate. A plate, which as described in the article, usually is to small of this. So while you might ge…
> but too often you end out with a strange mix of stuff on your plate Bingo. When presented with a buffet, people (myself included) usually have a fear of "missing out" the good stuff, so they just load a little bit of everything to their plate. At a buffet, you usually don't have the information about (1) how filling an individual ingredient is and (2) how well they go together. So each and every time, you end up wi…
Well my trick is to get a little bit of everything then return and just get what you liked the most and go crazy. Sometimes there's an issue with too many things to try, but usually it works. I always take all-you-can-eat literally.
Re: The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets
#28The only thing I found more interesting than all-you-can-eat buffets actually turning a profit is that there are business people who are apparently content running a business with such slim margins. This article quotes a 5% margin. I know food industry margins are low in the first place, but as a business owner in a different field I'm left wondering why anyone would even bother. The same business prowess and attenti…
> there are business people who are apparently content running a business with such slim margins ... I'm left wondering why anyone would even bother
A percentage margin is expressed relative to the value of the sales.
Low margin on high value sales is as good as high margin on low value sales, in terms of how much money you make.
Low margin is only a problem in low value sales.
Why shouldn’t people running a business with extremely high value sales, due to low margins? I can’t see what you’d find that a bizarre thing to do?
I’d be happy making 5% if I was selling a jumbo jet a day, for example.
You can’t criticise just the margin in isolation like you’ve done.
Re: The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets
#29I saw a great solution to the over-eating problem in one sushi spot in Italy. Not exactly a buffer, but you could pay upfront and order as much as you want per person. The caveat is that you can only order four servings at once and you pay the full a'la carte price for everything you hadn't fully eaten.
Interesting exercise, but why not just throw the uneaten food under the table, or covertly take it to the restroom and toss it in the toilet?
Re: The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets
#30The only thing I found more interesting than all-you-can-eat buffets actually turning a profit is that there are business people who are apparently content running a business with such slim margins. This article quotes a 5% margin. I know food industry margins are low in the first place, but as a business owner in a different field I'm left wondering why anyone would even bother. The same business prowess and attenti…
>but as a business owner in a different field I'm left wondering why anyone would even bother.
Because they don't have a choice.