外刊阅读20240518｜自助餐为何深陷倒闭潮？

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There is an old episode of The Simpsons in which Homer goes to the Frying Dutchman buffet and is thrown out after eating all of the shrimp , along with two plastic lobsters. “But the sign said, ‘All You Can Eat’,” he protests, and sues Sea Captain Horatio McCallister, the proprietor . Red Lobster was not watching, to judge by its current troubles. The US chain has considered Chapter 11 bankruptcy after disastrously putting a $20 “Endless Shrimp” option on its menu last year and making losses by attracting too many Homers. Buffet-style restaurants are constantly in danger of having their all-you-can-eat offers being taken literally.

But mispricing crustaceans as a marketing gimmick is a symptom rather than the cause of the travails of these chains. Fixed-price buffets, which first came to Las Vegas as a loss-leading way to keep punters at the tables, have long felt tired. They have been overtaken by fast casual chains such as Chipotle, Shake Shack and Panera Bread. The strange thing is that all-you-can-eat buffets are thriving at the other end of the income scale. Lavish and expensive spreads that offer fine steak, crab and lobster by the kilo, and even all-you-can-drink champagne, are popping up not only in Las Vegas but other places. Casual Sunday lunches at pubs have been succeeded by bacchanalian feasts at casinos and restaurants.

All-you-can-eat buffets have thus become exhibit A of what Jane Fraser, Citigroup’s chief executive, this week called “the K-shaped economy”. While lower-income consumers are feeling a sharper financial pinch , the K’s upward stroke denotes the well-off shoppers and diners who, as the consultancy EY put it, “want retailers and brands to excite and entice them”. The luxury all-you-can-eat buffet feels like a more profitable and less perilous operation than Red Lobster. The high entry price means such operations can afford a few diners who eat in excess of two helpings and guzzle a lot of drinks. The clientele are also more likely to be there for the ambience and less focused on ensuring they consume enough to get a good deal.

The financial problem with traditional chains is that they operate on very thin margins and rely on pulling in plenty of diners to minimise the amount of food that has to be thrown away. Food waste can easily push them into losses, which is why they often default to flashy promotions such as “Endless Shrimp” to lure customers from rivals, says Aaron Allen, a restaurant consultant. That is an easy trick to get wrong. David Just, a Cornell University economics professor who has studied buffet behaviour, tells me that a bargain offer of prime crustacean is bound to attract “many people who place a high value on one item and are going to eat a lot of it”. It can be mitigated by putting a time limit on promotions but Red Lobster’s was open ended.