“Still endless helpings, only now we serve you,” a message on the Whitehall restaurant’s page reads.Ryan's, Old Country Buffet, and HomeTown Buffet turn dinner into the most important meal of the day with Breakfast For Dinner starting April 10. Golden Corral, another buffet-style restaurant chain, is offering curbside pick-up along with temporarily serving customers cafeteria-style at its Lehigh Valley Mall location, according to the chain’s website. “During the height of the dining room closures, in April, buffets and cafeteria sales were down 80%, compared with a 35% hit to restaurants overall,” the article notes.Īt 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, David Portalatin, vice president and food industry adviser for NPD, told the Chicago Tribune. In the spring, San Diego-based Garden Fresh restaurants, which operates buffet chains Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes, announced plans to permanently close all 97 of its restaurants, the article notes.Īdditionally, the article cited a report from market research firm NPD Group, which stated that, as of August, sales at buffets and cafeterias were 55% lower than a year before while the overall restaurant industry was down 9.5%. The pandemic is wreaking havoc on countless restaurants nationwide, but “it is taking a greater toll on buffet concepts that rely on in-person dining and a shared self-service environment,” according to an Oct. The improvements were in response to the arrival of the Lehigh Valley’s first Golden Corral restaurant, which opened earlier that year in Whitehall, according to David Baker, Old County Buffet Whitehall’s general manager at the time. The Whitehall Old Country Buffet, located near the shuttered Sears department store, in 2013 underwent extensive renovations - including new walls, ceilings, carpeting, island food bars and a game room for kids. Old Country Buffet, offering eggs, waffles and other breakfast favorites on weekends at select locations, continues to operate about a dozen locations nationwide, including one remaining Pennsylvania location in Harrisburg, according to a restaurant locator on the chain’s website. We will do everything in our power to relocate employees and assist others impacted with access to available local resources.” “… All closures have been incredibly difficult decisions but will allow us to reallocate resources to our locations under the AYCE (all-you-can-eat) and Marketplace concepts. “These closures are part of those that started last week, which were a result of expiring leases for locations with declining in sales pre-pandemic,” Jason Kemp, president of VitaNova Brands, said in the release. The company’s most recent announcement also included the permanent closure of another HomeTown Buffet restaurant in California. 9 announced the closures of four other restaurants in its portfolio: an Old Country Buffet location in Chicago, as well as two HomeTown Buffets in California and one Ryan’s in West Virginia. VitaNova Brands, a Texas-based multi-concept operator of Old Country Buffet and other independent restaurant brands such as HomeTown Buffet and Ryan’s, on Oct. Old Country Buffet, which bills itself as “America’s premier buffet restaurant offering a delicious variety of food items for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert,” on Sunday permanently closed its only Lehigh Valley location at the Whitehall Mall.
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