Yesterday Amanda and I went to Golden Corral for the first time. It is a nation-wide $$ American buffet chain. Buffets have a special place in my heart. Growing up, my immigrant family was not in the best financial shape. My elementary school awarded coupons to a local American buffet restaurant called Old Country Buffet for each quarter of perfect attendance. As a child who didn’t know much about helping out around the house, I knew that attending school everyday was a simple way I could contribute to something special. The memories of exploring and eating all the Western foods my parents didn’t serve at home as well as the rare moments of an ABC child making their parents proud far outweighed the quality of the food. In hindsight, the buffet was nothing special. But the memories were.
This is my crude paint image of the floor plan of Golden Corral. I’m sure by locations this plan could vary. But this plan in itself is the reason I came to write today. The food? Fine at best, nothing inedible.
Upon walking into the corral of gold, I noticed the most fascinating thing. Not labeled but filled in blue, this square represents the first upsell GC presents to us: the fountain machine. I have never seen a restaurant with a fountain machine in a queue, at the very front of a restaurant, before even being seated. Man, I thought, they must really want you to be refreshed… maybe from a long hot day or when waiting in line. No, the real premise is $3.49 for a fountain drink. Sure, you can get water. But with dozens of choices and free refills, can you really resist turning down some liquid sugar on this special meal? Yes, we do. Amanda gets us two waters.
The grey block is the host stand with a small waiting area behind it. Servers seat parties to the side, in my poorly aligned square field. Most parties were either small groups of 3-4 or individuals, making the average table size 2-3 people. As my younger memory served and from the people we saw that day, the general demographic is a random scattering of families and older, single individuals.
Seating is nested to the sides of the restaurant, leaving patrons near the bakery and salad bar. As the economics of buffets entails, getting patrons to “fill up” on “empty calories” is how the restaurant wins and patrons gunning down premium items repeatedly is how the patrons get the best value.
The grill is placed in a genius way. It represents the maximum value, the real reason people come to eat here. Fresh, hot food with great aromatics placed front and center. While waiting in line, you can see and smell meat. You can feel the value. Your server greets you at the host stand and walks you further and further away from the only thing golden about this place. In only a matter of ten steps, your view of the grill has disappeared and only its scent follows.
I avoid the salad bar and bakery until last. I want to get my value. I make a trip over to the grill and notice there are several chicken and pork dishes. That’s to be expected, I thought. But where was the steak? Where was the beef? Since Amanda and I came for lunch and the lunch price is less than the dinner, I assume the good stuff comes out for dinner. The only beef served on the premise was grounded, either as a half-burger slider or as meatloaf. Well played. The only seafood I spotted were thin, fried fish fillets which I avoided and a seafood salad with imitation crab, which I had a bite of.
As with all buffets, the meat was scattered along the grill with vegetable and carb-heavy sides neighboring each meat dish. I managed to grab two plates of mostly meat, grabbing a few sides I couldn’t pass up. Like I mentioned before, the food quality was not bad, but certainly not something memorable. Like the gaming meme I’ve heard before, the real prize was the friends we met along the journey.
Would I go again to Golden Corral? Maybe once a year. There are much better AYCE places. But the childhood memory of American buffets and it’s wild accessibility means that the nostalgia will take over me here and there and the corral’s beautiful design will draw me back in. Next time, I’ll spend a few extra dollars to get steak on the menu.
Design is meant to serve both the restaurant and the patron. In the all-you-can-eat field, these parties find themselves at the opposite of interests. Yet choices in which dishes are on the menu and when, where they are placed, what the patrons experience and in what order… all of these design choices were made by a corporation to protect their interests. And the fact that the parking lot was full on a 2pm on a Friday tells me that Golden Corral protected their interests successfully without pushing away their customer base. And for that design, congratulations.
Leadership, Design, Writing 