Traveling always has its small joys and, without a doubt, one of them is that feeling of knowing that there will be an all-you-can-eat buffet. It is the opportunity to choose without limits and try a little of what you want, making it a perfect moment on any vacation day.
Although at first glance it may seem that this generosity does not benefit the locals, the reality is very different. Joe Burger, a well-known content creator on TikTok, has shed light on the strategies that make it so that, at the end of the day, “the hotel always wins,” even when guests decide to make the most of the buffet.
Through his video, Burger explains that the biggest investment in a restaurant does not come from the food, but from the staff. “The most expensive thing about a restaurant are the workers,” he comments, revealing how, in the context of an all-you-can-eat buffet, a waiter is capable of serving up to 200 people, a figure significantly higher than the 25 he could serve in a conventional restaurant. . This effort for service efficiency allows hotels to offer the feeling of abundance while keeping their costs under control.
But the analysis does not end there. Burger explains how hotels use strategic food placement to influence diners’ decisions. By placing the least expensive options at the beginning and reserving the highest-quality dishes for last, guests are subtly manipulated into filling their plates with more affordable food for the hotel. This tactic is complemented by the abundant supply of bread, a cheap filling that satisfies quickly.
Hotel cleverness reaches its peak with the “three-day trick”, a psychological observation that indicates the tendency of guests to moderate their consumption after a few days, opting for lighter and healthier options. This change in behavior, initially observed in hotels in the Spanish Caribbean in the 1990s, demonstrates how consumption patterns evolve over time, leading to a natural decrease in the amount of food consumed.
Therefore, the strategy behind the all-you-can-eat buffet in hotels is a fascinating game of psychology and economics. Through ingenious staff management, strategic food arrangement, and harnessing human behavior patterns, hotels have found a way to offer a seemingly limitless service that, paradoxically, works in their favor.
