The Buzz: Buffets rethink the way they do business in era of coronavirus – Appleton Post Crescent

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In its best practices guidelines during the COVID-19 outbreak, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended “discontinuing operations such as salad bars, buffets and beverage service stations that require customers to use common utensils or dispensers.” 

Now that businesses are reopening, buffet restaurants are figuring out how to put new practices in place to keep customers and employees safe.

What diners will find as they return to their favorite buffets, however, will vary widely. 

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In some places, it means you can’t serve yourself anymore. 

In others, customers can serve themselves, but have to wear gloves for every trip to the buffet table. 

A few, like Emperor’s Buffet & Grill in Appleton and India Darbar in Grand Chute, offer carryout, but haven’t reopened inside buffet tables to date. 

Here’s a sampling of different approaches: 

Customers wear gloves

HuHot Mongolian Grill in Grand Chute still lets its customers load up their own bowls of meat, vegetables and noodles that they then give to employees to cook on a large round grill. 

“Customers are required to wear gloves to go through the food line, and all tongs and ladles are replaced every 30 minutes,” said regional spokesman Robert Strawsburg. Additional measures include masks and wellness screens for employees and half capacity in the dining room. 

Monitoring the buffet

Pizza Ranch in Darboy reopened three weeks ago with a cafeteria-style format in which staffers, on one side of buffet tables, served customers on the other side. Customers didn’t like it because it was slow.

“Eighty percent of the guests said ‘let’s go back to normal,’” said owner/operator Brent Balken. After consulting with the Outagamie County health department, he switched a week ago to a dual-sided, self-serve mode with a staffer who monitors diners to assure that all use hand sanitizer or gloves every time they return to the buffet. 

“It’s worked well. We have not had one person balk at this. Nobody questions it and nobody has issues with it,” he said. Additional measures cap restaurant capacity at 50 percent and require employees to wear masks and gloves. “We have employees trained as disinfection specialists. They have a two-step process with a peroxide solution to clean things that are touched regularly.” 

Balken and wife Melonie also own the new Pizza Ranch opening in October by Costco. There, they’ll use a new flexible “lean design” buffet line with employees on one side and customers on the other. “If we have to move to cafeteria service, it will be a lot easier there,” he said. 

No buffet temporarily

WeatherVane Restaurant in downtown Menasha reopened last week without its popular brunch buffet. Diners are served by wait staff, and the restaurant has precautions like half capacity, spaced tables, reduced hours, sanitizer stations and staff masks and wellness checks. 

Owner Pat DuFrane says the restaurant’s long-term survival depends on increasing capacity and bringing back the buffet. “If it looks like things are coming back to normal, we’ll open up to 75 percent. We’ll be able to do the buffet when we’re at 100 percent.” When the buffet eventually returns, he’ll have a monitor ensuring a limit of one person at a time on each side and mandatory hand sanitizer use. 

Changes coming

Golden Corral in Grand Chute “will be reopening in July,” said Senior Vice President Shelley Wolford based in the company’s North Carolina headquarters. “Our current expectation is mid-month.”

She said the corporation’s new service guidelines vary by franchise location and include a “we serve you” model “which features endless helpings and eliminates the need for guests to touch serving utensils, and family-style table service where guest favorites are delivered to their table. We also have restaurants open in parts of the country with ‘no touch’ buffet service where guests are given a glove to wear when handling shared serving utensils, which are changed out every 20 minutes.”

Measures also include employee temperature checks, gloves and masks; hand sanitizing stations and physical distancing floor markers, stanchions, table spacing and drink delivery. 

Contact reporter Maureen Wallenfang at 920-993-7116 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @wallenfang.

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