All You Can’t Eat

Are the Vegas casino buffet’s salad days over, or is it coming back for seconds?

BY Heidi Knapp Rinella

With buffets gradually — and quietly — slipping into oblivion across the valley, many lovers of the all-youcan-eat extravaganzas are finding themselves asking: Is the Las Vegas buffet dying? Maybe not.

“To misquote Mark Twain, their demise has been greatly exaggerated,” says Mehmet Erdem, an associate professor in the William F. Harrah College of Hospitality at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Las Vegas is a destination city, and most destination cities are known for a food item or style of cuisine, he says. Think: cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, or Cajun/Creole food in New Orleans. Las Vegas is known for indulgence in pretty much every category. In dining, that often means a lavish buffet.

Erdem says he remembers his own first visit to Las Vegas as a tourist in 1997, when he went to the Flamingo for lobster and steak — for $9.99.

“It was crazy,” he says. “Lobster, steak, and a buffet.”

But it’s been a while since the Strip was peppered with bargain buffets. Starting with Wicked Spoon at the Cosmopolitan in 2010 and followed by Bacchanal at Caesars Palace in 2012, the steam trays faded away and individual servings — with, in many cases, on-demand preparation — arrived. Taste, quality, and appearance became more important than bargains, and prices went up accordingly. But it was still culinary excess, albeit an updated version, with some of the newer buffets offering as many as 500 choices.

“Vegas resorts are telling people this is part of the experience package,” Erdem says. “You’re not going to get this kind of experience anyplace else.”

The locals buffets, on the other hand, were long viewed as loss leaders.

“The goal was not to make money,” he says. “The goal was to bring locals in. Then comes COVID. One of the things COVID taught the industry was we need to do more with less and generate revenue more carefully. They’re looking at revenue generated per square foot. Revenue techniques didn’t happen just after COVID, but COVID put it more in focus.”

Indeed. In a May 2020 earnings call, Frank Fertitta III, CEO and board chairman