Buffets Are Pretty Much Dead

Whether or not you think small-owned restaurants will emerge on the other side of COVID-19 unscathed as we talked about earlier today, you can sure as hell say goodbye to buffets. Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes have closed permanently due to coronavirus, despite somehow surviving into 2020 with the word "plantation" in the name. Honestly, we think this is the first buffet to fall of many and after you take a look at the video in this tweet, it won't be hard to see why.

That video showcases an experiment where one person transfers their germs to literally everyone else at the buffet table. They could eliminate coronavirus tomorrow, and I still would never eat at a buffet again after watching that video. It's pretty clear that you're basically guaranteed to ingest at least one booger, and no amount of wiping down the stations will have us thinking otherwise. But even if you don't mind catching some phlegm in your potato salad, Coronavirus fears are going to linger well past the point of businesses reopening and buffets were already struggling to get by.

Hotels are already finding ways to adapt, echoing fears that minibars and buffets are also expected to be a thing of the past. General manager of the Four Seasons, Rudy Tauscher, said, "I think it's safe to say that breakfast buffets and communal tables and the kinds of things that had been traditions at many hotels are going away, for who knows how long." It's a sad truth, as who among us doesn't love a free breakfast buffet with their overnight stay? Even worse is the prospect that for the rest of our lives, we might be relegated to sampling one menu item at a time. But, until we can develop powerful enough vaccines and/or ways to de-snotify the communal eating experience, then buffets are a gamble, and for more reasons than that potato salad being a little too old.

Top Image: Fastily/Wiki Commons