The buffet was a quintessential all-American idea: lots of food at a low price. It took off through the 1980s, but in the 2000s, the restaurant concept struggled to keep up in an era of fad diets. The COVID-19 pandemic certainly didn't help. But Shady Maple, in East Earl, Pennsylvania, has come out thriving. On a Saturday, 8,000 people wait in line to chow down on its traditional Pennsylvania Dutch fare. Producer Abby Narishkin goes inside the kitchen and takes a seat herself to see if this place really is good enough to be one of the few buffets left standing.
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00:00 This is the kitchen behind America's largest buffet.
00:05 Shady Maple in Pennsylvania serves about 1.2 million people a year.
00:14 There's 20 trays. Every piece has to be laid out individually.
00:20 Customers travel from all over the country to chow down on this 200-foot buffet.
00:26 You come here, you eat until you start laughing.
00:29 Oh my God, I don't even have no hands.
00:31 It will set you back just $16 on a Saturday morning.
00:35 I feel like it just sums up American culture so well. Lots of cheap food.
00:41 Come on in to Old Country Buffet.
00:44 All you can eat like this used to be all the rage across the U.S.
00:49 Even big chains like Pizza Hut and KFC got in on the trend.
00:53 But especially in the last decade, buffets have stumbled.
00:57 Their U.S. market size is down roughly 30% since 2012.
01:02 But this place, Shady Maple, has thrived.
01:05 On average, 4,000 people come here every day to eat.
01:09 So what happened to the all-American all-you-can-eat?
01:12 And why, against all odds, has Shady Maple kept the big business of buffets alive?
01:17 Now that? Crispy.
01:24 I met with Summer Smith, Shady Maple's food quality manager, bright and early on a Saturday morning.
01:29 Good morning.
01:30 Good morning.
01:31 I'm just going to get to you.
01:32 Got a little maze.
01:33 Yeah.
01:34 The cooks start prep at 4 a.m.
01:40 We'll go through about 750 pounds of bacon.
01:45 Saturdays are their busiest days as they race to prep for 8,000 people.
01:50 We're going that way.
01:52 Oh, the energy is high. It's like our Super Bowl.
01:55 The chefs cook a ton of different dishes, from American to Pennsylvania Dutch fare,
02:01 honoring the Mennonite and Amish traditions of the area.
02:04 Like this local delicacy called scrapple.
02:07 Liver, and it's ground up.
02:10 At the fryer station, they crisp up sausage patties and links.
02:14 On the griddles, chefs drop hundreds of pancakes.
02:20 This line is for egg dishes.
02:22 Summer and her team go through over 700 eggs for a Saturday breakfast.
02:27 On the other side of the kitchen, this team starts cutting veggies for lunch.
02:31 They'll set up this chopper. The broccoli, cauliflower, they chop by hand.
02:36 It's a lot of prep.
02:38 By 8 a.m., the line wrapped around the lobby.
02:42 And I was getting a little hungry, so it was time to check out the buffet myself.
02:46 Hi.
02:47 How many for you?
02:48 Just one.
02:49 Just one today?
02:50 That is going to be $17.69.
02:52 Okay.
02:53 Gotcha.
02:54 Is there a time limit?
02:56 There is not a time limit. You can stay as long as you'd like.
02:59 Just if you want to stay past 11 o'clock. That's when we switch over to our lunch buffet.
03:03 There you go.
03:04 Thank you.
03:05 You can head down there and get seated by a hostess.
03:06 Okay.
03:07 And they'll let you know how everything works.
03:08 Thank you so much.
03:09 You're welcome.
03:17 Can I get an omelet with everything on it?
03:19 One chocolate chip.
03:20 Oh, yeah.
03:24 This is like childhood right here.
03:27 Jiggle.
03:28 Scrapple.
03:30 She said this was a Pennsylvania favorite.
03:33 Never have too much bacon.
03:34 French fries.
03:37 You need a little lime bacon to hold you over for the table bacon, you know?
03:43 I have no shame.
03:44 Let's go.
03:46 Woo!
03:47 Nice.
03:53 Got the first round.
03:55 The cinnamon syrup was too much.
04:13 That is the thickest omelet.
04:17 I'm going to crush it in like 30 seconds flat.
04:21 I'm going to try the Pennsylvania Dutch Scrapple.
04:24 It's just like, it's literally just a patty of like pork.
04:28 She said livers in it, all that stuff.
04:31 Baked French toast.
04:38 Whoa.
04:42 Mmm.
04:43 Okay, that's good.
04:45 I'm going to try this fluffy pie.
04:49 Mmm.
04:55 Oh, man. I'm just covered in chocolate.
04:58 Flip the slip over when you're finished dining and no tipping, please.
05:02 I mean, look at this spread.
05:05 Like, if you wanted to try everything, you're inevitably not going to be able to finish it all.
05:08 What's really mind-boggling?
05:11 All of this was just $16.
05:13 And those affordable prices are why Americans fell in love with buffets to begin with.
05:19 Buffets can be traced back to 18th century Sweden, where elites feasted on large spreads called smorgasbords.
05:26 Around the same time, the French laid out fancy meals of their own.
05:30 That's actually where we got the name for buffet, after the French word for sideboard, where the food was served.
05:35 But it was a Las Vegas casino manager who brought the idea to the American masses in 1946 with a 24-hour buffet that cost just a dollar.
05:44 And that was something that didn't make him a lot of money.
05:47 Herb's Buffet was meant to attract people there, and then they would stay and eat, and then eventually gamble.
05:54 And that's where the casino made its money.
05:56 In the 1970s, buffet chains started to spread across the U.S.
06:02 Golden Corral. Delightful, delightful.
06:05 At Old Country Buffet, kids always get what they want.
06:09 The restaurants could keep meal prices affordable because they had heavy foot traffic and low labor costs.
06:14 It doesn't take very many people to run a Golden Corral compared to a fancy restaurant.
06:19 There weren't as many servers, and a smaller kitchen staff cooked in big batches.
06:23 While a chef at a sit-down restaurant can cook for 25 people in an hour, a buffet chef can serve 200.
06:31 The profit margins at these places were razor thin, but it is definitely something that gets consumers in the door.
06:37 And for a lot of restaurants, that's challenge number one.
06:39 By the 1980s, buffets were a roaring success.
06:43 The key part of the American dream is having excess, right? Having lots of stuff.
06:48 And in a way, an all-you-can-eat buffet fits perfectly in with that.
06:52 You know, Wendy's Superbar is great for families because there's something for everyone.
06:56 The concept was so successful that big brands like KFC and Wendy's hopped in on the trend.
07:01 I went to Pizza Hut regularly in high school for the buffet because it was cool as a high school kid to gorge yourself with pizza.
07:10 Shady Maple's founders started the buffet at the height of all-you-can-eats in 1985.
07:15 From a small roadside veggie stand in the '60s, their new 300-seat buffet concept was a quick hit.
07:22 One-and-a-half-hour waits were common.
07:25 [music]
07:27 But soon, all-you-can-eat stumbled across the country.
07:30 In the era of fad diets, customers opted for healthier options.
07:35 Then...
07:37 Into the '90s especially, there are a number of fairly high-profile incidents involving kind of mass food poisoning at these places.
07:46 In 2000, a Milwaukee sizzler was responsible for hundreds of probable E. coli cases.
07:53 In 2003, a Chi-Chi's in Pittsburgh was the site of, at the time, the largest hepatitis A outbreak in U.S. history.
07:59 Bad green onions infected 660 people and killed four.
08:04 In 2010, a man got salmonella from an old country buffet in Wyoming.
08:08 The court ordered the chain to pay him $11 million in damages.
08:12 When you have enough stories in the news about people getting food poisoning from these places, that affects public perception.
08:19 And people will go elsewhere.
08:21 It's been downhill ever since.
08:23 Between 1998 and 2017, more than 1,300 all-you-can-eat restaurants in the U.S. closed down.
08:29 Then came the coronavirus pandemic.
08:33 It's hard to imagine a more lethal blow to all-you-can-eat buffets than COVID.
08:38 Everyone takes from the same trays and puts it on their plate.
08:42 There's a bunch of silverware sitting out.
08:44 It's all communal in a sense.
08:46 And I don't want to eat food that maybe other people have sleazed on.
08:48 That's just gross.
08:50 Sizzler, one of the biggest buffet chains in the U.S., announced bankruptcy in September 2020.
08:55 The following year, the parent company of Old Country Buffet did the same.
08:59 The pandemic shook Shady Maple, too.
09:02 We had to close here for over five months.
09:05 We reopened.
09:06 Then we had to close again between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
09:09 They started doing takeout.
09:11 But what really kept the company afloat, Summers says, was the Shady Maple grocery store behind the buffet,
09:18 which brought in thousands of customers every day.
09:20 But since 2021, Shady Maple's buffet business has come back with roaring success.
09:28 The last two years have been our best years ever, and we're continuing to thrive.
09:35 Shady Maple's reputation for making fresh food has kept people coming back.
09:40 There is this notion that everything is fresh or homemade.
09:44 That's a different proposition than a Sisi's or a Golden Corral.
09:47 Instead of using pre-made mixes, chef Brian Nagley whips up the bechamel sauce for the mac and cheese from scratch,
09:57 using milk and shredded cheddar.
09:59 He also makes the "suffing," or filling as the Pennsylvania Dutch call it, by hand, following the founder's original recipe.
10:07 He mixes 10 pounds of butter with bread cubes.
10:11 You can feel it. You know what I mean? You feel it with your hands.
10:14 To keep food fresh, the staff monitors the buffet closely and orders more when a tray is close to running out.
10:23 So this is our ordering system that we order the food here, that it goes back to the fryer aisle in the cooks department.
10:29 Yo pasta!
10:31 The fryers get the ticket, this one for fried shrimp, and fill the order as quickly as possible.
10:42 That ticket stays with the batch back through the order window.
10:45 But while an order of fried shrimp might take chefs two minutes to fill, the fried chicken takes 30 minutes.
10:53 He's putting a load of chicken in. His name is Tungson.
10:57 And then after he puts it in, we have them programmed in. 18 minutes it takes for fried chicken.
11:04 What's your nickname, son?
11:08 The handsome man.
11:11 He calls me boss lady.
11:13 Tungson dunks and breads every piece by hand. Each order has 60 pieces.
11:19 So he's always juggling multiple batches at once.
11:22 Handsome chicken!
11:25 Yes, ma'am.
11:27 Cook John Plott cooks the veggies they chopped earlier.
11:37 What did you just put in?
11:39 Cabbage.
11:41 That's sweet.
11:43 Yes, ma'am. Cabbage, and then when it comes out, we throw some of our brown butter and cornflake mixture off.
11:48 This one just froze again.
11:52 Most restaurants have a shutdown, and we don't. We keep going from the moment we open at 7am until we close at 7.30.
12:02 So the equipment sometimes gets tired, like everybody else does.
12:07 Down the aisle, John jumps in to make potatoes.
12:10 We mix our mashed potatoes for five minutes. If you do it under, they don't turn out. If you do it over, they don't turn out. There is a science to it.
12:19 At the end of the aisle, chefs pull the briskets out of the smoker.
12:24 On a Saturday, we'll go through 42.
12:29 We have it down to a science where it's a hickory smoke, cooked 12 to 14 hours.
12:34 Here, they're grilling rows of pierogi and kielbasa sausages.
12:39 Hi, it's me again.
12:45 If you're like me and want to stay for both breakfast and lunch, you just have to go back to the front and pay the $13 difference.
12:52 It's not actually an advertised thing, so you only hear it by word of mouth.
12:57 It's a fun little perk from being here.
12:59 If you have the stomach for two meals in a row.
13:02 Round two!
13:06 The only thing Somerset I needed to eat was this brisket.
13:12 How long have you been working here for?
13:15 Long time. I've never been always on this grill.
13:18 There you go.
13:20 Some people say it's expensive, but it's actually really cheap. You know, when you think about it.
13:26 Hey!
13:27 Love it.
13:31 I need to get the fried chicken. That's what everyone told me was the best thing here.
13:35 Handsome man, he's the one that made that.
13:42 Okay, got the goods.
13:46 I think that's the stuffing that Mr. Brian made for us.
13:49 Could I get a burger with cheese, please?
13:53 A burger with cheese, please.
13:54 Oh my god. We haven't seen any of these foods yet.
14:00 Oh my god.
14:07 Okay. So, the plan of getting a little bit of everything does not work when there is 700 of everything.
14:16 Finally, I got to dig in. Starting with these bright pink pickled eggs, a traditional Amish eat.
14:22 Look at that.
14:23 It's not as bad as some of the people I've watched on YouTube expressed.
14:31 It's very vinegary, but I think it's just the color, man.
14:34 Like, to see an egg that's literally as pink as flesh, it's a little jarring.
14:39 And I don't know if I can get past that.
14:41 Okay, so the fried chicken. Look at that.
14:45 Now that, crispy.
14:48 God, that's good.
14:51 Best thing I've eaten all day. Bar none. Best thing.
14:55 Wow. No wonder he knows he's handsome.
14:58 We're going to try this pulled pork.
15:02 The barbecue pork and Cajun catfish were decent.
15:05 The mac and cheese.
15:07 That's actually really good.
15:14 The brisket.
15:17 Seven people said this brisket was the only thing to get here.
15:21 Not to say my expectations are to the moon, but they're high.
15:27 No.
15:34 It's a little dry.
15:36 Good chicken wings.
15:41 Good chicken wings, good fried chicken, good fried shrimp.
15:44 Oh, the mashed potatoes!
15:47 So it's like a creamier version of what you would get out of a box, I think.
15:51 I mean, for the amount of food that you can get, I feel like the quantity alone is kind of worth it.
15:56 So we tried the Chinese buffet, we tried Golden Corral, and we were comparing both of them.
16:04 And we realized how bad the actual food is at both of them.
16:08 And then when you come over here, though, this place is actually decent.
16:15 It tastes more like real food.
16:16 I'll definitely come back, yeah. This is my third time in the past two months.
16:21 We came one time and that was it.
16:23 And now we look forward to coming every week.
16:27 By 5.30pm, the line has wrapped around the lobby.
16:32 And out the door.
16:34 Like all buffets, Shady Maple works on thin margins.
16:39 But this volume has kept it afloat.
16:42 It sees three times more traffic than a Golden Corral in the area, and 15 times that of a local CC's.
16:48 And because of that giant line, each platter of food is turned over quickly, within 20 minutes.
16:54 That does alleviate some of the food safety issues, because you're turning things over so quickly, nothing sits around for too long.
17:04 But when we look at the decay of the American buffet, I feel like this doesn't even sit in the same category.
17:12 Shady Maple has found its niche.
17:14 It's not only the largest buffet in America, it's also leaned into the allure of the Amish country around it.
17:20 Focusing on home-style Pennsylvania Dutch food, and touting local eats like that Scrapple and Mush.
17:29 And I think the reason that this place has endured, it's like food aside, it's the experience.
17:34 With a gift shop and a grocery store looming behind the buffet, Shady Maple has become a destination.
17:40 They've become rare enough to be novel again, right?
17:44 And people will go to Amish country and say, "Oh, let's go to Shady Maple."
17:47 Because who the hell has one of these in their neighborhood anymore?
17:51 [Music]