Pretty funny, though I’m sure barely anyone would have been doing this other than to make meme photos for social media.
They’ll be stopping it for the same reason most Pizza Huts in the US stopped doing it - profit. Not in the sense that people abusing the salad bar costs money - that’s just a convenient excuse - but simply because it takes a lot to keep a salad bar well stocked and fresh, and they did the maths and figured they can make more if all they sell is pizza.
They’ll be stopping it for the same reason most Pizza Huts in the US stopped doing it - profit.
We have unlimited salad included as part of the price of the meal in the UK. I’ve never gone back for seconds because I’m there for pizza.
When I was a student, they had a one bowl rule and students did try to cram in as much as they could by building towers like in the article (but nowhere near as impressive).
It’s like if you put a restriction on it then people will try to bend the rules to get more but if it’s unlimited then there’s no challenge.
Or it could be that students wanted to eat as much as possible for their money.
You criminally underestimate the audacity of grab hags.
My dad used to do the same thing back when Wendy’s still had a salad bar. He and my mom would get a full meal out of one bowl and he was a big dude (230lb 6’3” construction worker big).
We used to joke that he was why Wendy’s nixed the salad bars.
Chinese people in American food restaurants exhibit behavior remarkably similar to American people in Chinese food restaurants. Curious.
It’s the same thing Americans do at American restaurants. Have you seen what people do at Golden Corral?
buffet minmaxing
This is an article that requires pictures
It’s weird because there is a thumbnail with pictures but no pictures in the actual article
Wow if only there was a way to like I dunno, limit the amount by weight or volume or something instead of just ending salad bars entirely due to that pesky self-imposed one bowl rule.
They only ended self service salad bars.
What other kind of salad bar is there? I’d just call that a salad off the menu.
One where someone is there to check weight/etc as you suggested.
I’d still call that self service, just putting something there to discourage the behavior.
I’m thinking of this more like going to a self-serve frozen yogurt place. I know at the end it’s by weight so I always get a more reasonable amount of soft serve and skip most of the overpriced toppings. If it was whatever I could fit in the cup, holy crap I’d be getting a small size cup and loading it up with as much as I could managed to.
Must’ve taken an hour plus for one person to create each of these monstrosities. Reminds me of Mongolian bbq strats in college. Veggies, then meats, then drape that shit in noodles and sauces.
Oh wow, flashback. I remember feeding four of us off a single bowl at the local Mongolian BBQ place. Other customers were literally hooting and cheering while I eased my tower to the grill. Apparently, they imposed a policy after that: one bowl means no higher than the rim. I was so proud.
They could just charge by weight, that would instantly resolve the issue. And it’s not as if scales are very expensive.
LOL I did this one time in the college cafeteria. First made a full-size salad, right out to the edge of the plate. Dressing, sunflower seeds on top… perfect. Then I shoved in big cucumber slices all around the edge to enlarge the size of the plate by a couple inches, using the weight of the first salad to hold them in place, and piled a second salad on top of that. It was really just an engineering challenge. Took me an hour to eat that sucker.
Ah, another nice thing ruined.
Side note - in the cafeteria at one place where I worked the frozen yogurt was free if you could guess the weight within some small range. I always guessed the same amount, and got good enough at consistent dispensing that I almost always nailed it.
Respect.
Ghengis Grill: DO IT
I lived in China when Pizza Hut opened and it was always fun to watch Chinese people pillage the salad bar. They also had a smoked salmon pizza with wasabi mayo dressing on top. It was so good.
I’m not sure why I’m not surprised it’s about the Chinese one.
Years ago my university restaurant was modernized to have different kinds of food counters. After the modernization they had 2 problems with the salad bar: one problem was that some people were ordering meat at the grill counter and then piling salad on top to hide the meat, but more common was people building small salad towers, enough to feed multiple people with 1 plate. Eventually the restaurant resorted to billing the salads based on weight, which mostly solved the problem, but it also lead to a drastic drop in the consumption of tomatoes and cucumber.
