The Story Behind Golden Corral's Epic Comeback

There's nothing more inspirational than an old-fashioned success story, and if you want to hear a good one, look no further than the tale of Golden Corral. This all-you-can-eat buffet has stood the test of time since it first opened its doors in the early 1970s. Despite not having the most fashionable reputation in the world, it remained profitable even when all-you-can-eat buffets in general were losing popularity.

As with so many other restaurant businesses, Golden Corral has faced huge trials in the last few years, with the shock of COVID-19 causing it to have to re-evaluate how it operates. The question was, would this survivor of a bygone era shut down for good, or would it bounce back? Well, against the odds, it did the latter in a spectacular fashion.

Golden Corral has achieved stunning success in the last few years, turning itself from a risky proposition to one of the most well-regarded restaurant franchises in the country, and its Board of Directors were recently honored with a 2024 Private Company Boards of the Year Award for guiding the business so proficiently. The big question is, how did Golden Corral do it? We're here to show you.

Golden Corral is a business many people have grown up with, but until recently it somewhat represented an old-fashioned way of eating. It didn't always seem that way — and it hasn't always existed in its all-you-can-eat form. Golden Corral started out as a steakhouse, with its first restaurant opening in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and subsequent branches springing up across the South and Southeast. However, it soon pivoted to being a buffet during the '80s, when the restaurant style reached the peak of its popularity.

Golden Corral tapped into the evergreen appeal for customers, of getting bang for their buck. Diners were able to indulge in as much choice as they wanted for a set price, and come away feeling satisfied. Golden Corral still has set times to eat that are even more affordable. In the '80s, it was competing with other franchises like Sizzler and Pizza Hut, who at the time were also championing a buffet model. What it did better than them, though, was size. In 1991, Golden Corral opened its first Metro Market restaurants which could seat up to 440 customers at a time, who could eat any of the 170 items on offer whenever they wanted.

Golden Corral was riding high at the end of the 1990s and start of the new century. In 1997, the company locked in a franchise agreement worth $45 million with Frisch's Restaurants, and just a few years later it was celebrating its 30th year in operation with the opening of 24 new restaurants. However, things soon started to take a turn for the worse, thanks to a succession of high-profile controversies. A 2003 Salmonella outbreak rocked the restaurant, with a Georgia-based outlet linked to almost two dozen cases of sickness. Nine years later, in 2012, Golden Corral would have to tackle an even bigger illness scare, with a shocking 167 people becoming sick from an outbreak of norovirus that was traced back to one of its restaurants.

Golden Corral clearly had a little work to do on the hygiene front, and its reputation began to suffer — and it wasn't helped by one particular viral video. In 2013 a Golden Corral employee recorded some behind-the-scenes footage at his restaurant and captured a scene of pure chaos. His video showed raw food sitting by dumpsters with flies swarming around it, in an apparently flagrant disregard for health and safety protocol. Golden Corral kicked back by claiming that none of the food shown was ever intended for customers, but the damage to its image was already done.

There was once a time when the all-you-can-eat buffet was all the rage in the USA, and Golden Corral was at the forefront. During the 2000s, however, things started to change. Buffets were no longer seen as the value-for-money propositions they once were, and instead started to be associated with greed and overeating. Dining trends also started to shift towards fast casual formats, and buffets themselves started to suffer an image problem as places that harbored foodborne bacteria more often than other restaurants.

As such, the first few decades of the 21st century saw buffets closing down at a rapid pace. Places like Pancho's Mexican Buffet and Hometown Buffet either stopped operating completely or shut the doors on a massive number of their restaurants. Amazingly, amid all of this, Golden Corral continued to stay successful. In 2019, it had only slightly fewer than the amount of restaurants it operated in 1987, when buffets were at peak popularity. However, like other buffets, it began to be associated with a certain type of dining that was no longer hip or attractive.

Almost everyone knows how difficult it was for restaurants during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, certain restaurants suffered way more than others, and buffets were perhaps hit worst of all. Unlike other food businesses, buffets traditionally rely on footfall and footfall alone, and can't pivot to delivery as easily as some others might. Plus, their core appeal as food establishments (which is that you can eat as much as you want for a fixed price) doesn't translate to individually-priced dishes ordered on an app.

So it was likely no surprise that Golden Corral suffered hugely when COVID-19 hit. As Restaurant Business reported, by the end of March 2020, Golden Corral had closed all of its 35 company-owned restaurants and furloughed almost 2,300 employees. Although some of its many franchised stores continued operating and managed to make takeout and delivery work, the CEO Lance Trenary was quick to acknowledge to the business' employees how difficult the challenge it faced was. As a result of the pandemic, Golden Corral saw its sales plummet to an all-time low. While it managed to stave off bankruptcy, it had to figure something out.

COVID-19 was an enormous shock to the system for Golden Corral, and for a few months, it looked as though it may not be able to survive. However, survive it did, thanks to some speedy alterations to its service style. By mid-May of 2020, Golden Corral was starting to slowly reopen its stores, and when it did, it did the unthinkable: It got rid of its buffets entirely. This temporary shift in operations saw the restaurant switching to a family-style table-service approach. Customers would tell the servers what they want, selecting items like the adored Golden Corral mashed potatoes, and have their dishes brought directly to the table.

This speedy adaptation of its procedures helped the company keep customers coming through the door, even at a time when buffets weren't allowed to operate. It also allowed customers to completely avoid the Golden Corral foods they didn't want, and not be tempted by them on the buffet line. When buffets were permitted to start back up again, the business adapted further, with franchisees introducing queueing rails and improved hygiene measures. As a result, Golden Corral was able to succeed where so many others failed, and it saw it through to the other side of lockdowns and social distancing restrictions.

By the end of 2021, Golden Corral had weathered the majority of the storm it had endured during COVID-19 — but it still had to think about the future. After hitting a record low in sales during the pandemic, and continued uncertainty around the general hygiene of buffets and their long-term appeal, it had to make some changes to how it operated. So it started to look to new horizons, and for Golden Corral those new horizons had smaller restaurants on them.

"When COVID hit, a 12,000-square-foot building is not always your best friend," said CEO Lance Trenary to Nation's Restaurant News in December 2021. "It's a lot of overhead for our franchisees and our company operators. So we're looking at a 3,500- to 4,000-square-foot endcap with the drive-thru window and a limited menu but still centered around comfort foods." This rejigging of its format took a while to actually come to fruition, only beginning to take place in 2023, but publicizing how bold Golden Corral was with its new direction helped the company stay relevant and in the public conversation.

These days, if your business isn't online, you're toast. This is something that Golden Corral had to address in the days immediately following the COVID-19 pandemic. Before 2020, Golden Corral largely relied on its decades-long reputation to keep it afloat, but in a post-pandemic world, this was no longer enough — and so it began to invest in cultivating a digital presence to get the word out to the masses.

This digital presence included not just a robust website, but a strong social media presence, which Golden Corral took to with gusto. It started to create viral videos, which not only promoted the restaurant but also skewed towards a younger, social media-savvy audience. Golden Corral also refocused its advertising more broadly, aiming more specifically on its African American and Latino demographics. The result for the business was an uptick in customers from various different walks of life, and a renewed youthful vigor for the company that paid off in sales.

All businesses can get stuck in their ways after a while, and it's no surprise that Golden Corral was a business that did just that. It started in the 1970s, after all, and so it's probably not shocking that some aspects of its operations hadn't been modernized — like its site visits, which were still primarily documented on paper, creating communication issues and a slower tackling of problems.

As part of Golden Corral's changes in recent years, it streamlined various aspects of its operations to improve site visits. This might sound like a small part of its business, but this allows its employees at every level of the company, from the CEO to the in-store employees, to create action plans way more quickly and therefore improve conditions and operations way faster. Golden Corral embraced mobile app technology to do this and to better collect data that would ultimately improve its long-term growth. It's yet another example of the business being relentlessly focused on staying relevant in the modern market.

What matters more than anything for restaurants is how their customers feel after dining there. This is why customer reviews are so vital to restaurants, as they allow the owners to see exactly where they're doing things right — and doing things wrong. Golden Corral knows the importance of customer experience as much as any other food business, and as part of its comeback, it put a renewed focus on collecting data on how it's doing with customers, so it could adjust accordingly.

It did so by partnering with Service Management Group, or SMG, and by implementing new software to allow it to capture guest feedback. "SMG's unique Software with a Service (SwaS) model gives us access to an enterprise experience management platform and a dedicated professional services team," said Skip Hanke, Golden Corral's chief marketing officer, in a press release from SMG. He explained that it would help to "uncover insights faster and make data-driven decisions that increase guest traffic, loyalty and franchisee profitability." That might sound slightly like business jargon, but it speaks to Golden Corral's clear understanding that its comeback relies on making sure the customers are with them every step of the way.

Food businesses are nothing without their employees — but it's fair to say that a lot of restaurant franchises don't have the best reputation when it comes to how happy their staff are. This is something that in, recent years, Golden Corral has worked hard to address. "We have what we call a people-first culture, and we're working very hard to find unique ways to take great care of our people so that they can continue to enjoy great careers with Golden Corral," said CEO Lance Trenary in 2023 to FSR Magazine. The company invested in retaining its employees and improving benefits packages, and this investment seems to have paid off. Over the course of three years, it retained a large proportion of staff from its support center, speaking to people's desire to stick with the company.

Golden Corral also focused on bringing in new people to help move the business into the modern age. The chain hired Dawn Gillis as its chief information officer, who got to work on updating the technology throughout its restaurants and main offices. As a result, the time spent on more menial tasks has reduced enormously, allowing the business to redistribute resources towards the things that really matter — like keeping its customers and staff happy.

While 2020 saw a major setback for the business, and seemed to signal the death knell for the company and the concept of buffets in general, Golden Corral bounced back. It has the numbers to show for it, too. By 2022, the restaurant was taking in up to $85,000 per unit weekly, almost a third more than the previous year. Notably, this was also up to 5% higher than the amount it was taking in per store in 2019. That translates into a lot more profits! Golden Corral hadn't just survived; it had thrived.

The brand's incredible comeback was reflected in an award for CEO Lance Trenary in 2022, who received the International Foodservice Manufacturers Association's 2022 Gold Plate Award in recognition of his stewardship of the company. Trenary himself attributes Golden Corral's incredible success in the last few years to its continued value for money. Folks know that when they go to the restaurant, they get the food they want, when they want it, for a price they know at the start of the meal. Times are tough, and people need to be smart about where they spend.

As a franchise, Golden Corral relies heavily on its independent business owners to keep things running. However, that was easier said than done during COVID-19, when many franchisees were figuring out how to continue serving their customers while also adhering to hygiene rules and regulations. So, Golden Corral started communicating. "The pandemic has taught us that we need to continue to do that work with our franchisees, that we need to be innovative," said chief development officer David Conklin to Restaurant Dive.

That work didn't just stop with figuring out how to keep its restaurants safe and healthy. It continued in the aftermath of the pandemic restrictions, with the business assessing the long-term costs of its franchisees. In response, Golden Corral created a franchise incentive program, giving its small business owners cash credits which they could put towards food service supplies, to help reduce business costs. Golden Corral also invested in increased marketing and training for franchise locations, which ultimately helped new restaurants stay afloat and thrive.

If 2022 was a bumper year for Golden Corral, 2023 was the year where it blew everything out of the water. By the middle of the year, Golden Corral's restaurants were averaging over $100,000 a week per store — a new high for the chain. When comparing the sales in the same stores from the year before, outlets were averaging an 18% increase in their income. Oh, and it had more customers than the year before, too. Talk about a comeback, folks.

So it's only natural that Lance Trenary, Golden Corral's CEO, was feeling pretty pleased. "Our company's balance sheet is stronger than it's ever been in our 50-year history. We're completely debt-free now," he said to FSR Magazine. "And it gives us the freedom to invest in all these things — our people, our technology, new facilities, new concepts, helping our franchisees grow their businesses faster and further than they've ever been able to do it." In short, things are only going to get better for the business, and Golden Corral is ready to continue growing.

Now that Golden Corral is well and truly back serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner, where does it go from here? Well, it seems like the only way is up for this buffet business. Golden Corral's always looking for new markets to expand into, and there are roughly 400 around the country that it's looking to potentially invest in. It opened five new units in 2024, and as 2025 rolls around, 10 more are set to make their debuts and welcome their first customers.

The restaurant isn't resting on its laurels with its buffets, either. While Golden Corral's all-you-can-eat offering remains a staple of the business, it's also pushing out a new fast casual concept named Homeward Kitchen. This new venture takes all of Golden Corral's favorite dishes and supplies them in various different formats, offering take-out and drive-thru options as well as a dine-in approach. Favorites like Fried Buttermilk Chicken Sandwiches and Cajun Mac & Cheese Bowls sit next to salads and bowls on its menu, which are supplied in smaller venues to create a more intimate dining experience. If you only want something old-fashioned, though, like a Golden Corral breakfast, just be sure to get there by 11 a.m.