Pay one price, eat as much as you want. The early all-you-can-eat buffets were loss leaders, meaning the establishment lost money, but they did it because it brought people in which paid off in others ways. That works in a casino, but when the idea spread to restaurants, management had to carefully keep up with the economics and adjust prices to avoid losses. That's important, because people can and will eat an astonishing amount of food. Most buffets don't have much in the way of expensive seafood.
Then there's Red Lobster, which offered all-you-can-eat crab legs and then was astonished that they lost money. So what did they do? They switched from crab legs to endless shrimp on limited days. Then the days went unlimited. When that lost money, they did everything else they could before they rolled back on the shrimp. Red Lobster is still there, but the chain is a shadow of what it once was. However, most folks agree that it wasn't the shrimp that did them in, it was a leveraged buyout by venture capitalists who pulled some pretty skeevy tricks to make a quick profit. That doesn't always work the way you think it will.
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Are you sure your coworker didn't get tricked into marrying a seal wearing a mumu, or several raccoons in a trench-coat? Someone should check is all I'm saying....
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As a kid we would go to Duff’s Smorgasbord, a buffet chain where the food came by you so you could just stand there and pick out what you wanted. The loop went back to the kitchen for reloading or changing. I understand they didn't do well after the owner died, but there's still a Duff's Buffet in Clearwater, FL. https://duffsbuffet.com/ Doesn't have the moving food though.
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Back in the mid-80s, a coworker of mine went to Bonanza's All You Can Eat Shrimp night with his wife. She was a very large woman and she basically ate so much that the restaurant ran out of shrimp (I think he said it was about 10 reorders). After that night, they put a limit on how many reorders one person or table could have. Now it's possible they may have run out without her help, but one person having that much puts a strain on the entire store. And, the poor guy was teased about it for years.
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