How do all-you-can-eat restaurants stay profitable?

All-you-can-eat buffets are so not so widespread in Europe (as best as I can tell), but apparently they’re a thing in the USA. I’ve been in this kind of restaurant exactly once in my life, and I can’t say that I didn’t find the idea appealing: it instinctively seems like a really good deal. At least, until you remember that your stomach has limited capacity, and regardless of the quantity (or even quality!) of food available, you will mostly not be able to eat much more than a regular meal.

Anyway, here is a super interesting article on such restaurants and how they stay profitable: The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets.

I found it shocking how cheap food actually is at this scale (1.13 USD per serving of chicken?!), but I did suspect that restaurants have some more psychological tricks up their sleeve, and oh yeah, they do. I have not been surprised in the slightest though to learn that there are limits on what these restaurants will actually allow.