The Not-Yet-Forgotten Buffet Chain That's Working Hard For A Comeback

All you can eat pizza, salad, pasta, and dessert sounds like a great restaurant concept, right? This is exactly what American buffet-style chain Cicis Pizza has offered up since 1985 — that is, until the business became one of the popular pizza chains to declare bankruptcy. Now, four years later, the franchise chain is making a comeback.

What happened to Cicis Pizza? When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, buffets and dine-in eating in the United States were shut down essentially overnight for health and safety concerns. According to Restaurant Dive, 86% of Cicis revenue depended on dine-in traffic, you can imagine what dine-in closures did to its profits. In 2019, the business brought in $177 million, and in 2020, $76 million. Buffets don't always offer the highest quality food, and these concepts have seen a decline in popularity in recent years. In the years before the pandemic, sales and customer traffic had already been falling at Cicis.

Lower sales, $81 million in debt, and the pandemic shutdown led to the chain declaring bankruptcy in January 2021. Surprisingly, just two months later, Cicis re-emerged under new ownership of D&G Investors (who had already purchased the debt and converted it to equity), with a new president and franchise owner to revive the chain.

Cicis Pizza was designed for dine-in, and this is why the pandemic hit the franchise chain so hard. Even though the company attempted to shift to digital ordering and delivery during the peak of the pandemic, it was challenging to pivot from the buffet concept that it was known and loved for. That said, the chain has focused on some digital upgrades, like more robust call‑ahead and pick‑up ordering systems, as well as third‑party delivery.

And what about the buffets? Good news — they're sticking around and getting an upgrade. This area of the restaurant will now feature larger arcade and game sections to draw in more families. To celebrate its 40th anniversary earlier this year, Cicis brought back the iconic all-you-can-eat $4.99 buffet price for adults for a limited time. On Mondays and Tuesdays, there's also a weekly $5.99 deal for endless pizza, pasta, and salad until July 1; regular buffet pricing changes per location, but expect to pay around $8.99.

While Cicis Pizza peaked in the early 2000s with over 600 locations across the United States, it now only operates 273. In the United States, it's certainly not one of the largest pizza chains, currently standing as the 16th largest based on the number of locations and sales. Tightening operations with fewer locations allows the franchise chain to come back better and stronger than before, repositioning itself from a bankrupt buffet concept to a family food and entertainment establishment.