Shoney's Was Beloved For Its Popular Breakfast Buffet In The '80s. So Why Don't You See It Anymore?

Back in the 1980s, Shoney's was a classic restaurant chain that offered a unique type of meal: it specialized in buffets rather than à la carte dining. While the restaurant still exists — and even has rotating themed meals every night of the week — it's not nearly as popular as it once was. This is mostly due to some financial hardships the chain experienced back in the 1990s, which forced Shoney's to close many of its locations.

At its peak, Shoney's breakfast buffet offered dozens of breakfast items. Customers would pay one price, then be able to enjoy as much of the food as they desired. There were reportedly more than 1,300 locations by the end of the 20th century, but only about 55 locations are still open today. While the chain thrived throughout the 1980s, by the end of the following decade, Shoney's was reporting millions of dollars in losses. In fact, in 1999's third quarter, the chain posted a net loss of $17.5 million. So, between 1998 and 1999, Shoney's decided to either close or sell 239 locations. These days, it competes with other restaurant chains specializing in breakfast buffets, which only makes getting customers in the door even harder.

The reason for Shoney's decline is mostly due to the food's quality and pricing. In a 1997 report by Restaurant Business, it was revealed that Ray Schoenbaum, the son of Shoney's founder Alex Schoenbaum, said that the chain's food was terrible, and management was no better. When Shoney's attempted a $0.30 price increase in 1996, without any change to the food, it only drove more customers out the door until it slowly became another old school breakfast chain people forgot about.

Interestingly, Shoney's then-CEO Robert Langford still claimed in 1997 that Shoney's was priced too low for customers to take it seriously. "...Over the years we have devalued our breakfast bar," Langford told Restaurant Business. "It's worth a lot more than what we charge, but we've told the customer it isn't by the way we've priced it." At the time, the breakfast buffet was priced around $4 per person. Beyond the food's quality, a legal dispute among Shoney's board members in the 1990s cost a whopping $6 million in legal fees, which certainly didn't help the company's bottom line. 

Despite the consolidation through the years, Shoney's is still open, and in 2023, it overhauled its breakfast buffet to include new items, like churro donuts and chicken biscuits, with the hope of bringing people through the doors.