When the coronavirus threatened to end buffet-style restaurant dining, the leaders at VitaNova Brands, which at the time only offered all-you-can-eat feasting, evolved quickly to save their company from permanently closing.
“Like many of our competitors, the buffets would have been decimated,” said Jason Kemp, co-founder and president of VitaNova Brands. “Instead, we united as an organization to innovate and launch new concepts.”
The job was made tougher when, shortly after the economy locked down to slow the spread of the virus, the FDA issued guidelines that specifically called to discontinue self-service buffets.
Shortly after the FDA’s announcement, food columnist Jonathan Maze wrote that “it might be premature to say that the buffet is dead, but it seems likely to go into a coma for a while.”
By May, the buffet-style restaurant Souplantation, which had operated for 42 years, permanently closed all of its 97 locations.
The pandemic was the “sole reason” for its downfall, chief executive John Haywood told the Washington Post, as he could not see a way forward for a company built on buffet-style dining.
More than 4,000 workers lost their jobs when Souplantation closed.
As the leaders at VitaNova Brands faced a similar situation, Kemp and others decided to change the way they did business fundamentally, which wound up saving 4,700 jobs.
“Like many other businesses, we’ve had to shift our focus and vision of service,” said marketing manager Misty Moren, adding, “We had to come together as a team and figure out how we can safely and successfully move forward.”
The company modified its buffet-style dining to table service while also expanding into the convenience sector by adding a marketplace and a to-go kitchen.
The marketplace is essentially a grocery store where shoppers can buy prepared and packaged hot and chilled foods, as well as precooked and cooked meals that are offered in restaurants under the VitaNova Brands umbrella. Customers can also pick up fresh milk, vegetables, and other grocery essentials.
The to-go kitchen allows customers to have food either delivered or picked up. The meals that are available are those served by the restaurants under the VitaNova Brands label, such as Zio’s Italian Kitchen, Sushi Zushi, and Don Pablo’s Cantina. Customers can order food from all available restaurants.
“A customer can be on the Sushi Zushi menu ordering some California Rolls, then stack on a pizza from Zio’s and a steak from Tahoe Joes,” Kemp said.
Lee Sanders, who sits on the Board of Directors, said that while these changes were made because of the pandemic, they will become permanent.
“We are taking advantage of COVID, so to speak, if that is possible,” he said, adding that “this will outlast COVID and be a model that will have a long run.”
Sanders also said that the customers have embraced the changes that the company has made.
“We are seeing that it is working. It’s actually working much better than we anticipated,” he said, adding, “We’re actually speeding up our rollout based on what we have seen thus far.”
