J.J. Nelson misses seeing his loyal customers, including a 103-year-old woman who showed up without fail every day to the Barnyard Buffet in Saraland for a meal and camaraderie.

Nelson’s buffet serves up over 40 offerings on two hot tables to a mostly older and loyal following of diners who will flock to the Barnyard after Sunday church services where diners will dish out their own food from serving containers. Nelson’s customers are on his mind when he contemplates a reopening, which he worries cannot be done without health risks.

“We may wait until things are normal enough until we do a full reopening,” said Nelson, general manager of the Southern-style buffet who is poised to take over its ownership soon from his mom, Nancy. “I don’t think just doing a partial reopening or curbside is sustainable for us. We’re trying to really be patient, and the worst thing we can do is reopen too early.”

One thing Nelson is trying to figure out is how the buffet will look like once it reopens. Similar thoughts are being pondered at the Stagecoach Café in Stockton, Barry’s BBQ in Boaz, and at Southern-style buffets throughout Alabama where the tradition of walking up and serving yourself endless portions of fried chicken, catfish or pork roast is in jeopardy.

“The day of the open buffets is over until we get a vaccine,” said Bob Norton, chairman of the Auburn University Food System Institute’s Food and Water Defense Working Group. Medical experts and scientists have said it could take 12-18 months or longer for the development of a vaccine for coronavirus.

The future of the buffet, Norton and other experts say, is likely a full-scale return to cafeteria-style dining in which a food handler is responsible for dishing out the portions similar to what has long been done at restaurants in Alabama like Niki’s West Steak & Seafood in Birmingham, Ted’s Cafeteria in Birmingham, or Mary’s Southern Cooking in Mobile.

“Ideally, having a server who practices proper hand hygiene and wears gloves in accordance with industry practices – essentially someone who can monitor the access of the food – would be the safest way to reintegrate self-serve buffets back into restaurants,” said Dr. Molly Fleece, assistance professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Division of Infectious Diseases. “Placing food items in single-serve, to-go type of containers that you pick up and then add to your plate when you get back to your table would be another recommendation. Regardless, it is essential that all food is appropriately covered to help prevent the spread of an infection.”

Said Norton, “I assume there will be a lot of creativity.”

Be generous, no fuss

Stagecoach Cafe in Stockton, Ala., remains open for to-go orders during the coronavirus pandemic. The restaurant, which includes a popular buffet, was supposed to celebrate its 25th anniversary in March 2020. Longtime owner Joyce Overstreet said the celebration has pushed back to sometime later in the summer. (John Sharp/jsharp@al.com).

The cafeteria approach will be embraced by Joyce Overstreet at the Stagecoach Café, the only true sit-down dining option for miles in the tiny historic town of Stockton in northern Baldwin County.

“We started serving (cafeteria-style) the week before we closed anyway, and people were real appreciative,” Overstreet said. “We didn’t get a lot of pushback on that. We tried to be generous about it so people didn’t fuss.”

Overstreet said she’s preparing for the reopening of the inside dining by taping off areas in which people will have to stand 6 feet apart from each other. Capacity inside the diner is 200 maximum, but Overstreet said she will have tables spread out far enough that it will limit capacity. The employees will wear bandanas to cover their mouths, she said, but they also have the option of wearing a medical mask. The salt and pepper shakers will be removed from the tables. Silverware will also not be set out on the table.

“We’re going the extra mile to make sure people feel safe when they come in,” Overstreet said. “Really, in the grand scheme of it, I don’t think any of us are fretting. We’re so ready to see our customers. And I don’t think our older customers are going to come out during the busy times. I’ve had a couple of older folks tell me, ‘Joyce, we’ll see you at 2 o’clock.’”

Stagecoach Cafe in Stockton, Ala., remains open for to-go orders during the coronavirus pandemic. The restaurant, which includes a popular buffet, was supposed to celebrate its 25th anniversary in March 2020. Longtime owner Joyce Overstreet said the celebration has pushed back to sometime later in the summer. (John Sharp/jsharp@al.com).

Stagecoach has been providing to-go meals, and she claims it’s been “fairly successful.” Overstreet said she had to remove a window air conditioning unit so she could provide drive-thru service.

“I’m not lying and my servers will tell you this as well, but the to-go stuff is the hardest we’ve worked for so little amount of money,” she said. “It’s kept a few people working and that was our goal – to keep people working and fed.”

Café style, or shut down

Barry’s BBQ in the small town of Boaz at the Marshall and Etowah counties line, is offering to-go service on Friday nights to help “pay the power bill.” The buffet has been closed, and owner Jason Hallmark is thinking up strategies on how to present the food different from the traditional buffet serving line.

“Instead of people serving themselves, I’ll have two people on the buffet bar who will dip the food instead of (the customers) touching the food and the tongs,” said Hallmark. “It will be more café. That’s the only choice you got. Or you shut it down. Basically, that is the way I see it.”

Barry’s BBQ has been operating in Boaz for the past 25 years, but Hallmark and his wife have owned it only about a year. They were averaging 200 guests on Thursday nights. On the weekends, they were doing “a little over 300.” The restaurant can seat up to 300 maximum at one time.

“We don’t know what we will be now,” said Hallmark. “A dream we had doing this and a little virus has put a damper on it.”

Hallmark, like Overstreet, is preparing to limit the number of people inside. He’s distancing tables about 10 feet apart from each other, and is anticipating keeping the number of people seated at one table limited to six. Also under consideration is giving customers buzzers and requiring them to wait in their vehicles before being allowed inside the restaurant.

Hallmark and Overstreet have taken their cues from recommendations pitched Friday by a task force assembled by Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth that suggests keeping tables reduced to only six people. But there is no official order in place by the Alabama Department of Public Health, and Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said on Tuesday that she’s hesitant to reopen the economy because less than 1% of the state’s residents have been tested for coronavirus.

“May 1 is what we were hoping,” said Hallmark. “I’m afraid this will put a lot of businesses out especially the small mom and pops.”

The future of buffets

The popular layout and traditions of the Southern Buffet, though altered in the short-term, is likely to live on beyond coronavirus, according to a Yale University historian on cuisine.

“In some ways, Southern roadside places are more likely to survive intact than urban restaurants because of a loyal customer base not depending on tourists excessively, and not having to pay astronomical rents,” said Paul Freedman, a professor of history at Yale. “If people in Southern states are reluctant to practice stringent quarantine, mask-wearing and social distancing and the epidemic does not become more intense, it may be that customs don’t change and the buffet model does ok.”

Freedman said he’s worried more about the future of Chinese buffets, which are also shuttered during coronavirus. According to national news reports, based on data from Womply – a data subscription service – 59% of independent Chinese restaurants across the U.S. had completely stopped taking debit and credit card transitions, indicating they have ceased operations.

“The small-town, rural Chinese buffet is likely to be unsustainable partly because of prejudice against the Chinese as a result of the virus.”

Johnny Lau wheels out 100 individually packaged meals from China Doll Seafood Restaurant. (Photos courtesy Mary Katherine Zarzour Williams)

In Mobile, the China Doll Seafood Restaurant has long operated a popular buffet at the Pinebrook Shopping center off bustling Airport Boulevard in Mobile. But owner Christina Lau said they will not operate the buffet until given the OK from public health authorities. In the meantime, China Doll is open and is providing carryout meals for regular customers and is donating “as much as we can” to area hospitals and to nursing staffs.

“Our regular customers are missing our food,” Lau said.

Nelson, at Barnyard Buffet, said he believes his customers miss the “variety of choices” they have at a buffet which they are not getting with the restaurants closed.

“We may try a cafeteria where you let us know what you want, we make it for you and serve you with unlimited portions,” Nelson said. “The meat-and-three is really limiting to some people.”

But Freedman, at Yale, said he could see buffets transforming into the “meat-and-three” concepts popularized at restaurants throughout the South.

“Buffets are modernized takes on meat-and-three, steam table restaurants which, in turn, were inspired by farm hand lunches at which workers ate from pass-around bowls of vegetables and, sometimes, multiple meats,” said John Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance and author of The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South.

“They are revered because they showcase the bounty of foods that are now available to us,” he added. “As demographics of the South has changed, so have the buffets. Our local Chinese buffet has long served fried chicken and turnip greens, egg rolls and orange chicken, and refried beans and enchiladas. That’s the modern South, tucked behind a sneeze guard.”