Posts Tagged: Hometown Buffet

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4
Apr 10

Changes at the buffet

Not too long ago, I got an email from the Hometown Buffet. You might recall that I signed up for their club quite some time ago, in the hopes of getting coupons. So far, I’ve only gotten the first coupon that they advertise that you will get when you sign up for their club. The rest of their emails have just been advertising.

Today was Easter Sunday, and Shawn and I decided to go to the Hometown Buffet to eat. I got an email from them this week, letting me know that they would be open on Easter. So, off we went.

When we arrived, we noticed some confusingly worded advertising. Dinner was “all you can eat” for one price. Drinks were “all you can drink”. Underneath this advertisement, in small letters, it said something about purchasing a drink. Was it “all you can drink”, or wasn’t it? In the past, you paid one price for a drink and buffet, and that was it.

It looks like the new change involves the “beverage bar”. No, they didn’t add alcoholic beverages, although that is what I would expect from something called a “beverage bar”.

Right now, at Hometown Buffet, you pay one price for dinner. If you want to drink something, then you must pay a little extra. Then you can drink all you want, just like you can eat all you want from the buffet. Don’t want to pay that extra amount? No problem. You can choose to drink water instead. It seems like the price of dinner is a little bit lower now, too.

In the past, you would pay for the buffet, and the drink would be included in that price. It was odd to be asked by the cashier “Do you want to drink anything?”, especially since we didn’t understand yet the changes they had made.

Stapled to our receipt, was a very different piece of paper than there used to be. It’s in full color. At the bottom, there is a circle where the cashier fills in the number of people who paid for the buffet. The second circle says “# Paid Beverage”. The cashier fills in the number of people who paid for a beverage. I suppose that the workers who come by to collect plates can check this piece of paper, and scold people who didn’t pay for a drink, but are drinking something other than water.

Considering that a large portion of the customers who go to this buffet are Seniors citizens, and people who don’t have a proficient grasp of English, I foresee problems. I think people are going to be just getting a drink from the “beverage bar” without paying for it, having no idea that they are no longer allowed to do that.

But, if you happen to want to save two bucks, or, you just prefer to drink water with your dinner, you can do that now at Hometown Buffet. I wish they would have mentioned this in the email advertisement they sent me, when they were encouraging me to come there for dinner on Easter Sunday. I wouldn’t have been quite as confused when I got to the buffet if they had bothered to tell me about this new change.

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25
Nov 09

Cheap Eats for Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, to all who celebrate it!

Today’s “Cheap Eats” blog is about places to go for Thanksgiving dinner, that won’t cost you a fortune that you don’t happen to have, now that you are unemployed/ underemployed.

* Family first
There is someone in every family that makes themselves the person to visit. This is the person who starts planning the menu sometime in October. This is the person who enjoys cooking up a feast to feed everyone in the whole family. This is the person who has a home large enough fit the entire family, and then some.

Every family has different “rules” about how this works. Some families want everyone to bring a dessert or bottle of wine along with them to Thanksgiving dinner. It generally doesn’t cost too much to run to the local grocery store and pick up a pie, or at least some brownies. Trader Joe’s is a great place to pick up that “Two Buck Chuck” (inexpensive bottle of wine). If your family is aware that you aren’t working right now, they might be cool if you simply show up on time, and just bring yourself.

Upside: Thanksgiving is a great time to spend with family, eating great food, catching up, and watching football. Also, you are likely to get sent home with lots of yummy leftovers, which will feed you for the next few days.

Downside: You have to spend the day with your family. For some people, the stress involved in doing that is not worth the potential possibility of free food.

* Hometown Buffet (also known as Old Country Buffet, or Country Buffet), has a very nice Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving. You can click around on their website to find one of their Buffets near you. I would recommend calling them to make sure they are, in fact, open on Thanksgiving. They usually are.

You pay one price, and can eat all you want, until you are done. I’m fairly certain they will charge the “dinner” rate, even if you go during the usual lunch time. It’s about $12.00 per adult.

If you have coupons, you can give it a shot, but I can’t promise they will honor them on Thanksgiving. I am certain that the free dinner coupon that you get for joining their eClub is NOT something you can use on a holiday (or a Sunday). Other then that particular coupon, well, it can’t hurt to try.

Upside: You can eat and drink as much as you want, and the price will remain the same. You won’t have any dishes to wash later on, and you can safely avoid the relatives you don’t happen to want to visit with today.

Downside: There will be no leftovers for you to take home. In fact, it is specifically “verboten” to bring ANY food out of the buffet when you leave. (Unless, you decided to pay for their “take out” option, which is a different story.) Also, the lines will be long, so you should plan on waiting much longer on Thanksgiving than on a “normal” day to be seated at Hometown Buffet.

* If you happen to be in San Francisco, Cafe Gratitude is planning on serving a FREE Thanksgiving dinner. This will be the fifth year they will do this.

” Meals will be served on a first come, first served basis, 11 a.m.-3 p.m.”

They are doing this as an expression of gratitude for their many customers and fans of their Vegan restaurant.

Upside: If you happen to be a Vegan, a fan of the Gratitude resturant, and in San Francisco, you can get a free Thanksgiving dinner.

Downside: You might not get in, depending on the number of people that arrive. If you aren’t a Vegan, you might be disappointed by the fact that you won’t be served turkey. And, you pretty much have to already be in San Francisco today to even have a chance of taking advantage of this offer.

* If you are reading this blog and are truly desperate and hungry this year, you can use google to find out if your area has a “food bank” or “free kitchen” or even a local shelter that can assist you. SLO Food Bank is an example that is local to me.

Upside: These places are set up for people who are extremely poor and hungry, and they will understand your need. Some of these places might even be able to provide shelter, if you have none.

Downside: No one really wants to spend Thanksgiving this way. This is a last resort, so don’t use this option unless you absolutely have no other choice. Don’t take resources away from someone else who is truly needy, if you are not.

* If you aren’t really interested in having the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, you might want to give the Chinese Buffet a call. Sometimes they are open on holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas when many places are closed. Buffets are a great place to get a lot of food for a reasonable price.

I hope everyone has a happy and safe Thanksgiving this year.

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28
Sep 09

Hometown Buffet Keeps It’s Word

I signed up for the Hometown Buffet eClub when I was first looking at their webpage. If I had to guess, it must have been sometime after midnight, on Monday, September 28, 2009.

Later today, when I woke up, I checked my email. There was an email from “Buffets, Inc.” that had arrived at 12:47 this same morning. It turned out to be from Hometown Buffet. This email was basically a confirmation email, telling me to click on a link inside it. There was also information I could read if I did not know how I got on this email list in the first place, but, to be honest, I didn’t read it.

Mere seconds after clicking on the link to confirm that yes, I did want to be part of the Hometown Buffet eClub, I got another email from “Buffets, Inc.” titled “Welcome to our eClub!” Inside, as promised was a coupon for me offering a “FREE buffet meal with purchase of one adult buffet meal”. Hometown buffet has kept it’s word about what you would get just because you joined it’s eClub!

Helpful Hints about this coupon:

* You are going to need to print the coupon out of your email so you can bring it into Hometown Buffet in order to use it.

* Mine will expire about two weeks from when they sent the email.

* The fine print at the bottom of the email says, in all caps, “Coupon not valid on Sundays”. They really, really, really don’t want people to come in on Sundays with this coupon, for some reason. However, you can use it on most Mondays through Saturdays with no problem.

* This coupon is not valid on holidays either, so, check your calendar before you drive down to Hometown Buffet with this coupon.

On the receipt Shawn and I got from Hometown Buffet when we visited the other day, there was a phone number I could call if I wanted to do their survey, and enter for a chance to win $1,000. I had time today, (imagine that!), to see what this was all about. It turned out to be quick and easy to do.

Important stuff about the survey:

* It’s a 1-800 phone number, which means it’s a free call

* You have to push “one” for English right away. (You can also take the survey in Spanish if you want to).

* The first thing they told me about was that in order to be entered into the chance to win $1,000, I had to be a legal U.S. resident, who was 18 years old, or older. It actually made me punch in what my age was. This was before the survey itself even started.

* There are two questions on this survey. It wants to know if you ate in the restaurant, or took their food “to go” (which I would never have thought about doing). Then, it wants you to rate your overall visit on a five point scale, according to how satisfied you were.

* At the end, it will ask you for your home phone number, so that they can contact you if you happen to be the lucky person who wins the $1,000 prize.

Again, wish me luck with that!

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28
Sep 09

Hometown Buffet

It goes by many names. Hometown Buffet, Country Buffet, Old Country Buffet…. it’s all the same. Where I am at in California, it is called Hometown Buffet, but where I used to live in Illinois, it was called Old Country Buffet. I’ve no idea why the name is different in different locations, but it is. Same place, no matter which of it’s aliases it happens to be going by where you live.

They all pretty much look like this:
HometownBuffet

As far as I know, this chain of Buffet is only found in the good ol’ USA, land of obesity. If you live somewhere else, and there is one by you, let me know. What name does it call itself over there?

Hometown Buffet is the first in a series I’m going to call “Cheap Eats”, (places you can get decent food at without spending a lot of money). Buffets are great because you pay one price, and you can eat and drink whatever you want to, for as long as you want to, and the price does not change. I have a feeling Buffets are going to become more attractive to me in the near future.

MORE INFO:
Here is the official website for this chain of Buffets. It has catchy music that starts immediately when you get to the page. Go directly to the top right hand corner, and click the conveniently located button that says “Click To Stop”, before it makes you crazy.

There is a “Restaurant Locator” you can click to find the one nearest to where you live. It even tells you the hours it’s open, for each day of the week. Most of these buffets serve lunch and dinner, but some also serve breakfast on certain days.

PRICE:
Not too bad. Shawn and I went for lunch the other day, and it cost us a little under twenty bucks total. The price is somewhat higher for dinner, and I’ve no idea what it is for breakfast.

If you are age 60 or over, you can purchase a “Senior Club Card” for one dollar, and get a discount. (The website doesn’t say how much, except that it will be at least fifty cents).

You can go to their website and “Join the eClub”. This says it will give you one free buffet meal if you buy one buffet meal, just because you signed up. It also claims it will send you “updates and discounts” in your email, and mentions a “Birthday Coupon”. I signed up, and I will let you know how that goes.

The receipt from our meal says “Enter for a chance to win $1,000 dollars”, if you call their survey. Wish me luck!

This buffet chain also is kind enough to include coupons in local circulars that you get in the mail.

FOOD:
It’s good. This is not gourmet, of course, but it is good as far as buffet food goes. Overall, it tends to run on the lighter side of the seasoning spectrum, but it is not bland. There is a large salad bar, with lots of different vegetables to select, and another salad bar with things like potato salad and stuff. The other three large buffet tables have a variety of things on them to choose from. Expect comfort foods like mashed potatoes, and macaroni and cheese. One of these tables will usually have somebody carving meat. They often choose a “theme”, (like Seafood, or Italian, etc.) so you might find slightly different choices depending on what night you are there. They also have a soft serve ice cream dispenser, and a dessert bar.

I have tons of food allergies, and I have no problems at all finding food I can eat at Hometown Buffet. If I can manage to do that, everybody else should have no problem working around their allergies. I’m more severe than nearly everyone I’ve ever met. I think diabetics would do just fine here, thanks to the wide variety of food choices available. Quite a few of the deserts are sugar free, which is nice.

I’m not really a vegetarian, but I like to eat that way fairly often. I really like the salad bar at this buffet. In addition to the salad bar, there usually is one or two cooked vegetable choices, such as carrots or corn, and they always have yummy mashed potatoes. Garlic bread is often on the menu, as is Macaroni and Cheese. Last time we went they had Grilled Cheese Sandwiches which Shawn said were pretty good. (I’m allergic to dairy, or I would have eaten one myself). If you happen to be vegan, I’m not sure if there is much you can eat here. You can go to their website and click “Menu” and then “Specific Diet Choices” for more information.

OTHER NICE THINGS:
You are not expected to dress up to eat here.

It is family friendly. Thursday night is “Family Night”, “Featuring several kid-friendly items such as chicken strips, pizza, macaroni and cheese, and banana splits for dessert.” In my experience, you might also find the mascot of the buffet, a human sized Bee, and there may or may not be balloons involved. So, if you have kids, bring them on Thursday nights. If you want to avoid children, don’t go on Thursday nights.