Golden Corral

Golden Corral is an American family-style restaurant chain that features a large buffet and grill offering 150 hot and cold items, a carving station and their Brass Bell Bakery. It is a privately held company headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, with locations in 40 states.

Each location serves a buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner. Complimentary coffee is offered during lunch and dinner service.

The restaurant is famous for its three-year "Frying Pan Man" advertising campaign in which a person is hit on the head with a frying pan resulting in a craving to go to the restaurant.

History

In 1971, James H. Maynard and William F. Carl conceived the idea that became Golden Corral after several unsuccessful attempts to acquire a franchise with other companies. Golden Corral was incorporated in 1972 and the first Golden Corral Family Steak House was opened January 3, 1973, in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Within three months of opening the first restaurant, the company was on its way to getting a second location which opened September 17, 1973, in Raleigh, North Carolina. A third was built June 18, 1974, in Fayetteville. Since then, the company has expanded to over 475 locations across the United States, about 120 of them are company-owned, the others are franchised stores. Gross sales are over 1.526 billion.

The company focused on freshness to separate it from other budget steakhouses. From the start, each Golden Corral cut its own USDA Choice beef, offering a variety of steaks, and they did not charge much more than their competitors charged for their frozen, imported steaks. They also opened the majority of their restaurants away from any direct competition, focusing on small-town America. And, by 1979, the company owned more than 100 restaurants. By the end of 1980, the total was up to 151.

In 1982, the company acquired 193 restaurants from Sirloin Stockade, a Kansas-based competitor. Approximately 100 of them became Golden Corral Family Steakhouses. There were 430 Golden Corral restaurants by the mid-1980s, each averaged approximately 5,000 square feet in size and about $1 million in annual sales.

The company had more than 500 restaurants, by 1987. That year, they decided to begin franchising by licensing 55 distressed restaurants to their most successful general managers. Because of poor training, nationwide concerns about the consumption of red meat, and a shift in market shares to upscale restaurants, sales were falling. Red meat was out, fresh fruits and vegetables were in. So Golden Corral added salad bars to all of their locations. They sacrificed seating in most, in others they sacrificed part of the parking lot to make an addition to the building. Despite their efforts, market shares and profit margins continued to fall and by 1989 87 money-losing restaurants had been cut.

In 1991, the first seven Metro Market concept restaurants opened. They were 10,000 square feet and seated between 400 and 450 guests. These new Golden Corral restaurants more than doubled the old, which were typically 5,000 square feet with a guest capacity of 175. There was the addition of the Brass Bell Bakery, named for the brass bell which rang every 15-minutes to signal that fresh bread, rolls and pastries were coming out of the oven, along with an expanded buffet, dubbed the Golden Choice Buffet, which also had a new layout to showcase its 170 items. The restaurants also continued to offer their USDA choice-grade steaks. The location of these new restaurants--the majority of which were in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and North Carolina--was also a change for the company. They had moved away from small-towns and into metropolitan areas.

In 2001, the buffet was expanded with the addition of cook-to-order sirloin steaks and the system-wide annual sales exceeded $1 billion for the first time.

In January 2002, the National Arbitration Forum ordered that the domain http://www.goldencorralrest.com be transferred to Golden Corral from a Domain Service based in Russia.

Menu items

Golden Corral restaurants offer a wide spread of items to choose from for breakfast, lunch and dinner. During the breakfast service, choices range from traditional breakfast items, like scrambled eggs(usually egg product) & bacon and biscuits & gravy, to childhood favorites, like chocolate chip pancakes and French toast with powdered sugar. Lunch and dinner service offers salad bar, soups, hot entrees, a wide variety of sides, breads and desserts.

There are 10 buffet items that Golden Corral refers to as "10-to-Win" items. These are generally the most popular items and are considered keys to success of an individual Golden Corral restaurant. They include: rotisserie chicken, made from scratch mashed potatoes, Bourbon Street chicken, grilled sirloin steak, their popular home-style yeast rolls, fried chicken, their signature "Awesome" pot roast, meatloaf, pizza, and carrot cake.

Golden Corral's most recent restaurant concept--called "Strata"--rolled out during the past five years, has sought to bring more of the food preparation into view of the guests. At locations featuring these concepts, guests can help themselves to made-to-order omelets, waffles and fresh salads prepared on the spot and entrees that are hot off the grill.

Other services

To-Go

Many locations offer a To-Go service, which allows customers to pack anything they want into a To-Go container and then pay for it by the pound. Many restaurants also offer reserved parking spaces near the front of the restaurant for those using the To-Go service.

Catering

Some locations provide full- and part-service catering. Select locations have a Motorcoach for this purpose.

Banquets

Banquet facilities are also available at most locations, which can be reserved free of charge for parties and meetings. Generally on the far end of the restaurant, these rooms allow for large groups to dine away from those in the main dining room. And, for private events, the doors to the banquet room can be closed.

Philanthropy

Between 2001 and 2007, Golden Corral served 1,834,193 free meals to active duty and retired military personnel and has raised US$2,535,095 for disabled Veterans.

Training program

Co-worker

The Co-worker training program is referred to as "Fast Tracks". It allows co-workers to become certified in their position in the restaurant, and it provides a means whereby they can transfer and become proficient in other positions as well. Some of the positions include Food server, Baker, Grill Cook, Meat Cutter, Utility Person, or Prep Person. There are some administrative positions co-workers may also aspire to including Crew Trainer, Crew Leader, or Assistant Manager. This process involves computer-based training combined with hands-on training from experienced co-workers.

Management

Golden Corral has a 12-week management training program that is divided into three phases. The first two phases are five weeks each and take place in a training restaurant. The first five weeks are spent mastering each of the co-worker positions. In the next five-week phase, the candidate masters Golden Corral's administrative procedures. The final phase is two weeks of intensive training and testing that occurs at Golden Corral's headquarters in Raleigh.

Food safety

In 2003, an outbreak of salmonella was linked to a Golden Corral restaurant in Kennesaw, Georgia. Twenty-three people were affected by the outbreak. The salmonella bacteria was found in a floor drain, leading health inspectors to believe that it had been washed off of equipment earlier. No original source was found.

References