In March, the company explored takeout and “modeled a number of different options” to keep restaurants afloat during the pandemic. Haywood said it’s “impossible to keep the company viable” with jurisdictions not allowing buffets to reopen. “It was the canary in the mine shaft,” he said. But when Georgia - criticized for reopening businesses too soon - did not allow buffets to reopen, Haywood said he didn’t see a “path” to reopening anywhere else. Georgia, where Garden Fresh has four buffet restaurants in Atlanta, was one of the first states to ease restrictions for restaurants. He added: “ Anything that’s communal, eater-tainment or buffet - anything that brings people together in groups is going to be challenged” to reopen - even in states where restrictions have been lifted, such as Georgia. Related: A reopening toolkit: What restaurants need to protect guests and workers from coronavirus “Our problem is this: we’re a buffet concept,” Haywood said. Haywood, in a phone interview Thursday with Nation’s Restaurant News, said the company has spent the last eight weeks “ exploring every possible option” for the company. Related: Golden Corral suspends company-owned buffets in wake of coronavirus Roughly 4,400 employees, including Haywood, have been furloughed. The San Diego-based company, owned by Washington, D.C.-based private equity firm Perpetual Capital Partners, temporarily closed its 97 restaurants, 12 commissary kitchens and two distributions centers when stay-at-home mandates swept the nation in March.
Garden Fresh Restaurant Corp., the parent company of buffet brands Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes, is exploring a bankruptcy filing as the company does not see a “path” to reopening restaurants amid the COVID-19 pandemic, CEO John Haywood said.
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