Five years later: How foodservice leaders lead differently in the post-pandemic world

Five years after the food-away-from-home business was upended by an unimaginable health crisis, operators and researchers agree the industry has changed. 

Look at the post-pandemic staying power of takeout and delivery, they point out. Menus are slimmer, technology has become as commonplace as forks, and the supply chain is still not back to what it was in 2019.
 
Less obvious than what’s happening in dining rooms and kitchens, they attest, are the changes in the way operators approach their businesses. 

Data abounds on how operations and sales have been altered. But there's no specific measure of how the industry’s thinking has evolved.  Ditto for how the business is viewed differently today by customers and employees.

So, how have mindsets been changed by COVID-19?

“It’s something we talk about frequently here at Golden Corral,” said Lance Trenary, CEO of the 351-unit buffet chain. “There are so many more balls in the air than there were at the start of COVID. If there was one thing I learned, if there was one thing guests taught us, it was that you have to be flexible, adaptable, and willing to try new things. It caused us to think differently.”

For instance, “we’d never really embraced technology,” said Trenary. “It became very evident that...we had to change that mindset.”

In the middle of the pandemic, while the economy was still on a wartime footing, Golden Corral decided it had to revamp its tech for the near- and long-term. 

“We went from the Stone Ages to cutting edge,” said Trenary. “We’ve invested millions of dollars in this, with the idea that we’ll meet the guest where they are.”

Staying on the cutting edge has become as important as being in sync with food trends. “Technology really advanced so much in the last 10 years,” said the CEO, who won the association’s Gold Plate Award in 2022. “For the last five years, it’s been at lightning speed.”

Similarly, “going into the pandemic, off-premise was just not part of our business model,” says Trenary.
 “On a good year, we were at two percent [of sales for off-premise dining]. 

“It’s an incredibly important part of our strategic plan now,” he said. “We’ve tripled our off-premise business. We’re targeting ten percent this year.”

Long-standing reservations about grab-and-go had kept Cincinnati’s public high schools from giving that mode of service a try. Teachers and custodians feared they’d have far more classroom litter and mess to clean up, and that students would be too absorbed in what they’d grabbed for lunch to take in what was being taught. 

Those concerns turned moot when lunchroom closings and social distancing made grab-and-go service the preferred way of getting food to youngsters. 

“All those fairy tales and myths didn’t come to fruition,” says Jessica Shelly, Director of Student Dining Services for Cincinnati Public Schools and the Gold Plate winner for 2023. “We’ve continued to use grab-and-go for our high schools.”

She, too, cites a need for greater flexibility in the post-pandemic world. In the 67 schools she oversees, Shelly says, that adaptability has come from a new approach to staff training and preparation.

After COVID shut down schools, “we weren’t sure who would be returning to us,” even though no one from her staff was laid off, explains Shelly. "We worked on a robust replacement plan. Out of that succession planning, we developed a process and procedure module that covers all the activities we do every day.” Employees were cross-trained in those skills.

The approach enables an employee to switch readily to a position where they’re more acutely needed. All the individual need do is brush up on what’s required of them in the post they’ve been reassigned.
The program has also made school foodservices more efficient, according to Shelly.

More collaboration

The approach had the positive side effect of fostering more collaboration in decision-making, the 2023 Gold Plate winner reports. 

“Our thought process has changed to make sure we’re inclusive of other departments, of everyone,” says Shelly. “Instead of saying, ‘We need X,’ we’re really collaborating with them, inviting their input.”
Golden Corral’s Trenary has similarly seen more collaboration in the decision-making process, particularly with franchisees. 

“We have 160 franchisees,” he says, noting that a recent pulse check revealed that community’s trust in their franchisor’s leadership has never been higher. “I know our business results are part of that, but we have over-communicated since the pandemic started.”

There’s also been considerable resource-sharing. When Golden Corral decided the brand needed a major infusion of technology, market conditions were still tough. So, the franchisor picked up the tab.

Satisfying bolder consumers

Trenary contends that franchised and company-run stores are both dealing with a clientele that’s different from what they faced in pre-pandemic days.

“They’ve changed so drastically in the last five years,” says the 40-plus year veteran of the chain.  "I see a more discerning guest now than I ever have.”

He asserts that customers have come out of the pandemic with a revised definition of value. No longer is it perceived merely in terms of value, serving size, or food quality. He sees the overall experience as being more of a factor in guests’ computation of value, along with dynamics that have nothing to do with what happens within a restaurant’s four walls, like what it gives back to the community. 

With that new reality in place, Golden Corral has brought down its average check by $3 while improving margins and raising the annual sales of a typical store to $4.7 million.

Better prepared today?

Trenary reveals that 2025 didn’t start out strongly for Golden Corral, though conditions improved dramatically as the year progressed. Still, he says, there was no panic during those early weeks, a result of the confidence that came from weathering the pandemic with near-record results. 

“Our management is much more confident,” Trenary says. It’s not a cockiness—we make sure we don’t get cocky about anything. But the mindset that we adopted—to move quickly, to embrace technology, to try new business models, to embrace what the customers wanted — that all built our confidence.”

But he’s not sure the trade as a whole should be as confident.

“The industry has been segmented into winners and losers,” Trenary says. “Those who have listened closely to their customers and responded, those who have really embraced that mindset, are okay. [But] I think it’s evident that there is a group that did not do that, that did not invest. They did not prepare themselves financially.”

Similarly, Shelly is dismayed by the evidence she sees of America’s short memory. 

“During the pandemic and the few years after, we were seen as essential workers,” she says of her staff and herself. “We were the ones out in view, getting kids meals, helping them stay healthy.

“It seems that in the last couple of months, we’re not seen as essential anymore.” She spoke shortly after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a budget resolution that called for massive cuts in federal spending. One of the programs that politicos say could be on the chopping block is the federal school lunch program.

"We're kind of being tossed out the window,” said Shelly. 

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