This Restaurant Chain Had A Famous Breakfast Buffet In The '80s

If you're a fan of all-you-can-eat dining, you may have fond memories of a restaurant chain called Shoney's, which operated a famous buffet of traditional country breakfast fare in the 1980s. Shoney's buffet offered over 40 items for breakfast in unlimited quantities (though at some point that marketing claim dropped to an even 40 items). Being evidently very technically conscious, the chain has referred to its buffet as an "all you care to eat" fresh food bar (because what one can eat is grammatically different from how much one cares to eat).

Regardless of how much you could eat or cared to eat, there were abundant goodies on Shoney's buffet that made it immensely popular with diners. The breakfast dishes fluctuated a bit over the years, but fundamentally they included standard fare like scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, and biscuits and gravy, as well as fresh fruit options, ultimately even including desserts and a salad bar.

Headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, this Southern-born restaurant chain also steadily offered Southern staples, like grits, on its breakfast bars across the country. At certain points, the buffet also included items such as waffles, hot fruit toppings for the pancakes, yogurt, cereal, fruit salad, blueberry muffins, and even sweets like cinnamon rolls and apple crumb cake. Other regional Southern favorites have also been offered in certain locations, like fried bologna and liver pudding.

Shoney's breakfast buffet debuted in 1982 and remained a popular dining-out option in the 1990s. The brand peaked around 1998, at which point it operated over 1,000 restaurants. Unfortunately for breakfast buffet lovers everywhere, though, things began to decline after that.

While Shoney's hasn't died out completely, it has experienced a sharp decline over the years. As of December 2025, only diners in Oklahoma and eastward can now visit the once nationwide restaurant. Shoney's has just over 50 locations still in operation across 12 states, as of December 2025 — a far cry from the widespread presence the brand had in its heyday.

Buffet restaurants in general have declined considerably since the COVID-19 pandemic forced closures for some, drove down sales for others, and spurred shifts in consumer perspectives about restaurant safety in general and buffet dining specifically. Several buffet chains, such as Sweet Tomatoes and Old Country Buffet, didn't survive the pandemic. The loss of these favorites perhaps makes us appreciate the survival of other buffets all the more, like Shoney's and Golden Corral, another buffet brand that has fared much better than other chains in its category and is still going strong, even offering breakfast on the weekends.

Shoney's locations that still exist still offer an all-you-care-to-eat breakfast buffet. While some diners report that the items on Shoney's breakfast buffet aren't as abundant or as high-quality as they once were, others have enjoyed the trip down memory lane,  fondly recalling dining at the chain in the '80s and '90s.

As the buffet concept continues to decline in an ever-changing restaurant landscape, Shoney's evidently still sees profitability in its buffet dining offerings. In 2023, the company announced it was expanding its breakfast buffet with new items, including bacon and cheddar cheese grits, egg frittata cups, a Sweet Heat Crispy Chicken Biscuit, and a sausage skillet hash. Various sweet treats were added, too, with company CEO David Davoudpour commenting in a news release that he likes sweet things with his morning coffee. The more saccharine items included churro donuts and a strawberry trifle. Some bygone sweet menu items also made a comeback, including blueberry muffins and cinnamon rolls (though today's cinnamon rolls feature traditional frosting, while the Shoney's cinnamon rolls of yesteryear were topped with caramel syrup and nuts).

In 2024, the flagging restaurant brand further revealed it was expanding its all-you-care-to-eat offerings to include a rotating daily dinner theme. It's part of what Davoudpour calls a return to the brand's glory days, per a Shoney's press release. The daily breakfast items got a weeknight encore, with "brinner" (an amalgamation of breakfast and dinner) being featured on Wednesday nights. Other daily themes include a barbecue night, showcasing dishes like ribs, barbecue chicken, sliders, and baked beans. Mexican night offers fare like tacos, fajitas, beans, and chicken tortilla soup. Italian nights feature baked spaghetti, chicken parm, lasagna, and similar dishes, while clams, oysters, and regional Southern dishes such as jambalaya and gumbo appear on Friday fish night. A Saturday surf 'n' turf buffet adds ranch steaks, baked potatoes, and other veggies to the previous night's fish offerings. Sundays serve up old-fashioned comfort foods like meatloaf, pot roast, turkey and dressing, and collard greens (another Southern staple).