How The Internet Made Old Country Buffet Into A Hilarious Meme

The internet is selective about artifacts it deems worthy of coughing up from decades-past — and one of those is an Old Country Buffet training video-turned-hilarious-meme. The memes feature a mid-90s video of a man in a chef's jacket and tall hat standing at a carving station. In it, he demonstrates to new employees the proper way to communicate friendliness toward customers. Decades later, the cheesy lines of dialogue are perfectly awkward and great fodder for comedy and clever editing.

An example is a Reddit post entitled, "The Old Country Buffet carving station is the worst place to make conversation." The video is clipped at the carving chef saying, "Try the lasagna. It's my favorite." Reddit users responded with hilarious reactions and more memes. One user wrote, "One of my favorite YouTube comments of all time, 'This is a conversation between someone who hates his job with someone who hates his life.'"

The original Old Country Buffet training video is also posted on YouTube by a user named The Carving Guy. The man who identified himself as "Fred" appeared on a Minnesota radio talk show known as The Dave and Ryan Show. Fred explained how the original training video was shot after the restaurant closed one night in 1996. He said they taped the whole video in a few hours. The meme created fame for Fred, and one of his fans even offered to fly him out for a wedding in exchange for working the event — carving meat and delivering the lines. Fred declined.

The now-shuttered eatery was once a favorite for lower- and middle-class families who could enjoy a king's feast on a pauper's salary. That was before it closed in 2021 – one of many casualties of COVID restrictions, reduced crowds, and changing customer habits – knock-on effects restaurants are still adjusting to. There are a few similar institutions still standing like Golden Corral, which, while still popular, has had to resort to adjusting its business beyond the buffet  to survive. 

Now, Old Country Buffet and Fred the Carving Guy are part of a post-COVID nostalgic social media trend. It began when social media users dug up old clips of shows, cartoons, training videos, etc. while bored during lockdowns. They meshed the old media clips with modern slang and quotes to create posts that are nostalgic while still being socially relevant. This is how Old Country Buffet training videos have been used in memes –his defeated "Alright ..." used as a way to react to, among countless other things, the frustrations with modern dating. The Old Country Buffet memes grew even more popular when the restaurant closed for good, but for those who miss the dining booths, they can take a little solace that this time capsule of a GIF lives on.