Sizzler's buffet-steakhouse model collapsed in 2020 on both sides of the Pacific

Sizzler, the all-you-can-eat buffet and steakhouse chain founded in California in 1958, once had hundreds of restaurants across the United States and a beloved Australian operation that ran for 35 years. The format was built on volume: a fixed price, a salad bar, and customers who filled up.

By the 2000s the model was losing ground. Casual-dining chains aged against faster, cheaper competitors, and the buffet format struggled to keep pace. In Australia, parent company Collins Foods said the Sizzler network had been under constant financial review since 2015, closing 19 restaurants in that time.

In 2020 the decline became a collapse on both sides of the Pacific. On 21 September the US parent, Sizzler USA, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in California, citing the pandemic's closure of indoor dining and landlords unwilling to grant rent abatement. Six weeks later, on 15 November, Collins Foods permanently closed Sizzler's final nine Australian restaurants.

The two exits marked the practical end of a buffet dynasty. The US parent said it would restructure and cut debt, and the brand survived in diminished form, but a chain that had filled plates for six decades was reduced to a handful of stores and a memory.