Who are the Las Vegas buffet closures impacting most? The pigs who ate the scraps

The closures of the world-famous Las Vegas all-you-can-eat buffets are not just hitting human visitors – but scrap-eating pigs too.

“We have about 5,000 hogs here at this moment that we feed totally with food waste,” Sarah Stallard of Las Vegas Livestock told Fox 5 Vegas, and has begun to look for other options to feed its animals.

It comes as Sin City continues to move further away from all-you-can-eat dining rooms, which were once a staple of the city. Earlier this month, MGM announced that its buffet at the Grand Hotel is set to close permanently on May 31.

The move follows a trend of major resorts replacing traditional buffets with food halls and specialty restaurants.

For years, buffets in Vegas have provided a steady source of food waste for livestock farms, though their decline has led some to shift their attention to grocery stores and warehouses instead.

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This shift was also exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which prompted Vegas proprietors to adopt the food hall model.

"During the pandemic, interest in buffets continued to decrease while the costs of operating one increased," Patrick Miller, CEO of Rio Hotel & Casino, told Fox News Digital last September.

"With [our food hall], we've managed to offer guests the same selection of flavors with a higher emphasis on quality [food] at an affordable price point that is made fresh to order, rather than sitting under a heat lamp."

Such a switch-up had a direct knock-on effect on the livestock farmers. “Before the pandemic, we were mostly servicing casino hotels, sort of those one-stop properties,” Stallard said. “After the pandemic, it kind of caused a shift in where we were going to get that from.”

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Switching from Vegas buffets to grocery stores also required equipment upgrades to process different types of waste and remove “inorganic material,” she added.

It has, however, meant higher, more consistent waste volumes.

“Pre-pandemic, we were probably processing 30 tons a day, and now we process close to 55 tons a day,” Stallard told Fox 5 Vegas. “Thankfully, the shift that we made implementing that waste sorting technology has given us access to that grocery store market, and that is very consistent.

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