A Cicis Pizza customer says she was let down by the chain after several visits. Her reason? She doesn’t think it’s a “real” buffet.
The mom, posting under the TikTok account @theamwsfamily, documented her family’s recent visit to one of the restaurant’s locations.
“They say third time is a charm and I don’t believe that,” the TikToker remarks at the top of her video.
“But my kids wanted to go back to Cicis, and we’re back.” She narrates as she shows footage of the restaurant. “So when we first walk in, I’m showing y’all exactly what it looks like when we go up there.”
There are several stations with different pizza slices that appear close to being completely bare. Using flat-steel serving utensils, other customers place slices on red plates.
Although the TikToker’s children seem to enjoy the restaurant, she explains her gripes with the chain. Namely, she says she doesn’t believe it qualifies as a real buffet. And that’s due to the constant approaches she says she had to make to staff.
“And I understand that you can get request pizza. We got all that. We done heard y’all say that before. But tell me at a buffet—why do you have to keep going up there to request a pizza at a buffet? They didn’t have any bowls for the soup, so we had to keep asking for bowls. And I understand the crowd, it gets busy, we get all that,” she says.
The video cuts to someone putting breadsticks on a plate. “I told my kids, ‘Look. It’s five breadsticks left. Y’all got to be accommodating for the other people, but that sucker got stuck.’”
“You have to request, every time you go up there basically, what kind of pizza you want because there’s never any pizza up there. And this is a buffet,” she continues.
Despite airing these grievances with the restaurant chain, she did highlight some positives from her family outing. Toward the end of her clip, the mom showed her family sitting and eating together, along with a smiling Cici’s employee she gave a “shout out” to in her video for being “nice.”
In the caption of the clip, she reiterates the question, “If you have to keep going to request a pizza to be made is it really a buffet?”
@theamwsfamily If you have to keep going to request a pizza to be made is it really a buffet? 🤣 #buffet #pizzatime #pizzatiktok #foodtok #foodie #foodtok #pizza #review #pizzatok #foodreview #family #dinner ♬ original sound – TheAMWsFamily
Viewers weigh in
Her video accrued over 52,000 views, with hundreds of commenters chiming in.
Viewers were stuck on how much the mother ended up paying for her family at the restaurant. They alluded to the opening frame of her video, which shows the mom placing her credit card inside of a POS machine and processing the payment. “$72 is crazy tho,” one wrote.
Viewers also claimed there’s been a decline in Cicis quality.
“Dang. Cici’s used to be popping and stacked with pizza options!” one exclaimed.
Another echoed this sentiment. “I agree this is not the cicis that I grew up with. I swear I would eat like a whole pizza by myself when i was 12. Sometimes two. And they always had tons of pizza up there,” they said.
Another viewer defended Cicis’ decision to do not make the pizza in the buffet readily available. “They do that to control the food flow. Because people are going to just say forget it and leave.”
Is Cicis Pizza a ‘real’ buffet?
While Cicis Pizza does brand itself as an all-you-can-eat buffet, it is missing one small component: continuous refilling. According to chowbus, staff should be continuously monitoring “the buffet to refill dishes, ensuring freshness and availability.”
However, because Cicis Pizza offers a fixed price for its buffet customers to eat as much as they want, it is technically a buffet.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Cicis Pizza and @theamwsfamily via email for further comment.
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