Is Golden Corral planning to open a franchise in Jackson? No, that's not true: some joker put out a story to that effect on a prank website but it is not true. The company makes no mention of it on its website.
The story originated from an article published on React365 on April 3, 2019 titled "GOLDEN CORRAL TO OPEN IN JACKSON" (archived here) which opened:
Buffets Inc., the parent company of Golden Corral, announced plans today to open a restaurant in Jackson. The restaurant will be located at 2221 Shirley Dr, the site of the former Gilbert's Steakhouse. The former restaurant will be demolished, and construction is expected to begin the first week of June. The restaurant will be approximately 10,000 Sq. Ft, and will feature a banquet room for private events. Construction is expected to be completed by Thanksgiving, with the restaurant opening shortly thereafter.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:
GOLDEN CORRAL TO OPEN IN JACKSON
Buffets Inc., the parent company of Golden Corral, announced plans today to open a restaurant in Jackson. The restaurant will be located at 2221 Shirley Dr, the site of the former Gilbert's Steakhouse. The former restaurant will be demolished, and construction is expected to begin the first week of June. The restaurant will be approximately 10,000 Sq. Ft, and will feature a banquet room for private events. Construction is expected to be completed by Thanksgiving, with the restaurant opening shortly thereafter.
However there is no mention of the news on Golden Corral's website as you can check for yourself:
Press Room - Golden Corral
March 19, 2019 Golden Corral, a buffet restaurant long desired by Fresnans, is planning to open a location in Fresno. The popular chain with 495 restaurants nationwide has a franchisee in the area who has paid the franchise fee and is looking for locations to open a Golden Corral, said Van Ingram, the company's vice president of franchise development.
Golden Corral is also not part of Buffets Inc. (which is a part of Ovation Brands).
The site that published the story is a prank website where users can submit their own headline, description and photo to create realistic looking prank news articles.
Users don't even need to upload their own image, there is a built-in search function that will pull an appropriate image from Google image search.
The site is part of a larger network of prank sites all using the same basic layout but sometimes in different languages. It appears to be run by a Belgian company named Mediavibes or Media Vibes which is managed by a man named Nicolas Gouriou according to registration records.
Each site in the network comes with a disclaimer (sometimes translated into a different language) that reads:
This website is an entertainment website, jokes are created by users. These are humourous jokes, fantasy, fictional, that should not be seriously taken or as a source of information.
So don't fall for this prank now that we've warned you about it!
NewsGuard, a company that uses trained journalist to rank the reliability of websites, describes react365.com as:
A website that lets users make up headlines and stories and share them on social media.
According to NewsGuard the site does not maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability. Read their full assessment here.
We wrote about react365.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:
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