Red Lobster endless shrimp $20! Yay or nay?

[BSR]

5 hours ago, maninsoma said:

We must live in alternate realities.  I was in Honolulu a few months ago and seafood is everywhere.  You can even buy poke (cut up raw fish in a sauce) at mom-and-pop versions of 7-11.  Yes, Hawaiian food is also big on meat (particularly grilled meats) but I wasn't aware of steak and rice being served everywhere.  Maybe we were just paying attention to different places.

I noticed a lot of Hawaiians in Las Vegas every year during the National Finals Rodeo.  Since Hawaiians come to LV all year round, I figured they were just taking advantage of lower rates or special deals until a Hawaiian told me that they came to LV because of the Rodeo.  Turns out some of the oldest rodeos in the US were started in Hawaii.  Wow, the things you learn at the poker table.

Out of curiosity, I looked it up:  believe it or not, there is a Red Lobster in Hawaii.  I wonder if that location serves previously frozen seafood like every other RL or if the Honolulu spot offers more fresh-caught items.  I mean, with all the fresh seafood available, why would anyone in Hawaii go to a Red Lobster?  Is their cheddar biscuit addiction that bad??  

[MikeBiDude]

46 minutes ago, BSR said:

Out of curiosity, I looked it up:  believe it or not, there is a Red Lobster in Hawaii

You missed my post from a few hours ago? 😉

[MikeBiDude]

Another take on the closings. Some of the employee stories may be sour grapes, but their take on the all you can eat is interesting.

Fired Red Lobster Employees Have Quite the Tales About the “Endless Shrimp” Debacle

SLATE.COM

---

Tales from the seafood promotion from hell.

 

[BSR]

1 hour ago, MikeBiDude said:

You missed my post from a few hours ago? 😉

I did read it.  Either I had a senior moment (eek! hope not), or my brain short-circuited trying to process the information.  In Honolulu where there must be a zillion different spots for fresh-caught seafood, people are lining up to go to always-frozen-never-fresh Red Lobster??  Baffling, to say the least.

Edited May 22, 2024 by BSR
Wording

[+ Pensant]

8 hours ago, MikeBiDude said:

Another take on the closings. Some of the employee stories may be sour grapes, but their take on the all you can eat is interesting.

Fired Red Lobster Employees Have Quite the Tales About the “Endless Shrimp” Debacle

SLATE.COM

---

Tales from the seafood promotion from hell.

 

Sobering article. The gluttony of Americans can be appalling. The fate of the employees equally so. I just got back from three weeks in Europe, mostly in Germany. This article encapsulates their view of American “gastronomy” and rapacious PE capitalism.

[maninsoma]

11 hours ago, MikeBiDude said:

Another take on the closings. Some of the employee stories may be sour grapes, but their take on the all you can eat is interesting.

Fired Red Lobster Employees Have Quite the Tales About the “Endless Shrimp” Debacle

SLATE.COM

---

Tales from the seafood promotion from hell.

 

Wow.  Red Lobster management was even more stupid than I realized.  No time limit for an all-you-can-eat deal?  That might work if the price was a lot higher, but given that the deal was apparently close to 60% of other entrees it's no wonder that their dining rooms were filled with people who ate more shrimp than $20 could buy.

I happened to return last weekend to the Indian buffet I previously mentioned.  There is no time limit but most of the food on offer isn't what most people would pig out on, given it's so rich and spicy.  They also charge $45 per person.  I was a bit surprised at how many mimosas I drank (they were refilling my glass without me even asking for more, so I assume they must be using extremely cheap sparkling wine.

[maninsoma]

10 hours ago, BSR said:

I did read it.  Either I had a senior moment (eek! hope not), or my brain short-circuited trying to process the information.  In Honolulu where there must be a zillion different spots for fresh-caught seafood, people are lining up to go to always-frozen-never-fresh Red Lobster??  Baffling, to say the least.

The most popular restaurant, from what I could tell, was Cheesecake Factory.  At dinner time the dining area was always full and there were scores of people waiting outside for tables. I have only eaten at a Cheesecake Factory once and thought they food was overpriced and mediocre.  It boggles my mind that people would travel thousands of miles and then eat in a restaurant they could probably go to at home, but then I remind myself that a lot of USA citizens would rather go to a chain restaurant due to its predictability versus taking a chance on an unfamiliar place.

[MikeBiDude]

54 minutes ago, maninsoma said:

but then I remind myself that a lot of USA citizens would rather go to a chain restaurant due to its predictability versus taking a chance on an unfamiliar place.

This! And this is how McDonalds got huge in its beginnings…mediocre food, clean restrooms, 100% of the time consistent the same anywhere in the country.

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

1 hour ago, maninsoma said:

but then I remind myself that a lot of USA citizens would rather go to a chain restaurant due to its predictability versus taking a chance on an unfamiliar place.

Which is why most Americans stick out like sore thumbs on foreign soil.

The stereotype is unfortunately true:  From the way we dress, the volume of our voices, to our mundane food tastes.

Going to a RL in Hawaii is criminal.

[pubic_assistance]

1 hour ago, maninsoma said:

I have only eaten at a Cheesecake Factory once and thought they food was overpriced and mediocre. 

I have the opposite opinion.

I live in NYC / eat at very good restaurants all the time + I know how to cook...so to me..Cheesecake Factory is one of the few chains that I will actually seek out when traveling in Middle America. There are several delicious items on their menu. And considering the size of the servings I've never felt it was overpriced. (But then I'm spending NYC money which is like a different economy from the rest of the US.)

Not much of a fan of any kind of Cheesecake but I've never had a bad meal there.

[samhexum]

30 minutes ago, MikeBiDude said:

This! And this is how McDonalds got huge in its beginnings…mediocre food, clean restrooms, 100% of the time consistent the same anywhere in the country.

And the world...  I went to Russia in 1991 and we had to eat at the McDonald's in Moscow, just because…

I don't know if it still is, but at the time it was the largest in the world. Despite how expensive it was for Russians to eat there, the line to get in was around three sides of the block. Fortunately, our tour guides got us in right away, so we treated them to lunch. 

The food tasted exactly the same, and I don't remember the price being all that outrageous compared to the US at the time.

because it was so impossible to get anything edible in Russia, we also ate Pizza Hut, and were thrilled to!!!  The Russian citizens could not afford Pizza Hut, so they could eat at Pizza Hut Express, which was cheaper. Wealthy Russians or tourists could afford the regular Pizza Hut, so we again treated our guides and they were very impressed by us.

 

[maninsoma]

3 hours ago, pubic_assistance said:

I have the opposite opinion.

I live in NYC / eat at very good restaurants all the time + I know how to cook...so to me..Cheesecake Factory is one of the few chains that I will actually seek out when traveling in Middle America. There are several delicious items on their menu. And considering the size of the servings I've never felt it was overpriced. (But then I'm spending NYC money which is like a different economy from the rest of the US.)

Not much of a fan of any kind of Cheesecake but I've never had a bad meal there.

Well, I had a basic breakfast dish (maybe it was eggs, toast, breakfast meat or maybe it was an omelet -- I don't really recall) and I didn't think it was any better than Denny's.  I just compared prices online and, for that kind of meal, the cost seems pretty similar so either Denny's raised their prices more or I was just under a mistaken notion regarding the relative costs.  I almost never eat at chain restaurants unless it's a local chain with just a few locations.

[pubic_assistance]

17 hours ago, maninsoma said:

Well, I had a basic breakfast dish (maybe it was eggs, toast, breakfast meat or maybe it was an omelet -- I don't really recall) and I didn't think it was any better than Denny's.  I just compared prices online and, for that kind of meal, the cost seems pretty similar so either Denny's raised their prices more or I was just under a mistaken notion regarding the relative costs.  I almost never eat at chain restaurants unless it's a local chain with just a few locations.

I was a huge Denny's fan when I was young and poor.

But the last time I visited the breakfast was pretty piss-poor. I don't know HOW you fu*k up an omelette !!

Never had breakfast at the Cheesecake Factory. But that would be sad, indeed if they weren't better than a low-mark standard like Denny's.

When I am traveling in Middle America sometimes I don't have any choice but to eat in a chain restaurant. In many places, that's all that's left. Especially after the Pandemic Panic knocked a lot of mom-n-pops off the map.

 

Edited May 23, 2024 by pubic_assistance
grammar / spelling

[+ FrankR]

This was floating around social media yesterday. Can’t vouch for the truthfullness but will look into it… Won’t surprise me much either way.

[KeepItReal]

2 hours ago, FrankR said:

This was floating around social media yesterday. Can’t vouch for the truthfullness but will look into it… Won’t surprise me much either way.

Take a look here for context:

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-05-21/column-it-wasnt-just-the-endless-shrimp-red-lobsters-corporate-owners-drove-it-into-bankruptcy

[Winky]

On 5/16/2024 at 2:37 PM, DynamicUno said:

I think Red Lobster's troubles have more to do with the changes in ownership in the past couple decades than one badly executed promotion.  It's a eye catching headline, sure, but if the business was fundamentally healthy it would be no more than a blip.

To be clear, Red Lobster was a mature brand with a lot of older locations, and a fairly downmarket reputation. It was no longer a growth business, it was the seafood place you went with your boomer (grand)parents after church.  There was a lot more competition from other newer chains, but still, it had a decent level of goodwill.  If it was structurally sound, I think it would be struggling to stay relevant but not going bankrupt.

Red Lobster was owned by Golden Gate Capital for several years last decade.  It's typical for PE firms to saddle their targets with a lot of debt as part of the acquisition.  It's also common for them to sell off the assets like real estate.  They'll take a location where the chain owned the property and sell the lot to a real estate investment firm and execute a long term lease.  They restaurant is still on the hook for any maintenance and upkeep on the property, so the new landlords provide very little service for the rent payments.  So the PE firm gets their aquisition paid off and they leave the business with high debts and more operating expenses than they had before the takeover.

If GCC left Red Lobster with drained assets and high debts, and you add the challenging post-pandemic restaurant environment on top of that, it's little wonder they're struggling to keep up.  It would certainly explain the turnover in their c-suite ever since Thai Union bought them, I can see these executives coming in, getting a real look at the balance sheets and noping out as soon as they could.

That would also explain the sudden move to close a large number of locations. They can stem the bleeding from underperforming locations, and hopefully recover enough value from the assets that get auctioned off to pay down the debts and get to a more stable financial position.  Unfortunately, a bankruptcy will probably still be necessary to force a restructuring of the remaining debt (and hopefully not a liquidation).

Sadly, the chain retaurant industry has been a big target for these firms, and it leaves empty buildings and lost jobs in the wake.  Name any chain that's died or struggled to survive in the past many years and it's a reasonable bet that there's been an leveraged aquisition in the process.  Consumers pay higher prices, employees lose jobs and or better wages, and cities are left with empty storefronts that become a hole in their tax base.  But somehow the blame gets shifted to the middle class because a soccer mom stopped for a latte.

 

 

 

I believe that Thai Union was also the sole supplier of shrimp to Red Lobster, and forced the revived "all you can eat" promotion against the wishes of Red Lobster top management. Perhaps the profit to Thai Union from wholesale shrimp sales was more valuable to them than the loss of retail profits within in Red Lobster?

[pubic_assistance]

Not the first business that was raped and murdered by a Private Equity.

If we had a functioning Governement someone would have sponsored a bill to make this more difficult to do. Unfortunately.....no.

[samhexum]

22 minutes ago, pubic_assistance said:

Not the first business that was raped and murdered by a Private Equity.

Whatever the Sears & Kmart do you mean?

[+ WilliamM]

On 5/22/2024 at 11:32 AM, samhexum said:

And the world...  I went to Russia in 1991 and we had to eat at the McDonald's in Moscow, just because…

I don't know if it still is, but at the time it was the largest in the world. Despite how expensive it was for Russians to eat there, the line to get in was around three sides of the block. Fortunately, our tour guides got us in right away, so we treated them to lunch. 

The food tasted exactly the same, and I don't remember the price being all that outrageous compared to the US at the time.

because it was so impossible to get anything edible in Russia, we also ate Pizza Hut, and were thrilled to!!!  The Russian citizens could not afford Pizza Hut, so they could eat at Pizza Hut Express, which was cheaper. Wealthy Russians or tourists could afford the regular Pizza Hut, so we again treated our guides and they were very impressed by us.

 

That was a long time ago. I don't remember any of those places when I was in Russia in 2005

[samhexum]

36 minutes ago, WilliamM said:

That was a long time ago. I don't remember any of those places when I was in Russia in 2005

To be fair, you probably weren't looking for them.

[+ sniper]

7 hours ago, pubic_assistance said:

Not the first business that was raped and murdered by a Private Equity.

If we had a functioning Governement someone would have sponsored a bill to make this more difficult to do. Unfortunately.....no.

I think this selling the land under the building is what's killing the Vegas experience. It will take longer to play out because of the gambling money,  but I think the next financial crisis will hit them hard 

Edited May 24, 2024 by sniper

[BSR]

15 hours ago, KeepItReal said:

Take a look here for context:

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-05-21/column-it-wasnt-just-the-endless-shrimp-red-lobsters-corporate-owners-drove-it-into-bankruptcy

Thanks for the article.  I had a sneaking suspicion that there was more going on.  Unfortunately, we initially heard only part of the story because "Gluttons Eat Red Lobster Into Bankruptcy" grabs a lot more clicks than the nerdy details of a private equity buyout.

[+ Vegas_Millennial]

On 5/22/2024 at 10:32 AM, samhexum said:

I don't know if it still is, but at the time it was the largest in the world.

All McDonald's in Russia ceased operation at the beginning of the Russian War against Ukraine.  There were news stories at the time highlighting the arc of history from the time the first McDonald's opened in Moscow at the end of the Cold War, until it closed at the start of the War with Ukraine.

Edited May 24, 2024 by Vegas_Millennial
Fixed Auto Correct "Cold War"

[samhexum]

48 minutes ago, Vegas_Millennial said:

All McDonald's in Russia ceased operation at the beginning of the Russian War against Ukraine.  There were news stories at the time highlighting the arc of history from the time the first McDonald's opened in Moscow at the end of the Child Was, until it closed at the start of the War with Ukraine.

Unfortunately, it's been so long that I forgot.

[mike carey]

1 hour ago, Vegas_Millennial said:

All McDonald's in Russia ceased operation at the beginning of the Russian War against Ukraine.  There were news stories at the time highlighting the arc of history from the time the first McDonald's opened in Moscow at the end of the Child Was, until it closed at the start of the War with Ukraine.

The end of the Cold War perhaps?