Someone from Connecticut told me Red Lobster never took off there because it was seen as bad seafood. Maybe the same reason Taco Bell failed in Mexico and Domino’s failing in Italy.
Seafood is a harder sell I think and higher prices don’t help.
Having grown up in New England and moved to Central Texas, I saw two very different opinions on Red Lobster.
It's 100% correct that in NE or anywhere near the coast Red Lobster was always considered inferior. The local competition and the ability of non-chain restaurants to "buy off the dock" meant you could always find better options that maybe even cost less.
When I moved to Central TX, I was stunned by how much everyone loved Red Lobster. It was my MIL's favorite celebration restaurant, and my wife loved it as well. To me having lived on fresh seafood for years, it was OK not great, but you could find decent seafood, slightly overpriced. I did see a rapid decline over the next 10-15 years.
But the problem isn't market share since most of the US doesn't have coastal access to fresh seafood. It's the same thing that happens to every chain restaurant after being bought out by a corporation. The restaurant life cycle as I have come to see it.
Start off being run by an owner who cares and is invested in making good food, grow to a local chain, start franchising, grow and get bought by corporate, focus changes from good food to profit and consistency, food quality craters, customers depart.
There's no magic here besides corporate mismanagement from the unlimited shrimp deal that cost them millions a quarter in loss to moving away from scratch cooked food to microwaved prepackaged food.
It's the same with Applebee's, Chili's etc. at one point all these places were decent to good before corporate greed and mismanagement steps in and starts selling over-priced sugar cocktails and appetizer specials. It's no longer about providing good food and atmosphere to families but about extracting maximum value from a customer engagement.
> grow and get bought by corporate, focus changes from good food to profit and consistency, food quality craters, customers depart.
While the broad strokes about the loss of a restaurant's soul under corporate influence rings true, according to Wikipedia, Red Lobster was purchased by General Mills in 1980 and then went through its massive growth and expansion phase.
That reflects my own memories of the place during that time. They certainly weren't losing customers after their corporate acquisition.
However, food culture and trends change, and the US has undergone a backlash against chain restaurants in general, with the perception that they are synonymous with low quality food.
My theory is that this is even worse for a seafood chain, where perception of freshness is a make or break criterion for diners. Once that perception is out there, it is very hard to recover the brand's image.
I wonder how many restaurants in coastal cities actually serve fresh fish any more. I'm sure some do but I'd bet a large number of such restaurants have moved to flown-in frozen seafood because it's cheaper or because the local stocks are overfished.
> Start off being run by an owner who cares and is invested in making good food, grow to a local chain, start franchising, grow and get bought by corporate, focus changes from good food to profit and consistency, food quality craters, customers depart.
> It's the same with Applebee's, Chili's etc. at one point all these places were decent to good before corporate greed and mismanagement steps in and starts selling over-priced sugar cocktails and appetizer specials. It's no longer about providing good food and atmosphere to families but about extracting maximum value from a customer engagement.
There needs to be a single catch-all phrase for this type of process, which (I think) we've seen more and more regularly in recent years. We see it in physical businesses, and it's also probably behind the huge shift to subscription-based services online. My interpretation is that it's essentially the capitalism that we've had for decades, but taken to ever-greater extremes. It seems to be rooted in America (and indeed, arguably behind a decent proportion of America's increasing woes) but is gradually infecting Europe too.
Whenever I see examples, I think of /r/latestagecapitalism, or "hyper-capitalism" but I'm not sure these terms would be widely-enough understood to be helpful in discussing or explaining the phenomenon.
I only ate at Red Lobster once, many years ago, because I also thought it was bad seafood. I thought (and still think) of it as the McDonald's of seafood.
But, to back up your point, I live in an area (not NE US) where fresh seafood is common and reasonably priced. Why eat at a place like Red Lobster when you have much better options?
But even when I've been in areas where good seafood is harder to get, I was never tempted to give Red Lobster another chance.
> After decades as a General Mills subsidiary, Red Lobster was purchased by a private equity firm in 2014
There it is.
Reflexive distaste for PE aside, Red Lobster somehow became a prominent part of my childhood's core memories. Must have met the criteria of affordable, family-friendly, and enough menu variety for everyone. I remember seeing strange adult drinks in salt-rimmed glasses called "margaritas" for the first time, how my mom would always point out how cold and dark it was inside, learning words like "booth" and "platter", and of course watching the lobsters awaiting their fate.
I haven't been to a Red Lobster in about 20 years. The one in my hometown is still open. Maybe I can swing by a location before they all close and see if the biscuits bring back memories of good times with family who aren't around anymore.
This is unfortunate, but so is the quality of seafood these days. Between chemicals in the water, plastics, and overfishing, seafood is just not something people should be eating.
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Seafood is a harder sell I think and higher prices don’t help.
It's 100% correct that in NE or anywhere near the coast Red Lobster was always considered inferior. The local competition and the ability of non-chain restaurants to "buy off the dock" meant you could always find better options that maybe even cost less.
When I moved to Central TX, I was stunned by how much everyone loved Red Lobster. It was my MIL's favorite celebration restaurant, and my wife loved it as well. To me having lived on fresh seafood for years, it was OK not great, but you could find decent seafood, slightly overpriced. I did see a rapid decline over the next 10-15 years.
But the problem isn't market share since most of the US doesn't have coastal access to fresh seafood. It's the same thing that happens to every chain restaurant after being bought out by a corporation. The restaurant life cycle as I have come to see it.
Start off being run by an owner who cares and is invested in making good food, grow to a local chain, start franchising, grow and get bought by corporate, focus changes from good food to profit and consistency, food quality craters, customers depart.
There's no magic here besides corporate mismanagement from the unlimited shrimp deal that cost them millions a quarter in loss to moving away from scratch cooked food to microwaved prepackaged food.
It's the same with Applebee's, Chili's etc. at one point all these places were decent to good before corporate greed and mismanagement steps in and starts selling over-priced sugar cocktails and appetizer specials. It's no longer about providing good food and atmosphere to families but about extracting maximum value from a customer engagement.
While the broad strokes about the loss of a restaurant's soul under corporate influence rings true, according to Wikipedia, Red Lobster was purchased by General Mills in 1980 and then went through its massive growth and expansion phase.
That reflects my own memories of the place during that time. They certainly weren't losing customers after their corporate acquisition.
However, food culture and trends change, and the US has undergone a backlash against chain restaurants in general, with the perception that they are synonymous with low quality food.
My theory is that this is even worse for a seafood chain, where perception of freshness is a make or break criterion for diners. Once that perception is out there, it is very hard to recover the brand's image.
I came to understand a long time ago that when a business starts franchising, that's a sign that the business is going to be making worse product.
> It's the same with Applebee's, Chili's etc. at one point all these places were decent to good before corporate greed and mismanagement steps in and starts selling over-priced sugar cocktails and appetizer specials. It's no longer about providing good food and atmosphere to families but about extracting maximum value from a customer engagement.
There needs to be a single catch-all phrase for this type of process, which (I think) we've seen more and more regularly in recent years. We see it in physical businesses, and it's also probably behind the huge shift to subscription-based services online. My interpretation is that it's essentially the capitalism that we've had for decades, but taken to ever-greater extremes. It seems to be rooted in America (and indeed, arguably behind a decent proportion of America's increasing woes) but is gradually infecting Europe too.
Whenever I see examples, I think of /r/latestagecapitalism, or "hyper-capitalism" but I'm not sure these terms would be widely-enough understood to be helpful in discussing or explaining the phenomenon.
But, to back up your point, I live in an area (not NE US) where fresh seafood is common and reasonably priced. Why eat at a place like Red Lobster when you have much better options?
But even when I've been in areas where good seafood is harder to get, I was never tempted to give Red Lobster another chance.
There it is.
Reflexive distaste for PE aside, Red Lobster somehow became a prominent part of my childhood's core memories. Must have met the criteria of affordable, family-friendly, and enough menu variety for everyone. I remember seeing strange adult drinks in salt-rimmed glasses called "margaritas" for the first time, how my mom would always point out how cold and dark it was inside, learning words like "booth" and "platter", and of course watching the lobsters awaiting their fate.
I haven't been to a Red Lobster in about 20 years. The one in my hometown is still open. Maybe I can swing by a location before they all close and see if the biscuits bring back memories of good times with family who aren't around anymore.
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