Just wondering: What are your thoughts on why Red Lobster is finding itself in financial trouble? Is the price of seafood climbing? Poor management? People are eating out less? People are settling for cheaper seafood at other restaurants, like Golden Corral? People are finding better deals elsewhere? Seafood dropping in popularity? So, what are your thoughts and would you fix?
It’s an old and tired chain and it hasn’t reinvented itself. Most of the locations are in the same places for the last 20+ years, while communities evolve and develop in different directions. Successful restaurants depend upon good locations. Owners should look for new locations in places where more people shop and dine. They should change their decor and remarket their brand.
Because they advertise heavily in areas where they don’t exist? Seriously, there are ads on tv. They look really good. But there isn’t a RL within 200 miles of me.
In this economy, no one wants to shell out all those clams for that kind of food.
It’s expensive and not very good?
The best thing on the seafood restaurant’s menu isn’t seafood.
They have changed their menu and eliminated some of the most popular items. As one example, I know lots of folks who really liked their cheesy potatoes, as I did, and they don’t have them any more. Also, the food they do have has really declined in quality. I also agree with all of Omar Little’s points.
I’ve been there twice and the atmosphere is mcdonalds-ish but the prices are sizzler.
With that kind of atmosphere, I would go with the olive garden model and aim for the budget conscious.
If you want to charge that much, you need at least as much class as chili’s or california pizza kitchen.
I’ll eat almost anywhere, but I’m more excited about going to McDonald
s than RL, and it’s not even about the prices. The only thing I remember from eating there years ago was everything tasted like it had been microwaved.
LOL. I noticed that too. It’s the imaginary restaurant that looks good in theory.
Places like RL that destroy perfectly good seafood should be outlawed, what a waste…
According to CNN, it’s because of the Great Recession. Of course, he doesn’t mention that there are far more restaurant chains now than there were when he was a kid, and that (as mentioned above) Red Lobster hasn’t done anything to keep current in the marketplace.
StG
Wow! Back-to-back right answers.
I haven’t been to Red Lobster in decades. There aren’t very many in New England because you can get great lobster and other seafood at a billion other places or even cheaper at any supermarket. However, I still see the ads (as noted, they advertise even where there aren’t any locations) and I did go to them a few times as a kid.
I think they are sitting in a target demographic spot that you don’t want to be in. The quality and range of restaurants in the U.S. has improved greatly in the past 25 years. Red Lobster used to be considered solidly middle-class or maybe even a little higher 30 years ago. It was somewhere you might take your family for a special occasion or a date if you in a mid-sized city and wanted to impress them. That doesn’t apply today. The range of quality food options has exploded and the new trend is smaller places that do something different extremely well.
Seafood is as popular as ever but there are also many new competitors in that market. If you wanted to impress someone with truly good seafood, you have to either find a great local place or choose a higher end chain like Legal Seafoods. There isn’t a strong position to be played in the mass-market, mediocre seafood arena these days. Middle-class market dollars for midscale sit-down restaurants is shrinking while both the higher and lower end are thriving if they offer something new. In short, they are indeed trying to force an outdated model to work.
The last tie I ate at a Red Lobster was about six years ago in desperation on a trip, as everything else in the area was closed. The food was about as low mediocre as I remembered.
I don’t know how they manage to screw up seafood so consistently, but it’s no surprise the formula isn’t working so well.
There was an article in the Wall St. Journal recently about how Americans supposedly are eating less seafood these days (either supermarket-bought or at restaurants) and how the industry is trying to figure out how to reverse the decline. I view it as a good thing - it just means more clams for me.
How to learn to eat at and love Red Lobster: Just try eating at Long John Silver’s sometime. (A seafood sort-of-fast-food chain. Don’t know if it’s nationwide or regional.) You’ll never underappreciate Red Lobster again.
This article suggests that it’s due to the decline of the middle class in America. Red Lobster is too upscale for the poor and too low-class for the rich, The article notes that Darden Restaurants (parent company of Red Lobster) is doing much better with upscale restaurant chains like Capital Grille.
Long John Silver’s is straight-up fast food. It has a drive-through.
I ate at ljs once. About the same quality as red lobster at half the price.
I tried to eat at RL several times but never made it. Every single time we went there we were given a 2 hour wait time. I find it surprising that they’re going out of business, my biggest problem was we could never get in the place. I guess now’s the time to try.