Crappy food. IDK why it’s taken so long for them to start sinking.
Price vs The Quality of their fare.
Seriously, I currently live in NE and I would rather drive to Indianapolis or Toledo rather than go to RL. For me and my SO to eat there with an appetizer is close to $60 w/o a tip and the food quality just doesn’t justify (in my mind) the expenditure.
Even with gas approaching $4 a gallon we can drive to Indy, have a better selection of restaurants and still come out “ahead” of what we would if we drove 8 miles from our house to RL. If I feel like this then I would have to imagine that others in the “middle class” feel the same as well as our last two outings to RL showed that the place was half-full during what should have been the weekend “dinner rush.”
Also, RL annoys a number of people with their ridiculous coupon policy. If you see their ads in the Sunday newspaper, they offer coupons which won’t even pay the sales tax for two meals.Assuming that most people aren’t functionally illiterate in basic mathematics, a quick calculation would determine that you’d do better to simply pay for your meal and forget their “discount.”
Unless the recession ends relatively soon RL (and Outback for that matter) are on their way out,IMO. They cost too much and offer too little.
This is exactly what I came in to say. This country has undergone a foodie transformation in the past 10-20 years, during which the quality of food available at every price point has increased dramatically.
A look at the nearest RL’s online menu reveals a bunch of boring “crab legs, clams, and shrimp boiled in a pot”-type entrees in the $20-30 range, along with $8-12 appetizers. For roughly the same price I can dine at this restaurant in downtown Cambridge, MD (pop. 12,000), where I will get a true fine dining experience at a “fancy French restaurant”: starched white linens, finger bowls, knowledgeable staff, and inspired, insanely delicious dishes in a warm, luxurious atmosphere. Standouts on the menu include monkfish with artichokes and truffle sauce, pheasant rémoulade, and seared scallops with lardons and snap peas. Such a restaurant wouldn’t have existed outside of a major city two decades ago. Now there’s one thriving in what I’ll affectionately call a hick town on the Eastern Shore of MD. I blame The Food Channel 
As for why they’re in dire straights so suddenly when the foodscape has been changing for half a generation, I suppose there were enough eating-out dollars floating around when times were good for them to eke out an existence. But when the economy worsened and people tightened their belts they didn’t just spend fewer dollars, they became more selective with them.
I’m a big guy. I buy my food based on quantity and quality. I like leftovers… A Mexican restaurant can get giant plates and cover them in rice and beans. An Italian restaurant can add an extra scoop of noodles and sauce. A seafood house is stuck, their bread and butter is their most expensive item. I can get a 16oz prime rib at the local bar for cheaper and it will give me a couple of meals. If I wanted to impress someone I’d take them somewhere local.
NE = Northeast Indiana? Then you would also have Fort Wayne as an option too, right? Actually, I dated a couple people there, and the restaurant choices were not great (but she didn’t eat out much and thus it came down mostly to what we could find near here place).
[Hijack]How does “NE” mean northeast Indiana? I assumed that nevadaexile lived in Nebraska or New England.[/Hijack]
I think he meant “Northern England.”
Sorry…I did mean “Northeast Indiana”.
Late night typing and no proofreading.
And while Ft. Wayne does have a reasonable number of restaurants,there’s a notable paucity of seafood places.
RL and a local place Paula’s are about all that there is.
Red Lobster is a “cheap carbs” restaurant. They mostly sell overpriced biscuits and pasta and inch-thick breading on tiny shrimp. Olive Garden is the same thing. A breadstick and pasta joint. I think diners are wise to the ways of filling up customer’s plates and stomachs with cheap carbs and are walking away. When I go out, I want a good-sized portion of protein, prepared well (not cooked-in-advance and reheated sysco garbage) and interesting vegetable and salad options that I can’t easily prepare at home. Red Lobster is the equivalent of TV dinner food that you can buy in a cardboard box at the grocery store and reheat at home. I’m not paying sit down restaurant prices for that.
I think they need to become (and play up) the healthy alternative to other chain places (Applebees, etc.). They serve seafood, so that should be possible with just some minor menu changes. People already kinda see them as healthy ( The Most Health-Conscious National Restaurant Chains ). The marketing needs to focus on that and stop with the general blandness they have been selling for years.
I’ll defend RL, but I guess I don’t have much to say other than simply opinion.
Growing up in Indiana (the aforementioend Ft. Wayne actually) seafood was a premium and RL did it best IMO. If we as a family wanted to go out and eat seafood, but not spend a ton of money for it then it’s what we did and RL was the best option for it.
Fast Forward to college and it was the nicest place in town (seriously) and when you needed a date idea you went there.
I go out to eat a lot, and I mean A LOT, and I only go to places that cost money if they have something no one else really does. I never go to Applebees anymore because Wendy’s does a fine burger and fries at cheaper, why go to a mexican restaurant when I can go to Chipotle or Taco Bell? And to me, there isn’t anything seafood wise that can touch RL. I haven’t the faintest if Charlotte (where I live now) has local places for seafood, but if they do it’s probably downtown (20 min AT LEAST for me), or some hole-in-the-wall local place that will take effort to find. I’m a midwest kid, I have no idea what “good” seafood tastes like and I like RL.
If there is anything that will keep RL alive, its the small-town-nowhere-near-the-coast cities that it’s a treat for good seafood and also probably doubles at the nicest place in town to eat on a budget
They charge too much for the quality they’re serving. But that hardly makes them unique. Restaurants all over the place slather the food in cream sauces and butter and deep fry it so you don’t really taste the actual food. Red Lobster’s just slightly more obvious about it. Also, they don’t teach their bartenders how to make a proper twist for a martini.
My understanding is that they are attempting to re-classify themselves as higher quality than applebees and the like simply by raising their prices. If that’s true, I can’t tell if they’re cynical bastards with a low opinion of the ability of the average american to perform cost/benefit analyses or if they’re just super dumb.
Is this a serious question? Because it sounds like parody.
Why go to Red Lobster when you can go to Captain D’s?
Because the 400 mile drive isn’t worth it?
When I was in Colorado Springs decades ago I was in the same boat. (Ha! Ha! See what I did there?) If we wanted seafood we could afford our options were Long John Silver’s and Red Lobster. I don’t know if RL was ever a fine dining experience but it was certainly a bit more upscale than Western Sizzlin’ or the other restaurants my family could afford to take a family of four out to.
The last time I went to a Red Lobster was nearly ten years ago in Pine Bluff, Arkansas and it wasn’t very good. While the food wasn’t particularly bad it wasn’t all that good either. I used to love Red Lobster when I was younger and I’m not sure whether the restaurant change or my tastes changed. But to be fair to RL, pretty much everything in Pine Bluff, Arkansas isn’t very good.
I’m thinking the correct guess is that America’s eating habits have changed significantly over the past twenty years.
There’s a Red Lobster on Markham Street next to a Kroger’s supermarket here in Little Rock. They seem pretty busy during lunch and during dinner there’s almost always people waiting outside for a table to open up for their party. I was surprised to learn that RL hasn’t been doing so well financially.
There’s your reason that it’s doing so poorly. It’s so crowded that no one goes there anymore.
My kids still love Red Lobster. They are still at the age where fried and or soaked in butter is a desirable trait in food. I’m not a huge fan - the seafood isn’t good and I can get better elsewhere.
But I think the Fargo, Ft. Wayne, Pine Bluff point - that is where Red Lobster will continue to do well - if they can sell it and cut out the big city and coastal locations. Keep it as a Midwest medium sized city chain where real estate is less expensive and so are labor costs - and people don’t expect fresh seafood - and its got a business model that probably has a decade of life in it (but yeah, I’d want to see the financials as well).
If they wanna get prosperity they should hang a drive through window on the side that just tosses those damn biscuits into my gaping maw. It could even be, like… drive by, roll down the window, give us 20 bucks and we’ll keep handing you the crack and cheese bread, as much as you can eat in 5 minutes. I think I’d be there twice a week.
Ninja’d! Good thing I read all the way to the end, Yogi!