Name: Red Lobster CEO Vows Not to Repeat the Mistakes of ‘Endless Shrimp’
Uploaded: 2024-11-28T05:21:00Z
Duration: 13 min 22 s
Description: “Endless Shrimp” was “operational chaos” for Red Lobster, says the chain’s new CEO—and he’s going to fix it. WSJ sat down with the 35-year old to learn about his $70 million comeback plan.

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“Endless Shrimp” was “operational chaos” for Red Lobster, says the chain’s new CEO—and he’s going to fix it. WSJ sat down with the 35-year old to learn about his $70 million comeback plan. Photo: Alexandra Larkin

https://m.wsj.net/video/20241127/a0addf43-3eaf-4479-afdc-b1cfad372623/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

“Endless Shrimp” was “operational chaos” for Red Lobster, says the chain’s new CEO—and he’s going to fix it. WSJ sat down with the 35-year old to learn about his $70 million comeback plan.

Red Lobster CEO Vows Not to Repeat the Mistakes of ‘Endless Shrimp’

Narrator: In May, red lobster was sinking.

It has officially filed for bankruptcy.

More than a billion dollars in debt and a serious financial pinch.

Narrator: Just five months later, the 56-year-old chain emerged from bankruptcy with new owners and a new CEO, the 35 year old former chief executive of P.F. Chang's, Damola Adamolekun.

This can be the greatest comeback in the history of the restaurant industry

Narrator: Adamolekun sat down with "Wall Street Journal" reporter Heather Haddon, at a Red Lobster in Orlando to discuss how he'll take the chain back to the top.

So I actually had dinner here last night.

Oh, did you? Okay.

Yes, I did. Just being here as a customer.

I love it.

Sat in the corner.

Wonderful.

And I have to say, one of the things I first noticed was the banner outside, basically like, we're open. America, we are open. And I get the sense that this is not the only Red Lobster with a sign on it that says "We are open." Are you doing that throughout your fleet of restaurants basically to kind of get past the bankruptcy?

I'll tell you what I told the board yesterday. So that was done during bankruptcy. So I didn't, you know, that was done before I took over. I think at some point you want to address the elephant in the room, but you want to do it in a more, in a way that better reminds people of why they wanna come to you in the first place. I told the board yesterday, "It reminds me of, 'Thou doth protest too much,' that line." Right? Like, why do you need to say you're open? Oh yeah, that's right. You closed restaurants. You've been bankrupt. As far as it goes with signs like that specifically, I've already kind of started this, but we're gonna replace them with talking about our food, talking about our lobster, talking about our shrimp, our crab, our programs, the new menu that's coming out.

So through the bankruptcy, I think about 100 restaurants were closed. Maybe a little more than that.

Yeah.

Do you see now that you're done with closures, or are you still analyzing which restaurants may need to change?

We're done with closures. And so, you know, the intent was to complete all of them during bankruptcy. And so, that was complete. Now it's about taking the fleet we have now, which is 545 restaurants still, so still one of the largest restaurant chains in the country for sit down dining, right. So it's been important to reassure the team members because it's a very difficult thing to not know if your restaurant's gonna close next and which restaurants gonna get closed. So now being in a position to tell them definitively like, that's done. That chapter, you know, no pun intended, but that chapter is complete and we're entering a new chapter that's gonna be about investment and growth.

And could growth eventually mean new restaurants?

Could eventually. Sure. I mean, right now we're focused on investing in the restaurants we have, which is a significant capital investment. Once that's complete and performance improves, you know, there's certainly potential for new restaurants, both domestically and internationally.

So Red Lobster was successful for many, many years, but the last decade or so haven't been so great. What happened to Red Lobster? What do you think, you know, caused it to kind of slow down?

You know, fundamentally it's losing focus on what got you here in the first place, right? So for restaurants to continue to be successful, it requires continued investment in the guest experience. And so that needs to be a constantly in the top of your mind. And at some point when restaurants become too successful, not too successful, when they become successful, that focus can be lost, right. Now you don't see the impact overnight to where it goes from very successful to not successful, but it's a gradual decline. And that gradual decline, unfortunately for this brand, happened over many years, over many owners without being properly addressed. And so, that's fundamentally the situation. It's simple on one hand, it's focusing on the guests to make sure they have an incredible experience, but of course it's complicated to deliver that.

It also takes investment, right?

It takes investment. It takes investment. But the return of that investment is very high, right? For example, investing your team members, a lot of folks will consider that an expense to be managed. I consider that an investment that yields a return, right? You invest in your team members, they'll take care of your guests, and that's how you drive traffic, that's how you drive sales.

So let's talk about Thai Union. Minority investor previously in Red Lobster. How much do you blame them for some of the issues that Red Lobster then faced?

Well, it's not a question of whether I blame them or not. I think as an owner of the business, you're responsible for the outcome. And so based on the outcome, you know, that's not an outcome anybody wanted. Now I'm taking stock of where we are and what we can do to drive the business going forward.

I'm also wondering about restoring the corporate environment. Our understanding is, under all the different changes of CEOs and leadership that, you know, some of the morale maybe in the corporate arena had deteriorated and it wasn't really a great environment. Is that true from what you've understood? And how are you tackling that?

It's true to a degree. You know, I think people want, people inherently want to be successful and they want the business they work for to do well. So I think there was some amount of despair, which is natural when you go through the process of bankruptcy and, you know, the company you love and the company many people have worked for decades is going through something so difficult. But at the same time, I've been pleasantly surprised at the energy and the excitement since I've arrived. This isn't despair that can't be corrected. This is people wanting and wishing and hoping for new vision, new leadership, new strategy, things that make sense to them. You know, a lot of these people have been in the restaurant business for a long time. They know what makes sense.

Right. Let's look at this menu. Well, for casual dining, this is actually not overwhelming. I've definitely seen bigger menus. But any areas, I don't know if you wanna take a look at this, that you think might be something you're gonna focus on.

Here's a good example. The sizes of all the dishes are roughly the same, right? There's an opportunity to aesthetically focus on what people care about the most. Our two top sellers are Shrimp Your Way, which is a wonderful shrimp dish, and then also our Ultimate Feast, which is lobster. You know, you can choose your components, but typically it's lobster and crab and a very high end dish. Now you don't find those very easily here, even though that's what people order the most. So that's one way to kind of, you know, clean up the aesthetic. Additionally, if you were to say, where's the value in this menu? You have to hunt for it. There's no clear sort of value segment of the menu, which is something that can be done pretty easily. You could have, you know, your pastas, your salads, your bowls, Shrimp Your Way, and that's something that we'd look at as well. So there's things you can do both in terms of reducing the number of items, but also just the layout, right, the aesthetics, the photography.

Red Lobster really has a lot of, you know, it has a cult kind of following. It also has a lot of celebrities that love it. Do you intend to tap into any of that celebrity love? Or how do you see marketing this brand differently?

A couple very, you know, very well known celebrities reached out when I was appointed CEO and I've had calls with them and spoken with them.

Any names you can mention?

Well, you know, I don't know if I can mention them, but you know, people in sports especially, right? There's a lot of people, there are a lot of athletes that love this brand that have grown up with it and that I've spoken to and wanna be involved and find a way to be involved. Now, I can probably say this one 'cause it was on their podcast, but you know, Jason and Travis Kelsey yesterday mentioned Red Lobster on their podcast.

Oh man, that's good right there. Shout out to Red Lobster.

And it, and it went semi viral and we're talking to them, right? And seeing if there's things we can do. So there's a lot of interest in the brand, a lot of history, you know. We spoke with one very well known athlete and you know, he said he used to go to Red Lobster every Sunday after church with his mother and loves, you know, it's a big memory for him, right. And wants to see if he can help, right. So, you know, Flavor Flav is one that, you know, obviously we worked with during the bankruptcy period.

You're the man, bro.

Excited to see some of those campaigns.

There's gonna be fun things coming,

But one campaign we're probably not gonna see much more is Endless Shrimp. So not in the endless way it was done, I assume.

Yeah.

Yeah, what was the impact of endless shrimp on the brand, both financially? I mean we, you know, I think a lot of that has been out there, but also just in terms of the ambiance of the restaurants, you know, there was a lot of people just being like, "Look at all the shrimp I got," and posting it on social media or what have you. What was the impact on the brand?

Yeah. You know, you mentioned this, it's been covered that financially obviously, it didn't work, right? It created a lot of issues. It created a lot of operational chaos in the restaurants. It made it difficult to work at a Red Lobster. We made it harder for our team members

Because they were just constantly, you know, bringing plates or?

Well, in a number of ways, right? So it overloads certain segments of the kitchen, for example, right? So it makes the chef's job harder, right? Constant, you know, these constant orders coming back for refills on shrimp, for example. People would sit for longer. So it makes the host end's job more difficult, right, trying to manage people who've been there for a long time, just eating as much shrimp as possible versus guests that are trying to get a seat. And makes it difficult for the servers, right? There's some conflict inherent when you need to tell people that, you know, they can't take a Tupperware of shrimp home with them and yeah. So it created a lot of problems. But, you know, I've discussed that, I think what's most important to me is that I think it drove away some core consumers. Some people who come here for a long time and had great experiences with the brand and suddenly came in one day and it's chaotic, right, it's not what they're used to. They came in for a nice lunch and it's full of people just, you know, ordering as much shrimp as possible.

So what is your strategy on endless shrimp going forward? I know I was looking at the menu and on Mondays, there is some kind of shrimp deal, I believe.

So we have a tremendous value shrimp proposition outside of Endless, right? We have $20 Shrimp Your Way, which is three types of shrimp for 20 bucks, which is a great, great, great deal. So we have good deals on the menu and we'll always have great shrimp product and great shrimp value deals.

What is the future for this brand? And how would you define success here?

We need to earn our guests back that we lost in the last several years. And so that's the immediate future, is diagnosing and addressing the things that, the deviations that we've made from our core. You know what people love about Red Lobster, lobster, shrimp, and crab, number one. Our lobster is 100 percent wild caught, our crab is 100 percent wild caught. We buy 25% of the lobster volume in America. These are why people love us, right? It was their first experience with lobster, their first experience with crab. They learned how to crack crab legs at a Red Lobster. So getting back to that is number one, what made us special in the first place. And then I want this to be the best restaurant company to work at in America. And by the way, Red Lobster was, or at least close to the top of the list for a very long time. When you talk to former CEOs, they'll tell you that. This has always been a great cultural organization except for the last few years. So we deviated from that. I wanna restore that. That means investing wages in certain markets, that means investing in the culture of this company, making it a place that people want to come to work at, that means investing in training. You know, what I've found at P.F. Chang's is, when people are good at their jobs and well-trained, it makes them more excited to work.

I believe Fortress's has pledged to do something like 60 to $70 million in investment. Do you think that's enough?

So they put 60 million on the balance sheet coming outta bankruptcy, and that is confirmed and done. As somebody who watched the wires come in eagerly I can say that they did follow through on that. I'll say about Fortress's, you know, they're the sort of investors who understand what makes businesses great. Of course, they're financial experts, but they understand people, they understand teams, they understand morale, they understand what it takes to grow a great business. And they're intelligent investors. And so, they've been great partners. They've made the investments and it's our job now to deliver that and execute on the plan and make the money go as far as it can, right, in terms of the impact it can have on the business. So we launched a survey a few weeks ago that's gonna go through to every single restaurant, all 545, from the shingles and the roofs to the tiles on the floors, determine what needs to be replaced, how old the equipment is, how old the systems are, and what each restaurant needs.

So let's talk about keeping you here. My understanding is you're closing on a house.

Yeah. That's right. That's right.

In Orlando.

Yes.

So you are all in?

I am. I'm here.

Do you see yourself here for years and years to come? Listen, I love this company. I love this brand. And the people that I'm working with are tremendous. We just hired an exec team and they're awesome. And so I'm not thinking about anything else but restoring this business, right? I did buy the house. And it's important, I think, to make a statement to the organization that I'm committed. You know, we've had a history of CEOs and leaders kind of coming in and out and execs flying in and out. And I told everybody, "Everybody I hired on my exec team needs to move to Orlando, right?" So that's a requirement, and that's gonna be true going forward. This is an Orlando company, this is where we're based. The team needs to be here, and they need to feel like there's some stability and some longevity. So, yeah, I have no intention of doing anything but trying to fix this business and restore it to the heights that it previously held. And I think we're gonna do that.

Wish you all the best of luck with that.

Thank you very much.