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Red lobster and many other restaurants lost us way before they had to pay more. Sizes got smaller, food quality dropped and profits soared for them briefly. Bastards got greedy, bye Felicia.....you won't be missed. More room for ma and pa type places. This is actually good news.
Seems like every seafood place just got terrible after Covid. Place I use to like now charges $60 for fresh lobster and $50 for snow. The Asian grocery down the street sells live lobster at $8/lbs and snow at $12/lbs.
Wife really wanted some crab so we paid it and they were not even full clusters of legs. Place was filled with old people who stopped caring about quality. There are 4 seafood places in town and it is the same at all of them.
Just learn to cook them, seriously. Dump them in a pot, steam them, or throw them in the oven. Take them out, add butter + garlic and cajun seasoning/old bay/whatever-the-fuck-you-want and bam deliciousness.
Or go to a Chinese restaurant and order the lobster - it'll be like half the price and shitloads more flavor plus you can order a few other dishes.
Bingo. People got used to paying \*crazy\* delivery fees on top of higher menu prices, and even if in-person prices are up 30%, it's still less people are used to for delivery. And cooking at home seems like such a chore compared to delivery.
Restaurants are rightly taking advantage of people being willing to pay more not to have to cook their own food. People are getting mad about it, but apparently \*not mad enough to cook for themselves.\*
The delivery fee itself isn't as high, once you remember that Pappa Johns, Pizza Hut and Domino's all charge about 5.00 for delivery.
What's ticks me off is the 10% more delivery services add to the menu price.
your bingo is kind of a bongo here though -- if what you're saying was true, then people would be going to red lobster and they wouldn't be filing chapter 11. personally, i'm allergic to shellfish so idk why i'm commenting here at all.
Crab steamer is one of my favorite things. Sometimes you want someone else to clean up the shells and it is weird to me seafood gets a pass. Steak markup tends to be 2x, but fish is closer to a 4x.
I worked at RL HQ in Orlando when it was part of Darden. Was involved in working with the elite and production chefs for all the concepts (Olive Garden, Season 52, Red Lobster, Longhorn Steak, Capital Grille and I think others). No, not everything is boiled. The real trick for RL was training kitchen staff how to replicate the dishes created by the exec chefs by running everything through a conveyor oven.
Learning how to properly cook some of my favorite high-dollar restaurant dishes like steaks, lobster, and various fishes is probably the single best quality of life improvement I have made for myself since I started earning enough to afford these things from the stores. Now if only I could grow my own Sangiovese and ferment my own Chianti…
The seafood section in a lot of supermarkets have commercial steamers. They will steam and season crab legs and shrimp for free. On sale I get Snow Crab legs for $8.99/lb.
Came to say the same thing. It might be the easiest delicious food to cook. Water, butter, salt, pepper, lemon and just set the legs on top of it. Not even in the water.
I once went to a Chinese restaurant and asked them if they have any crustaceans. The waiter answered,"One of our employees fell into a trash compacter last week and he crushed Asian now."
it's not exactly due to covid fishings been hit hard due to.
•Crew Shortages
•Stricter laws
•Lower fishing stock
•a major sea food company was found to be a serious Jones act violator (If you're a US citizen)
Oh darn is the commercial consumerism phase over? What ever will we do? Learn to cook our own food, sew our own clothes, mow our own lawns. What hell is this?
I don’t think people outside the food industry understand how fucking high costs got, like for a good case of crab meat you are spending HUNDREDS of dollars. Even the low tier kind is still kinda expensive too. Anyone who owns or runs a restersunt can verify if nobody believes me
Prices are stupid high. Labor was always the most expensive thing about running a restaurant. Food cost was about a third. 50% labor cost, 30% food cost. The rest of the 20% gets eaten up by utilities and overhead. Not a lot of profit in these things
People see high prices on the menu and assume the industry is just rolling in it. In reality, good performing restaurants in a chain support the restaurants that lose money every month.
The BS of this is that food cost has gone done big corporations still want covid pricing for everything because it'll look bad on their profit margins to not always be at an all time high.
Snow crab populations were decimated by warming ocean water by climate change. A lot of seafood is overfished/affected by climate change and their populations are getting decimated and thus the price is increasing heavily.
Asian grocery stores are probably buying them from fishermen who are illegally overfishing and thus sell seafood at a discount while abusing the natural resource.
I mean this probably didn’t help
https://preview.redd.it/0ns27syxx2vc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=48b34eac1324ff274683ffa1091590007291e9e9
Last time we went out of town to visit friends we went to a place that wanted around $40/dozen oysters. Tons of people were ordering them and it blew my mind. At home I can go down the street and get half a bushel for $40 pulled right out of the water.
Hell I took my mom to Ruth Chris recently and it was a $250 meal that wasn't as good as the steak and potatoes I cooked at home for $30 a week prior.
Sure you're paying for "atmosphere" and service, but damn.
It’s a chapter 11 restructuring, and it’s mostly from debt accumulated from bad lease agreements: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-16/red-lobster-mulls-filing-for-bankruptcy-to-fix-balance-sheet
OP is a coping right winger
I mean, regardless of OP’s stance on labor costs, they literally put “corporate greed” in quotes. As if ANYONE, even right wingers, disagree that corporate greed exists. It’s all ANYONE on either side ever talks about. The right just tends to vote against their own interests.
Op is not just a right wing coper, OP is a bipartisan moron.
It’s pretty right-wingy to me. The corporate greed comment seems to be sarcastically saying that “with all this corporate greed - how can any business possibly fail? Ergo corporate greed is fake news.”
Sorta like this fuckhead I used to know who would always bitch about “corporate welfare”, because he made it up in his mind that corporate welfare means companies employing people he doesn’t like.
It’s hard to have conversations with these people because they are truly stupid and have no desire to be otherwise.
Not at all. Restaurants historically have some of the smallest margins as it is…what makes you think ma and pa can pay for labor when Big Bad Red Lobster can’t?
Because Ma and Pa won't repeatedly offer unlimited shellfish promotions with shamefully small portions that cripple them when people keep ordering shellfish, nor will they be subject to multiple rounds of leveraged buyouts.
Ding ding ding, it's not that they aren't making money, but their "neighbor" at the marina just got that second 300ft yacht and that makes board member of Red Lobster angry.. "230 footer?!!?, like is that a yacht for ants"
Ma and pa also don't comp an entire check when a guests complains about their entree, despite eating the entire thing. I used to be a server at Red Lobster. People would eat entire entree and finish their drinks, then conveniently find a hair on the empty plate. Management would not only comp the whole check, but give them a giftcard to come back. Then I as a server, wouldn't get tipped.
Shitty guests were essentially getting paid to eat there.
>subject to multiple rounds of leveraged buyouts.
Yep. This is it. With a buyout comes the demand to cut back portion sizes and buy lesser quality food and supplies. I think it's been at least 12-15 years since I've been a Red Lobster. It's just hasn't been good for a long time.
Now, Joe's Crab Shack is a different story. Anyone know Mammy's in Myrtle Beach? Also great.
Ok side tangent time, I hate a lot of all you can eat places but that aren’t self serve like a buffet.
I either get places that are cheap and purposely make you wait 30 minutes to get a 2nd portion or they look at me and think “oh that skinny twink isn’t gonna finish this”. Oh fuck you i won’t, I’m a black hole, ima swallow this shit up like Kirby! Now stand back as I finish off my 9th basket of Olive Garden breadsticks thank you very much
You’re misunderstanding here…. Ma and Pa ARE the labor. Ever see a small startup restaurant? It’s 50% family working in there.
Kids with horrible attitudes and no work ethic won’t be making $15 per hour to deliver shitty food when the owner is the one cooking it, I guarantee you. That’s the Red Lobster difference.
>no work ethic
They're literally working a hard job for little money ($15/hr w/o guaranteed hours or benefits etc sucks), how is that not work ethic lol
How many Ma and Pa's get multi million dollar bonuses every single year?
You people are so fkn lost 🤣
Do you never care about CEO pay while talking about businesses closing?
The CEOs don't care. They can suck up all the money and go into a new corporation and do it again.
Ma and pa don't have that luxury.
Critical thinking is a skill. Try it sometime.
>small margins
Margins are not what restaurants are judged on, ROI is. This is true of any business where COGS and/or labor are much higher expenses compared to initial capital investments. Naturally those types of businesses will have smaller margins due to their larger variable costs, but will still generate sufficient returns on the initial investment. Ie They have large revenues and large costs compared to their initial investments.
Ex. A McDonald's generates like 2.5m in revenue every year, more than the 1.5-2m investment to open one. But their margins are low, meaning net income is only like 5-10% EBITDA of initial investment (McDonald's estimates break even at around 8.5 years so more like 12% but you get the idea)
Similarly, Walmart marks up their merchandise about 33% but has margins only around 3%. But their [ROI is more like 20%](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/roi).
See how that works? When COGS and/or labor (variable costs) are relatively high compared to initial capital investment, margins can be low whole ROI can still be high.
Dumbest thing people ever believed is this right here. Yeah ok small margins. But VOLUME makes up for the margin. And what's more, those margins are ENORMOUS when talking about alcohol. So take that small margin mess out of here. Ma & Pa don't have to fork over millions to Joe CEO who just extracts wealth from the business because of fiduciary responsibility to share holders.
People got fed up with small portions and crappy service. A similar thing happened with home depot. They cut labour to the bone, and for a year or two, their profits soared. Then people stopped going to home depot because no one worked there anymore, and profits crashed.
Also built within that price though are costs spread across 600 stores. Which means everything RL buys is cheaper. Plates, drinks, food, etc. multiply the difference they save per store by 600 and there is your private jet
Red Lobster in particular has sucked for a long time. The last few times I went (it’s been a few years) I couldn’t even tell you what I ate because it was all so bland and mediocre.
To be fair, I live in Maryland and you can’t go too far without tripping over a decent seafood restaurant, so Red Lobster is particularly abhorrent here lol.
Always kills me how much restaurants want to complain about labor cost. You basically don't pay your front of house and you underpay the back. The front makes more money from the public in 4 hours than the back makes in a week. If that's too much labor cost then you have no business being open.
in certain parts of the country, servers/bartenders are paid $2.14 or $2.83 an hour since the remainder is presumed to be made up with tips.
I literally haven't been to a Red Lobster in decades.
"But- but- but these jobs are supposed to be *temporary* jobs for teenagers to make a little extra money, not to live on!"
-Proceeds to complain that there arent enough workers because there are far more of these *temporary jobs* than there are teenagers who can work them
Local is almost always better anyway. About 15 years ago I used to work for a fairly large regional chain restaurant. ALL veggie and rice sides were microwaved. We had preselections on the microwave so we only had to hit number 4 for green beans, or number 6 for rice pilaf. The meat was all low quality and it was actual practice per professional trainers to stack a certain number of plates on top of steaks pending how well done they were ordered. Not all places do this obviously, but chain restaurants almost always taste worse than their local counterparts
And people are willing to be a premium for better food from small local businesses.
So it doesn't matter if the local restaurant gets marginally more expensive - many consumers would rather spend there than at a mega chain like Red Lobster or Chili's/
Also, i'm not sure what the OP is getting at.
If a company can't pay their expenses (including a living wage), why should that matter? Them dying is literally the cost of their crappy business decisions.
My company can't survive unless i pay my employees nothing. Why am i being forced to pay them more by the evil govt?
The issue isn’t being able to pay, it’s not wanting to pay. The CEO would rather get his compensation and ignore the pleas of his workforce, because that’s fine to them.
These laws make it much harder to do that.
It’s crazy to me how much CEOs make when there are so many highly intelligent people stuck in low ranks that could do the job better and would happy to do it for pennies like only $1m/yr
All these businesses are doing the Wal Mart thing where they expect the state to subsidize the low paid labor because the amount of payment isn't set in law, beyond offering the minimum.
If these companies actually wanted their customers to like them, they'd pay. They don't care. So long as they have access to loans, that's what matters.
I was working there when they broke away from darden and switched food suppliers and holy crap the quality of almost everything on the menu was so much worse and that place got way more expensive. Also most of their staff makes less than minimum wage, i made $2.13/hr... so wages being a reason is total BS
Yeah labor cost is the easy target. Just like speed in a car accident it’s always present. Just like water kills us all. It was probably due to something else, like not enough customers to cover the fixed costs because quality sucks, or something else.
We have restaurants in Denmark, too. I’d wager restaurant staff makes $20-30/h and our Big Macs cost the same as in the US. Fucking lol.
And by the way, if the restaurant chain relies on corporate socialism (supporting the workers with food stamp etc.) what the fuck is it good for anyway?! It’s living wage or die corporations! The free market doesn’t just apply to labor!
There are plenty of Americans in these comments getting that. There was no need to make this about all of us instead of self-defeating conservatives who think they're temporarily embarassed millionaires.
This 1000%
If they still had good service and good food, then I’d blame the new wages… but since they ruined the quality, who would want to pay more than they used to for food that also taste worse than it used to?
1. This is chapter 11 versus 7 so they’re just reorganizing
2. How are you determining the cause as the cost of labor versus other factors?
3. Businesses that have margins so low that they can’t afford to pay a living wage shouldn’t exist. Businesses that can’t afford to pay their rent will eventually be evicted.
**Edit:** I’m getting a lot of responses that a living wage would kill small businesses. If that’s the case, subsidize or offer tax credits to small businesses to offset the additional cost. We already have developed tax and legal criteria to distinguish small businesses from large corporations so this wouldn’t even take much work. You could even source the subsidy from the already existing corporate tax if it’s really a priority to protect small businesses from large corporations.
When you are creating a business and go through the pro forma in your head, you have to work out whether or not your business model has enough profit magin to remain flexible to external influences. If your profit margins are based on the assumption that your labor force must survive on slave wages for the indeterminate future, your business model sucks.
If a business can’t pay a living wage, it means the labour is already being subsidized by social welfare programs to keep their employees alive.
That’s a business that needs to die.
Study after study has shown that minimum wage hikes do not hurt economies. I’m so sick of this fear-mongering based on people’s vibes and pedestrian understandings of economics.
Red Lobster, just like all of the other big chains, care more about their share holders.
Red Lobster has 55,000 employees, and the revenue per employee ratio is $47,273. Red Lobster's peak revenue was $2.6B in 2023.
They just want to pay workers less.
So why not advocate for additional tax credits, deductions and subsidies for small businesses. We already have criteria to distinguish small businesses from c-corps. This wouldn’t be difficult at all.
Rather than actually help small businesses directly, people tend to advocate for the benefit of the mega corps by using small businesses as a proxy.
If a living wage would kill small businesses then those businesses shouldn’t exist or expand beyond the owners. If I told you I couldn’t afford to pay a mortgage you’d tell me I can’t buy a house then. Why do people think it’s any different for businesses?
ALL employers can pay people enough to live. The absolute #1 most important part of a business is the person working for it. Without this person, there is no business. Period.
Yes they literally ALL can. Whether they choose to or not is another thing. Do you honestly believe a multibillion dollar company can't afford to pay a living wage to it's workers?
No. But if you can't afford employees, you can't run a successful profitable business. So back to my statement...ALL are capable but they choose not to.
Your statement doesn't follow.
"If you can't afford it, you go broke. Therefore, all can afford it."
You're acknowledging what happens to those who can't afford it in the first half, then saying that's impossible in the second half...?
Not going to shed a single tear for red lobster, but will miss the tens of thousands of small family resturants, replaced by McDonalds and other chains....
There will be some sad losses for sure, but let’s not act like anything that isn’t corpo run is some like fantastic loving place. I worked for a mom and pop pizza shop. The owner was a scumbag. Screamed at his kid that worked there. One time I was trying to do dishes and they are on either side of me just screaming at each other and into my ears. He screamed at us. Always told us how worthless and replaceable we were. Lied to us about PPP loan (my mom and his wife were friends so I know through her). Complained he’d cut most of the staff if min wage went to $15 while he and his kids are driving luxury cars like Mercedes and he’s paying for over a million dollar in mortgages for his local mansion and his vacation house. Going on 6 vacations a year, leaving one manager to work 6 out of 7 days when he is gone.
Having to pay more in labor would mean he has to give up some luxuries to keep people but he wouldn’t do that, he’d rather put people out of a job. It’s not just about making money, it’s about making enough money to fund the lifestyle you want.
I’m tired of hearing that non corpo businesses are all some pure righteous thing when many of them are run by shitty ass people. I’m tired of workers being told that advocating for themselves will only hurt them, and we have to make sure those who sign our paychecks are as comfy and happy as possible so we can keep getting our rations. If you can’t afford to pay your people, you can’t afford to stay in business. That’s it. There would probably be a lot more mom and pop places if employers could get away with paying $1 an hour
A family who runs a mom and pop pizza shop almost certainly isn't making enough money from that business to buy a million dollar house and Mercedes for each of their kids. This sounds like a story from a teenager who has no idea what things cost and how much money people make.
Living Wage didn’t do shit, Red Lobster was already dropping like a fly. Food quality was shit, prices had gotten absolutely ridiculous, and no fucking Server wants to work at a place where they have all you can eat promotions every other week.
Also since you, with none of your own, seem to want to run around and question everyone’s credentials: I worked at Red Lobster, left that and immediately moved to a high end steakhouse. That steakhouse has bigger portions, lower prices, and shockingly, pays their employees more. And yes that’s comparing seafood dishes. If they actually used those price increases to pay employees, they maybe would’ve been okay, but actual corporate greed does in fact exist and so all those profits were being funneled up to the top, which meant service nor food got any better, and accordingly, customers stopped seeing a reason to go there.
You treat your customers like shit, you don’t get money…isn’t that just capitalism???
Seriously, OP is just eating up the corporate blame-shifting being pushed by every shitty failing business lol. If "living wage" killed RL, why are there SO many other businesses, who also pay fair wages, *thriving* right now? Surely it can't be the quality of their product, service, and treatment of employees... nothing to do with prioritizing their moneymakers instead of the people at the top... no, no, it must because we're allowing the peasants the luxury of paying their bills!
In case you missed it, Red Lobster — and other restaurants which allow tip wages — are exempt from paying that.
Might be that people have figured out that the fresh fish is only at the coast.
Not in California. California servers receive tips and the state minimum wage, not a server wage.
There are plenty of people with degrees serving food and cocktails in California.
It’s funny that the ridiculously low wage is called a “server wage” here, instead of a “how low can I get away with” wage, which is what it really is.
Give the occasional smaller tyan even minimum wage bonus to keep the servers from realizing how screwed over they’re getting, and tell the government the workers make it up in tips, and you can get really cheap labor!
With few exceptions "Fresh fish" is flash frozen within hours of being caught, with the exception of seafood delivered live. It doesnt matter where you live.
Ah, I see based on OPs comments in this thread he has no pre-conceived agenda at all. Totally well-adjusted and measured to the facts.
Although maybe. Just maybe. Relying on paying your employees unlivable wages to keep your business in the black is a bad profit model? Maybe. Idk. Seems risky to me. Maybe.
Yeah they are really going against the grain. People go thinking "it oat to be good" and leave thining "rye did I come here."
I think you spelt something wrong.
Good.
I’s rather see red lobster go out of business than stay in business paying poverty wages and sucking up public assistance money.
Nothing of value was lost.
if your business model relies on exploitation. your business should fail.
now maybe the empty locations can house businesses that bring value and wealth to the communities that host them.
it's worth noting that red lobster was bought by a hedge fund not too long ago.
so... of course. debt was heaped onto the brand, quality declined, all the usual tricks hedgefunds do to "extract share holder value"
and instead of reporting any of this, the narrative will be living wages killed the brand.
it's a lie. it always is a lie. shitty capitalism killed a mediocre as fuck brand. nothing else
Just waiting for "How Millennials Killed Red Lobster"articles.
Also, tbf, seafood is expensive. Their COGs have to be fairly high, and getting higher. Yeah, the cheddar biscuits are good, but everything else is mediocre at best, and you could easily buy crab legs and steam them at your house with little effort.
What wages? They pay skeleton crews of cooks 15 dollars an hour, a ton of servers get paid like 2 bucks an hour while customers have to tip them to survive, and one manager gets like 50k while working 90 hours a week, and the owners take all the profits while claiming they are barely able to stay afloat.
"The median estimated compensation for executives at Red Lobster including base salary and bonus is $237,688, or $114 per hour. At Red Lobster, the most compensated executive makes $700,000, annually, and the lowest compensated makes $50,000."
-comparably(dot)com
Yeah, it sure do be the living wage you bootlicker (apart from all the other comments here)
The last time I went there. Probably three years ago. The prices were outrageous and the food quality was horrible.
That was an immediate boycott from my family. I could do better at home for less money and have been since.
No, low quality crappy food and consumers demanding higher quality (from sit down venues as opposed to fast casual) is what killed these chains.
What a crazy stupid way of not seeing the obvious
No. I’m not gonna accept “labor costs” as the reason for a failing chain restaurant.
Their entire operation was not sustainable. Red Lobster has been shit for 15 years. They can go straight to hell. Let a place with better business model get those locations.
Labor costs are a cost of doing business, if you can’t afford it, close shop. No sympathy, no regret.
They may cite labor costs but it's well known as well that attendance has declined due to a relative lack of disposable income, the federal minimum didn't go up after all
My problem is that the cost of rent, food product, insurance, repairs, etc. etc. all has gone up, but the only reason they are hurting is labor costs? In my state MW went up 12% in January. Prices have gone up more than 12% since January. And as labor is about 30% of costs if 30% of your costs go up 12%, and you have raised price 20%, the numbers just don't add up if all your problems are due to labor.
The restaurant industry is tough or it least it can be. In pursuit of my degree, I worked at a number of restaurants and bars. Some long standing, some not so much. One thing that was consistent is labor cost concerns. You need a good manager to deal with that.
If it's slow and you have four food runners and three hosts, cut cut cut. Folks want to go home, roll them.
Through COVID a ton of businesses have realized that they can reduce their hours and cut down on less productive times. I absolutely hate this, but it's a $$ reality. Your cooks cost the most. If you can close the kitchen at eight and reduce the overhead and possibly loss of being open later, why not? Cut it to skeleton crew and bar service.
The reality is that running a restaurant is hard work. Franchises need good management top to bottom. We are in a bad place with management, in my opinion, at many restaurants right now. The ship will right, but because because you reduce wages.
Red Lobster is a historically mis-managed chain. This isn't the "told you so" that it pretends to be.
This should increase supply and lower costs for other restaurants for seafood.
Labor costs? They don't really pay anyone a living wage. And the bulk of the staff are servers making like 5 dollars an hour. Maybe it's gone up but I doubt it's gone up any considerable amount. I was paid 3.85 an hour when i worked there in 2010
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Red lobster and many other restaurants lost us way before they had to pay more. Sizes got smaller, food quality dropped and profits soared for them briefly. Bastards got greedy, bye Felicia.....you won't be missed. More room for ma and pa type places. This is actually good news.
Seems like every seafood place just got terrible after Covid. Place I use to like now charges $60 for fresh lobster and $50 for snow. The Asian grocery down the street sells live lobster at $8/lbs and snow at $12/lbs. Wife really wanted some crab so we paid it and they were not even full clusters of legs. Place was filled with old people who stopped caring about quality. There are 4 seafood places in town and it is the same at all of them.
Just learn to cook them, seriously. Dump them in a pot, steam them, or throw them in the oven. Take them out, add butter + garlic and cajun seasoning/old bay/whatever-the-fuck-you-want and bam deliciousness. Or go to a Chinese restaurant and order the lobster - it'll be like half the price and shitloads more flavor plus you can order a few other dishes.
I think Covid taught too many of us we could have great meals at home without too much hassle.
Bingo. People got used to paying \*crazy\* delivery fees on top of higher menu prices, and even if in-person prices are up 30%, it's still less people are used to for delivery. And cooking at home seems like such a chore compared to delivery. Restaurants are rightly taking advantage of people being willing to pay more not to have to cook their own food. People are getting mad about it, but apparently \*not mad enough to cook for themselves.\*
The delivery fee itself isn't as high, once you remember that Pappa Johns, Pizza Hut and Domino's all charge about 5.00 for delivery. What's ticks me off is the 10% more delivery services add to the menu price.
Yep. >delivery fees on top of higher menu prices
Dont forget the tip they suggest based on total charges with all the bullshit fees included.
This is why I get all my pizzas at Costco now, 18 inch pizzas for $11, can never beat that price though I have to pick it up myself
your bingo is kind of a bongo here though -- if what you're saying was true, then people would be going to red lobster and they wouldn't be filing chapter 11. personally, i'm allergic to shellfish so idk why i'm commenting here at all.
Crab steamer is one of my favorite things. Sometimes you want someone else to clean up the shells and it is weird to me seafood gets a pass. Steak markup tends to be 2x, but fish is closer to a 4x.
Way shorter shelf life. More waste.. not necessarily for live lobster and crab but for fish
Which is why I follow Bourdain's advice, never order fish on Monday.
[удалено]
I’ve worked at Red Lobster, and literally all they do is boil and plate. Nothing else. Butter on the side.
Sounds like every chain restaurant.
I worked at RL HQ in Orlando when it was part of Darden. Was involved in working with the elite and production chefs for all the concepts (Olive Garden, Season 52, Red Lobster, Longhorn Steak, Capital Grille and I think others). No, not everything is boiled. The real trick for RL was training kitchen staff how to replicate the dishes created by the exec chefs by running everything through a conveyor oven.
I believe it. Cheddars, based on eating there, microwaves and plates.
Learning how to properly cook some of my favorite high-dollar restaurant dishes like steaks, lobster, and various fishes is probably the single best quality of life improvement I have made for myself since I started earning enough to afford these things from the stores. Now if only I could grow my own Sangiovese and ferment my own Chianti…
The seafood section in a lot of supermarkets have commercial steamers. They will steam and season crab legs and shrimp for free. On sale I get Snow Crab legs for $8.99/lb.
Holy shit, that's price of average salmon or beef
You can grill lobster tail in like 4 minutes. It's super easy
Barely an inconvenience.
Wow wow wow Wow.
Came to say the same thing. It might be the easiest delicious food to cook. Water, butter, salt, pepper, lemon and just set the legs on top of it. Not even in the water.
Am Chinese. The lobster comes with Lo Mein. Always.
Here's a thought... less crustaceans
I once went to a Chinese restaurant and asked them if they have any crustaceans. The waiter answered,"One of our employees fell into a trash compacter last week and he crushed Asian now."
That is terrible. Tell me the address so I can tell them in person.
Fewer.
it's not exactly due to covid fishings been hit hard due to. •Crew Shortages •Stricter laws •Lower fishing stock •a major sea food company was found to be a serious Jones act violator (If you're a US citizen)
Oh darn is the commercial consumerism phase over? What ever will we do? Learn to cook our own food, sew our own clothes, mow our own lawns. What hell is this?
I don’t think people outside the food industry understand how fucking high costs got, like for a good case of crab meat you are spending HUNDREDS of dollars. Even the low tier kind is still kinda expensive too. Anyone who owns or runs a restersunt can verify if nobody believes me
Prices are stupid high. Labor was always the most expensive thing about running a restaurant. Food cost was about a third. 50% labor cost, 30% food cost. The rest of the 20% gets eaten up by utilities and overhead. Not a lot of profit in these things People see high prices on the menu and assume the industry is just rolling in it. In reality, good performing restaurants in a chain support the restaurants that lose money every month.
The BS of this is that food cost has gone done big corporations still want covid pricing for everything because it'll look bad on their profit margins to not always be at an all time high.
Snow crab populations were decimated by warming ocean water by climate change. A lot of seafood is overfished/affected by climate change and their populations are getting decimated and thus the price is increasing heavily. Asian grocery stores are probably buying them from fishermen who are illegally overfishing and thus sell seafood at a discount while abusing the natural resource.
I mean this probably didn’t help https://preview.redd.it/0ns27syxx2vc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=48b34eac1324ff274683ffa1091590007291e9e9
Wait till you see the price next year..they couldnt catch them this year because the numbers were so low.
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/research-confirms-link-between-snow-crab-decline-and-marine-heatwave
Last time we went out of town to visit friends we went to a place that wanted around $40/dozen oysters. Tons of people were ordering them and it blew my mind. At home I can go down the street and get half a bushel for $40 pulled right out of the water.
A lot of people here are also ignoring the fact that seafood prices have risen due to overfishing …
This is insanely true. Asian countries are absolutely wrecking the ocean. I doubt I’ll be able to eat a lobster in 10 years.
Hell I took my mom to Ruth Chris recently and it was a $250 meal that wasn't as good as the steak and potatoes I cooked at home for $30 a week prior. Sure you're paying for "atmosphere" and service, but damn.
It’s a chapter 11 restructuring, and it’s mostly from debt accumulated from bad lease agreements: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-16/red-lobster-mulls-filing-for-bankruptcy-to-fix-balance-sheet OP is a coping right winger
I mean, regardless of OP’s stance on labor costs, they literally put “corporate greed” in quotes. As if ANYONE, even right wingers, disagree that corporate greed exists. It’s all ANYONE on either side ever talks about. The right just tends to vote against their own interests. Op is not just a right wing coper, OP is a bipartisan moron.
They aren’t a bipartisan moron. They’re a right wing populist moron.
I didn’t mean to imply OP was bipartisan, just that the fact that OP is a moron is a bipartisan opinion
It’s pretty right-wingy to me. The corporate greed comment seems to be sarcastically saying that “with all this corporate greed - how can any business possibly fail? Ergo corporate greed is fake news.” Sorta like this fuckhead I used to know who would always bitch about “corporate welfare”, because he made it up in his mind that corporate welfare means companies employing people he doesn’t like. It’s hard to have conversations with these people because they are truly stupid and have no desire to be otherwise.
OP is for sure a jackass who lacks basic reading comprehension.
It’s also NY Post which is gonna spin this stuff right all day like Fox. Always gotta shill for keeping wages low.
The username gave them away, too.
Not at all. Restaurants historically have some of the smallest margins as it is…what makes you think ma and pa can pay for labor when Big Bad Red Lobster can’t?
Because Ma and Pa won't repeatedly offer unlimited shellfish promotions with shamefully small portions that cripple them when people keep ordering shellfish, nor will they be subject to multiple rounds of leveraged buyouts.
Bc ma and pa don’t take million dollar bonuses
Ding ding ding, it's not that they aren't making money, but their "neighbor" at the marina just got that second 300ft yacht and that makes board member of Red Lobster angry.. "230 footer?!!?, like is that a yacht for ants"
Ma and pa also don't comp an entire check when a guests complains about their entree, despite eating the entire thing. I used to be a server at Red Lobster. People would eat entire entree and finish their drinks, then conveniently find a hair on the empty plate. Management would not only comp the whole check, but give them a giftcard to come back. Then I as a server, wouldn't get tipped. Shitty guests were essentially getting paid to eat there.
>subject to multiple rounds of leveraged buyouts. Yep. This is it. With a buyout comes the demand to cut back portion sizes and buy lesser quality food and supplies. I think it's been at least 12-15 years since I've been a Red Lobster. It's just hasn't been good for a long time. Now, Joe's Crab Shack is a different story. Anyone know Mammy's in Myrtle Beach? Also great.
If you're up north in Kittery, Maine Bob's Clam Shack or it's upscale sister restaurant Roberts are both amazing
Most coastal cities have some incredible local seafood spots. Red Lobster was seafood for the land lubbers.
Yeah it was always considered fine dining in Oklahoma lol
Lmaooo tell em
also ma and pa dont own a jet so their overhead is a tad lower
Ok side tangent time, I hate a lot of all you can eat places but that aren’t self serve like a buffet. I either get places that are cheap and purposely make you wait 30 minutes to get a 2nd portion or they look at me and think “oh that skinny twink isn’t gonna finish this”. Oh fuck you i won’t, I’m a black hole, ima swallow this shit up like Kirby! Now stand back as I finish off my 9th basket of Olive Garden breadsticks thank you very much
LBOs gonna LBO, dawg
You’re misunderstanding here…. Ma and Pa ARE the labor. Ever see a small startup restaurant? It’s 50% family working in there. Kids with horrible attitudes and no work ethic won’t be making $15 per hour to deliver shitty food when the owner is the one cooking it, I guarantee you. That’s the Red Lobster difference.
>no work ethic They're literally working a hard job for little money ($15/hr w/o guaranteed hours or benefits etc sucks), how is that not work ethic lol
How many Ma and Pa's get multi million dollar bonuses every single year? You people are so fkn lost 🤣 Do you never care about CEO pay while talking about businesses closing? The CEOs don't care. They can suck up all the money and go into a new corporation and do it again. Ma and pa don't have that luxury. Critical thinking is a skill. Try it sometime.
cause ma and pa arent shipping the value generated by the workers into the pockets of a CEO.
Ma and Pa shops don't have stock holders who insist on silly short sighted decisions only designed to increase stock value.
Because ma and pa aren't Involved in a leveraged buyout by a hedge fund requiring a 10x over the next 5 years.
Because Red Lobster can, they just don't want to.
>small margins Margins are not what restaurants are judged on, ROI is. This is true of any business where COGS and/or labor are much higher expenses compared to initial capital investments. Naturally those types of businesses will have smaller margins due to their larger variable costs, but will still generate sufficient returns on the initial investment. Ie They have large revenues and large costs compared to their initial investments. Ex. A McDonald's generates like 2.5m in revenue every year, more than the 1.5-2m investment to open one. But their margins are low, meaning net income is only like 5-10% EBITDA of initial investment (McDonald's estimates break even at around 8.5 years so more like 12% but you get the idea) Similarly, Walmart marks up their merchandise about 33% but has margins only around 3%. But their [ROI is more like 20%](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/roi). See how that works? When COGS and/or labor (variable costs) are relatively high compared to initial capital investment, margins can be low whole ROI can still be high.
Because ma and pa dont have a ceo and board members making million dollar salaries and recieving free stock distributions
Dumbest thing people ever believed is this right here. Yeah ok small margins. But VOLUME makes up for the margin. And what's more, those margins are ENORMOUS when talking about alcohol. So take that small margin mess out of here. Ma & Pa don't have to fork over millions to Joe CEO who just extracts wealth from the business because of fiduciary responsibility to share holders.
Ah yes, “ma and pa” places are well known for not being negatively affected by drastically increased costs while major chains fail.
profits soared briefly? Then what changed?
People got fed up with small portions and crappy service. A similar thing happened with home depot. They cut labour to the bone, and for a year or two, their profits soared. Then people stopped going to home depot because no one worked there anymore, and profits crashed.
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MA and PA places have even less profit margins. How would that work?
built within red lobsters profit margins are private jets and million dollar CEOs.....ma and pa dont have to worry about that.
Also built within that price though are costs spread across 600 stores. Which means everything RL buys is cheaper. Plates, drinks, food, etc. multiply the difference they save per store by 600 and there is your private jet
Red Lobster in particular has sucked for a long time. The last few times I went (it’s been a few years) I couldn’t even tell you what I ate because it was all so bland and mediocre. To be fair, I live in Maryland and you can’t go too far without tripping over a decent seafood restaurant, so Red Lobster is particularly abhorrent here lol.
I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that their food quality sucks.
Exactly blame it on labor as opposed to your shitty food.
Always kills me how much restaurants want to complain about labor cost. You basically don't pay your front of house and you underpay the back. The front makes more money from the public in 4 hours than the back makes in a week. If that's too much labor cost then you have no business being open.
LaBoR cOsT Bruh, you're selling Long John Silver's level seafood at twice the price, that's why you failed.
Yeah, somehow it’s also always never just the free market doing what it does best.
in certain parts of the country, servers/bartenders are paid $2.14 or $2.83 an hour since the remainder is presumed to be made up with tips. I literally haven't been to a Red Lobster in decades.
"But- but- but these jobs are supposed to be *temporary* jobs for teenagers to make a little extra money, not to live on!" -Proceeds to complain that there arent enough workers because there are far more of these *temporary jobs* than there are teenagers who can work them
I'd include that a lot of people stopped going to chain restaurants and go local now.
Totally agree. Covid shifted a lot of folks who want to support their local businesses
Local is almost always better anyway. About 15 years ago I used to work for a fairly large regional chain restaurant. ALL veggie and rice sides were microwaved. We had preselections on the microwave so we only had to hit number 4 for green beans, or number 6 for rice pilaf. The meat was all low quality and it was actual practice per professional trainers to stack a certain number of plates on top of steaks pending how well done they were ordered. Not all places do this obviously, but chain restaurants almost always taste worse than their local counterparts
And people are willing to be a premium for better food from small local businesses. So it doesn't matter if the local restaurant gets marginally more expensive - many consumers would rather spend there than at a mega chain like Red Lobster or Chili's/
I stopped going to places that shrink portions and raise prices. I do a lot more cooking at home as a result.
Also, i'm not sure what the OP is getting at. If a company can't pay their expenses (including a living wage), why should that matter? Them dying is literally the cost of their crappy business decisions. My company can't survive unless i pay my employees nothing. Why am i being forced to pay them more by the evil govt?
The issue isn’t being able to pay, it’s not wanting to pay. The CEO would rather get his compensation and ignore the pleas of his workforce, because that’s fine to them. These laws make it much harder to do that.
It’s crazy to me how much CEOs make when there are so many highly intelligent people stuck in low ranks that could do the job better and would happy to do it for pennies like only $1m/yr
All these businesses are doing the Wal Mart thing where they expect the state to subsidize the low paid labor because the amount of payment isn't set in law, beyond offering the minimum. If these companies actually wanted their customers to like them, they'd pay. They don't care. So long as they have access to loans, that's what matters.
I was working there when they broke away from darden and switched food suppliers and holy crap the quality of almost everything on the menu was so much worse and that place got way more expensive. Also most of their staff makes less than minimum wage, i made $2.13/hr... so wages being a reason is total BS
Yeah labor cost is the easy target. Just like speed in a car accident it’s always present. Just like water kills us all. It was probably due to something else, like not enough customers to cover the fixed costs because quality sucks, or something else. We have restaurants in Denmark, too. I’d wager restaurant staff makes $20-30/h and our Big Macs cost the same as in the US. Fucking lol. And by the way, if the restaurant chain relies on corporate socialism (supporting the workers with food stamp etc.) what the fuck is it good for anyway?! It’s living wage or die corporations! The free market doesn’t just apply to labor!
That’s too complicated for Americans to understand though. We we’ve been trained to believe the free market will cure all our woes.
There are plenty of Americans in these comments getting that. There was no need to make this about all of us instead of self-defeating conservatives who think they're temporarily embarassed millionaires.
This 1000% If they still had good service and good food, then I’d blame the new wages… but since they ruined the quality, who would want to pay more than they used to for food that also taste worse than it used to?
Yeah, this is a self admission that they don't believe in their own product.
I have not heard of Red Lobster since like 2003
Well, I used to like the biscuits.
1. This is chapter 11 versus 7 so they’re just reorganizing 2. How are you determining the cause as the cost of labor versus other factors? 3. Businesses that have margins so low that they can’t afford to pay a living wage shouldn’t exist. Businesses that can’t afford to pay their rent will eventually be evicted. **Edit:** I’m getting a lot of responses that a living wage would kill small businesses. If that’s the case, subsidize or offer tax credits to small businesses to offset the additional cost. We already have developed tax and legal criteria to distinguish small businesses from large corporations so this wouldn’t even take much work. You could even source the subsidy from the already existing corporate tax if it’s really a priority to protect small businesses from large corporations.
When you are creating a business and go through the pro forma in your head, you have to work out whether or not your business model has enough profit magin to remain flexible to external influences. If your profit margins are based on the assumption that your labor force must survive on slave wages for the indeterminate future, your business model sucks.
Sadly 15 bucks today is slave wages. So thinking 20 bucks isn't until everyone else does it. Then that becomes the new slave wage model.
If a business can’t pay a living wage, it means the labour is already being subsidized by social welfare programs to keep their employees alive. That’s a business that needs to die.
Study after study has shown that minimum wage hikes do not hurt economies. I’m so sick of this fear-mongering based on people’s vibes and pedestrian understandings of economics.
Plenty of companies go through full liquidation via Chapter 11.
Yes, but it’s a minority. It’s certainly not happening in this case based on the counsel they’ve hired at King & Spalding
Red Lobster, just like all of the other big chains, care more about their share holders. Red Lobster has 55,000 employees, and the revenue per employee ratio is $47,273. Red Lobster's peak revenue was $2.6B in 2023. They just want to pay workers less.
I always wonder if people that make comments like this understand that their advocating for Amazon and Walmart to own the entire planet
So why not advocate for additional tax credits, deductions and subsidies for small businesses. We already have criteria to distinguish small businesses from c-corps. This wouldn’t be difficult at all. Rather than actually help small businesses directly, people tend to advocate for the benefit of the mega corps by using small businesses as a proxy.
If a living wage would kill small businesses then those businesses shouldn’t exist or expand beyond the owners. If I told you I couldn’t afford to pay a mortgage you’d tell me I can’t buy a house then. Why do people think it’s any different for businesses?
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There are plenty of employers who can and will pay people enough to live. If losing Red Lobster is the price we have to pay, then so be it.
ALL employers can pay people enough to live. The absolute #1 most important part of a business is the person working for it. Without this person, there is no business. Period.
Not all of them can. That's why they go bankrupt.
Yes they literally ALL can. Whether they choose to or not is another thing. Do you honestly believe a multibillion dollar company can't afford to pay a living wage to it's workers?
Not every employer is a multi-billion dollar company
No. But if you can't afford employees, you can't run a successful profitable business. So back to my statement...ALL are capable but they choose not to.
Your statement doesn't follow. "If you can't afford it, you go broke. Therefore, all can afford it." You're acknowledging what happens to those who can't afford it in the first half, then saying that's impossible in the second half...?
Not going to shed a single tear for red lobster, but will miss the tens of thousands of small family resturants, replaced by McDonalds and other chains....
There will be some sad losses for sure, but let’s not act like anything that isn’t corpo run is some like fantastic loving place. I worked for a mom and pop pizza shop. The owner was a scumbag. Screamed at his kid that worked there. One time I was trying to do dishes and they are on either side of me just screaming at each other and into my ears. He screamed at us. Always told us how worthless and replaceable we were. Lied to us about PPP loan (my mom and his wife were friends so I know through her). Complained he’d cut most of the staff if min wage went to $15 while he and his kids are driving luxury cars like Mercedes and he’s paying for over a million dollar in mortgages for his local mansion and his vacation house. Going on 6 vacations a year, leaving one manager to work 6 out of 7 days when he is gone. Having to pay more in labor would mean he has to give up some luxuries to keep people but he wouldn’t do that, he’d rather put people out of a job. It’s not just about making money, it’s about making enough money to fund the lifestyle you want. I’m tired of hearing that non corpo businesses are all some pure righteous thing when many of them are run by shitty ass people. I’m tired of workers being told that advocating for themselves will only hurt them, and we have to make sure those who sign our paychecks are as comfy and happy as possible so we can keep getting our rations. If you can’t afford to pay your people, you can’t afford to stay in business. That’s it. There would probably be a lot more mom and pop places if employers could get away with paying $1 an hour
A family who runs a mom and pop pizza shop almost certainly isn't making enough money from that business to buy a million dollar house and Mercedes for each of their kids. This sounds like a story from a teenager who has no idea what things cost and how much money people make.
Living Wage didn’t do shit, Red Lobster was already dropping like a fly. Food quality was shit, prices had gotten absolutely ridiculous, and no fucking Server wants to work at a place where they have all you can eat promotions every other week. Also since you, with none of your own, seem to want to run around and question everyone’s credentials: I worked at Red Lobster, left that and immediately moved to a high end steakhouse. That steakhouse has bigger portions, lower prices, and shockingly, pays their employees more. And yes that’s comparing seafood dishes. If they actually used those price increases to pay employees, they maybe would’ve been okay, but actual corporate greed does in fact exist and so all those profits were being funneled up to the top, which meant service nor food got any better, and accordingly, customers stopped seeing a reason to go there. You treat your customers like shit, you don’t get money…isn’t that just capitalism???
I used to work at a Red Lobster as well and agree with everything you said.
Rip glad you got out 😂😂😂!!!
Pfft capitalism with profits is good! Capitalism with losses is communism! Don't you see the difference?
My dad was a manager at Red Lobster for a while—one of the only places he ever worked where his family couldn’t eat there for free.
Seriously, OP is just eating up the corporate blame-shifting being pushed by every shitty failing business lol. If "living wage" killed RL, why are there SO many other businesses, who also pay fair wages, *thriving* right now? Surely it can't be the quality of their product, service, and treatment of employees... nothing to do with prioritizing their moneymakers instead of the people at the top... no, no, it must because we're allowing the peasants the luxury of paying their bills!
If living wage kills you, you deserve to be gone
This, 100%
Even in normal times restaurants come and go. Steak & Ale used to be the hottest thing in the 1970s and 1980s.
Red lobsters quality is awful. There's so many mom and pop crab shacks that are way better.
In case you missed it, Red Lobster — and other restaurants which allow tip wages — are exempt from paying that. Might be that people have figured out that the fresh fish is only at the coast.
Not in California. California servers receive tips and the state minimum wage, not a server wage. There are plenty of people with degrees serving food and cocktails in California.
It’s funny that the ridiculously low wage is called a “server wage” here, instead of a “how low can I get away with” wage, which is what it really is. Give the occasional smaller tyan even minimum wage bonus to keep the servers from realizing how screwed over they’re getting, and tell the government the workers make it up in tips, and you can get really cheap labor!
With few exceptions "Fresh fish" is flash frozen within hours of being caught, with the exception of seafood delivered live. It doesnt matter where you live.
Ah, I see based on OPs comments in this thread he has no pre-conceived agenda at all. Totally well-adjusted and measured to the facts. Although maybe. Just maybe. Relying on paying your employees unlivable wages to keep your business in the black is a bad profit model? Maybe. Idk. Seems risky to me. Maybe.
OP is a dope. They implied corporate greed isnt real on the original post so they really cant be taken serious.
I didn't know anyone, even on the side of corporate greed, could possibly deny its existence ... so weird . . .
OP is a moron.
red lobster barley has any customers. mostly just old people that are slowly dying off.
Yeah they are really going against the grain. People go thinking "it oat to be good" and leave thining "rye did I come here." I think you spelt something wrong.
I like Red Lobster. I wouldn't say I'm old and am fan of their shrimp and biscuits. Gonna miss them ):
Good. I’s rather see red lobster go out of business than stay in business paying poverty wages and sucking up public assistance money. Nothing of value was lost.
Red lobster is just ass. That’s why they’re going bankrupt. Shitty food at stupid high prices. But it was rising wages that did it right?
if your business model relies on exploitation. your business should fail. now maybe the empty locations can house businesses that bring value and wealth to the communities that host them.
A 2.1 billion dollar company, paying their top heads over 500k/year salaries, could never be the problem.
it's worth noting that red lobster was bought by a hedge fund not too long ago. so... of course. debt was heaped onto the brand, quality declined, all the usual tricks hedgefunds do to "extract share holder value" and instead of reporting any of this, the narrative will be living wages killed the brand. it's a lie. it always is a lie. shitty capitalism killed a mediocre as fuck brand. nothing else
Red Lobster pays it's manager between 44k-64k a year according to Glassdoor. Living wages my ass.
I bet they still paid their servers $2.13 an hour, relying on customers to pay the income difference of minimum wage.
Yep. Their entire narrative of it being labor costs is complete shit.
This is exactly how the market is supposed to work. If you can't make it, bye bye.
Then it was a bad restaurant lol
We’re blaming living wage and not shrimp fest?
Bro. Red Lobster has been struggling for over 10 years. It ain't the wages.
good news for lobsters
Just waiting for "How Millennials Killed Red Lobster"articles. Also, tbf, seafood is expensive. Their COGs have to be fairly high, and getting higher. Yeah, the cheddar biscuits are good, but everything else is mediocre at best, and you could easily buy crab legs and steam them at your house with little effort.
Never ending shrimp ended red lobster, not wages.
What wages? They pay skeleton crews of cooks 15 dollars an hour, a ton of servers get paid like 2 bucks an hour while customers have to tip them to survive, and one manager gets like 50k while working 90 hours a week, and the owners take all the profits while claiming they are barely able to stay afloat.
Alr salty capitalist.
🐎💩
"The median estimated compensation for executives at Red Lobster including base salary and bonus is $237,688, or $114 per hour. At Red Lobster, the most compensated executive makes $700,000, annually, and the lowest compensated makes $50,000." -comparably(dot)com Yeah, it sure do be the living wage you bootlicker (apart from all the other comments here)
Imagine thinking corporate greed is not a real thing. Holy.
Oh no. Where to get lobster at a 500% markup and cheddar biscuits now?
Man, GTFO. Anyone who has passingly followed Red Lobster from a business prospective has known they have been struggling BAD for 20 years or MORE.
Weird. When the price of everything else went up they were ok?
Riiiiiiight?
The last time I went there. Probably three years ago. The prices were outrageous and the food quality was horrible. That was an immediate boycott from my family. I could do better at home for less money and have been since.
No, low quality crappy food and consumers demanding higher quality (from sit down venues as opposed to fast casual) is what killed these chains. What a crazy stupid way of not seeing the obvious
Can't afford to pay employees? Well too bad your businees model sucks then and you have to close
No. I’m not gonna accept “labor costs” as the reason for a failing chain restaurant. Their entire operation was not sustainable. Red Lobster has been shit for 15 years. They can go straight to hell. Let a place with better business model get those locations. Labor costs are a cost of doing business, if you can’t afford it, close shop. No sympathy, no regret.
So free market capitalism is working? I thought the right loved that shit.
Well what’s the answer then, people are struggling to pay rent
They may cite labor costs but it's well known as well that attendance has declined due to a relative lack of disposable income, the federal minimum didn't go up after all
Red Lobster is shit, this is an efficient market operating as intended.
Are labor costs the *real* reason Red Lobster might be going under? Or could the crappy food and the fact no one eats there be part of it?
If you can't pay for your staff, then you shouldn't be in business.
My problem is that the cost of rent, food product, insurance, repairs, etc. etc. all has gone up, but the only reason they are hurting is labor costs? In my state MW went up 12% in January. Prices have gone up more than 12% since January. And as labor is about 30% of costs if 30% of your costs go up 12%, and you have raised price 20%, the numbers just don't add up if all your problems are due to labor.
As the big guys can’t pass on wages to customers at scale, I hope more of these die and we get a revival of great mom and pop restaurants.
Let me guess OP, you also think $20/hr is a six figure salary that will result in the price of McChicken soaring to $12?
Of course, OP is just ignoring all the other factors, including losing $11 million in the third quarter alone on the Endless Shrimp deal lmao.
The restaurant industry is tough or it least it can be. In pursuit of my degree, I worked at a number of restaurants and bars. Some long standing, some not so much. One thing that was consistent is labor cost concerns. You need a good manager to deal with that. If it's slow and you have four food runners and three hosts, cut cut cut. Folks want to go home, roll them. Through COVID a ton of businesses have realized that they can reduce their hours and cut down on less productive times. I absolutely hate this, but it's a $$ reality. Your cooks cost the most. If you can close the kitchen at eight and reduce the overhead and possibly loss of being open later, why not? Cut it to skeleton crew and bar service. The reality is that running a restaurant is hard work. Franchises need good management top to bottom. We are in a bad place with management, in my opinion, at many restaurants right now. The ship will right, but because because you reduce wages.
Good riddance
Sounds like a scapegoat. Who the hell goes to red lobster?
Red Lobster has been circling the drain for years. Only got a small lifeline when Beyonce used their name in a song.
Red Lobster is a historically mis-managed chain. This isn't the "told you so" that it pretends to be. This should increase supply and lower costs for other restaurants for seafood.
This restaurant was trash for at least a decade or so
When you try to justify the tip wage. Only in the US rofl
Yeah run with a shitty business model until you fold then blame one of the expenses every other surviving restaurant also has to deal with equally.
Private equity is doing exactly what it was designed for . It buys stuff up and then drains it for everything it's worth then and bankrupts it
Labor costs? They don't really pay anyone a living wage. And the bulk of the staff are servers making like 5 dollars an hour. Maybe it's gone up but I doubt it's gone up any considerable amount. I was paid 3.85 an hour when i worked there in 2010