Endless shrimp was a successful annual limited-time offer for Red Lobster for 20 years. The new major shareholder in Red Lobster is Thai Union, a canned seafood company based in Bangkok. Thai Union saw the promotion as a way to get rid of the huge amounts of shrimp it was catching and made it an everyday item. (Thai Union became Red Lobster’s largest investor in 2020. ).
Sunday, Red Lobster filed for bankruptcy. This brings to light Thai Union’s part in the never-ending shrimp mess. Red Lobster said it is investigating the circumstances of that promotion, which Red Lobster management opposed.
The filing said that Thai Union chose the CEO of Red Lobster and got rid of two of its breaded shrimp suppliers. This gave Thai Union exclusive rights to supply shrimp to the chain.
That caused prices to go up, and it wasn’t in line with how the company usually chooses suppliers based on expected demand, the chain said in its filing.
Red Lobster said in the filing that Thai Union’s decision caused operational and financial problems for the company and put heavy supply obligations on it.
Endless shrimp alone didn’t doom Red Lobster. Analysts and former leaders of the chain say that the American seafood icon was brought down by a number of things, such as bad management by Thai Union and handoffs between investors and corporate parents.
“Some operational decisions made by former management have hurt [Red Lobster’s] finances in recent years,” the company said in its bankruptcy filing.
Over the past 20 years, fast-casual chains like Chipotle and quick-service chains like Chick-fil-A have grown very quickly and become very popular. This has put pressure on Red Lobster. Red Lobster has had trouble adding Millennials to its core Baby Boomer customer base for years because it hasn’t spent enough on marketing, food quality, service, and restaurant upgrades.
“Red Lobster was the foundation of casual dining. In a previous interview with CNN, Alex Susskind, a professor of food and beverage management at Cornell University, said, “They were powerful and well-known, and they changed the way Americans eat seafood.”
But the company didn’t build on that foundation, Susskind said. “Red Lobster had incredible popularity among Baby Boomers. They didn’t bring in a newer generation. ”.
Red Lobster’s Endless Shrimp promotion has become a beloved annual tradition for seafood lovers This limited-time offer allows customers to indulge in unlimited servings of shrimp dishes for a fixed price But with 2023 now here, the big question on everyone’s mind is – will Red Lobster be doing Endless Shrimp this year?
As a seafood fanatic myself I’ve done some digging to get the scoop on whether Endless Shrimp is happening in 2023. Here’s a comprehensive look at what to expect from Red Lobster’s famous shrimp deal this year.
A Quick History of Endless Shrimp at Red Lobster
Let’s start with some background on Red Lobster’s Endless Shrimp promotion. The restaurant chain first launched this limited-time offer in 1994. It quickly became a massive success and a yearly tradition that customers looked forward to.
Previously, Endless Shrimp was only available for a few months each year, typically in the fall. In 2022, Red Lobster shook things up by making shrimp endless on their menu year-round. This was partly an effort to increase sales amid broader struggles in the casual dining industry.
Over the decades, Endless Shrimp has remained Red Lobster’s most popular limited-time offer It draws in big crowds of hungry shrimp enthusiasts ready to get their fill.
Red Lobster Announces Endless Shrimp for 2023
The good news for shrimp lovers is that Endless Shrimp will return to Red Lobster in 2023! The restaurant recently confirmed that the deal will be back this year.
In a January 2023 announcement, Red Lobster stated that Endless Shrimp will make its yearly return this fall. So while you’ll have to wait a few more months, it’s officially confirmed that the promotion will happen again this year.
Unfortunately, further details like the start date, end date, and pricing haven’t been released yet. But based on previous years, customers can likely expect Endless Shrimp 2023 to run from late August through November. Pricing should be around $16.99 as it was last year.
What to Expect from Endless Shrimp 2023
While Red Lobster is still keeping mum on the specifics, we can make some educated guesses about what to expect from Endless Shrimp based on previous years.
Here are some likely details for Endless Shrimp 2023:
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Duration: Approximately 12 weeks from late August to November.
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Pricing: Around $16.99, slightly higher than the $15.99 price of 2021.
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Menu: A selection of the chain’s most popular shrimp dishes will be included, like Walt’s Favorite Shrimp, Garlic Shrimp Scampi, and Coconut Shrimp.
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New Dishes: Red Lobster will probably roll out 1 or 2 new creations, like Nashville Hot Shrimp or Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp.
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Deals Stack: You’ll likely be able to combine Endless Shrimp with other Red Lobster deals and discounts.
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Reservations: Making reservations in advance is highly recommended during peak Endless Shrimp season.
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Takeout: Getting your Endless Shrimp to-go will almost certainly be an option again.
Of course, the specifics won’t be verified until Red Lobster releases its official Endless Shrimp announcement later this summer. But based on previous promotions, you can expect a very similar experience to years past.
Why Red Lobster’s Endless Shrimp is So Popular
It’s easy to see why Endless Shrimp has become such a phenomenon and yearly tradition. Here are some of the biggest reasons people get so excited about it:
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Great Value: Paying one flat price for unlimited shrimp is an incredible deal compared to ordering shrimp dishes a la carte.
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Shrimp Heaven: The chance to indulge in plate after plate of deliciously prepared shrimp is any shellfish fanatic’s dream.
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Menu Variety: The ability to alternate between different shrimp dishes – fried, grilled, scampi – keeps things interesting.
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Over-the-Top Experience: For shrimp lovers, being able to eat unlimited amounts feels like an exciting, over-the-top experience.
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Perfect Season: The fall timing hits the spot as shrimp is best in season during summer and fall months.
So the value, abundance, and sheer excitement of unlimited shrimp makes Endless Shrimp an event customers eagerly await each year.
Tips for Maximizing Endless Shrimp 2023
When Endless Shrimp returns in fall 2023, be sure to go in with a game plan to make the most of this shellfish spectacular. Here are my top tips:
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Arrive hungry! Come with an empty stomach to fully enjoy multiple servings.
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Pace yourself. Don’t gobble your first round too quickly or you’ll get full faster. Take it slow.
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Try new dishes. Don’t just stick to your usual; take the opportunity to explore new shrimp preparations.
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Ask for extra sauce. Request additional sauce or butter to really amp up the flavor.
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Save room for dessert. The chain’s famous Cheddar Bay Biscuits pair nicely with something sweet like their chocolate wave cake.
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Make reservations. This ensures you get a table and don’t end up stuck waiting in long lines.
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Take leftovers. If you can’t finish, Red Lobster lets you box up Endless Shrimp at no extra charge.
The Verdict on Endless Shrimp 2023
While you may have to restrain yourself until fall, shrimp enthusiasts everywhere can rejoice that Endless Shrimp will return to Red Lobster in 2023.
This beloved annual promotion lets seafood fans indulge to their heart’s content in unlimited servings of shrimp. Based on previous years, you can expect Endless Shrimp 2023 to start in late August and run for around 12 weeks.
Once the deliciously long shrimp season arrives, be sure to follow these tips to make the most of Red Lobster’s famous deal. Pace yourself, explore new dishes, save room for dessert, and don’t be shy about taking home leftovers.
With 2023 being Endless Shrimp’s 30th anniversary, here’s hoping Red Lobster celebrates in style and makes this the juiciest year yet! Where will I see you this fall? I’ll be the one blissfully dunking shrimp into melted butter and cocktail sauce.
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Fear & Greed Index
Last summer, Red Lobster made $20 endless shrimp a permanent menu item.
Endless shrimp was a successful annual limited-time offer for Red Lobster for 20 years. The new major shareholder in Red Lobster is Thai Union, a canned seafood company based in Bangkok. Thai Union saw the promotion as a way to get rid of the huge amounts of shrimp it was catching and made it an everyday item. (Thai Union became Red Lobster’s largest investor in 2020. ).
The change cost Red Lobster $11 million.
Sunday, Red Lobster filed for bankruptcy. This brings to light Thai Union’s part in the never-ending shrimp mess. Red Lobster said it is investigating the circumstances of that promotion, which Red Lobster management opposed.
The filing said that Thai Union chose the CEO of Red Lobster and got rid of two of its breaded shrimp suppliers. This gave Thai Union exclusive rights to supply shrimp to the chain.
That caused prices to go up, and it wasn’t in line with how the company usually chooses suppliers based on expected demand, the chain said in its filing.
Red Lobster said in the filing that Thai Union’s decision caused operational and financial problems for the company and put heavy supply obligations on it.
Thai Union did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
Endless shrimp alone didn’t doom Red Lobster. Analysts and former leaders of the chain say that the American seafood icon was brought down by a number of things, such as bad management by Thai Union and handoffs between investors and corporate parents.
“Some operational decisions made by former management have hurt [Red Lobster’s] finances in recent years,” the company said in its bankruptcy filing.
Over the past 20 years, fast-casual chains like Chipotle and quick-service chains like Chick-fil-A have grown very quickly and become very popular. This has put pressure on Red Lobster. Red Lobster has had trouble adding Millennials to its core Baby Boomer customer base for years because it hasn’t spent enough on marketing, food quality, service, and restaurant upgrades.
“Red Lobster was the foundation of casual dining. In a previous interview with CNN, Alex Susskind, a professor of food and beverage management at Cornell University, said, “They were powerful and well-known, and they changed the way Americans eat seafood.”
But the company didn’t build on that foundation, Susskind said. “Red Lobster had incredible popularity among Baby Boomers. They didn’t bring in a newer generation. ”.
Owned by General Mills
In 1968, the first Red Lobster opened in Lakeland, Florida, about an hour south of Orlando. At that time, casual dining was just getting started.
The brand was started by southern restaurateurs Bill Darden and Charley Woodsby. Darden owned several Howard Johnson’s restaurants, one of the first casual dining concepts.
“Our motto was informal and family prices,” Woodsby later said. They saw an opportunity to bring seafood to landlocked people at more affordable prices than fine-dining restaurants.
“In most of middle America, you couldn’t get decent seafood. “Red Lobster made it popular for everyone,” said Jonathan Maze, editor-in-chief of the trade magazine Restaurant Business. “Red Lobster was part of this casual dining revolution. ”.
Just two years into Darden and Woodsby’s venture, General Mills acquired the brand. General Mills owned brands like Betty Crocker, Wheaties, and Cheerios. The company also wanted to get into the restaurant business with Red Lobster’s five simple restaurants.
By the early 1970s, with General Mills’ advertising muscle behind it, Red Lobster opened restaurants across the South.
Red Lobster rose quickly and was the first casual dining chain to advertise on network television, according to a Harvard Business School study. Red Lobster also developed the first national seafood distribution system in the 1970s.
“Many diners preferred their seafood fried in those days, and Red Lobster’s hush puppies could be considered an early ‘signature item,’” Joe Lee, the first general manager at Red Lobster and later its president, said in a journal article. “Families were welcomed with high chairs and a 59-cent child’s plate.”
By 1978, Red Lobster had 236 restaurants and $291 million in sales. It had 372 restaurants and $834 million in sales in 1985.
In 1995, General Mills split off its restaurant business into a new company called Darden Restaurants, which was named after Bill Darden, the founder of Red Lobster. At first, the company had the well-known chain Red Lobster and the new chain Olive Garden, which General Mills started in 1982.
But Red Lobster fell behind its sister brand Olive Garden under Darden.
By 2008, Olive Garden’s sales had eclipsed Red Lobster’s. Darden also acquired fast-growing chains such as Longhorn Steakhouse, Capital Grille and Yard House.
“Darden stopped investing in Red Lobster. “Things slowly got worse,” Les Foreman told CNN. From 2002 to 2022, he was director of operations and divisional vice president at Red Lobster. Red Lobster’s sales began declining and Darden prioritized investments in its other brands.
Darden soon faced pressure from activist investors pushing the company to split in two.
Darden responded to activist pressure by announcing plans in 2013 to sell Red Lobster, separating the chain from the rest of its business.
The following year, Darden sold Red Lobster to Golden Gate Capital, a private equity firm, for $2.1 billion. To help fund the deal, Red Lobster spun off its real estate assets in a transaction known as a sale leaseback agreement. Red Lobster had long owned its own real estate but would now be paying rent to lease its restaurants.
In the restaurant business, sale leasebacks are very common. However, Red Lobster ended up losing money because it was stuck with leases it couldn’t pay.
“That produced cost pressures on Red Lobster that they’ve never had before,” said analyst John Gordon. “It became a problem. ”.
While this was going on, fast-casual and quick-service restaurants grew thanks to lower prices, thousands of new drive-thru restaurants, and online delivery. These chains pressured the casual dining sector.
According to Technomic, a restaurant research firm, casual dining has gone down from making up 33.6 percent of all restaurant sales in 2013 to 31.1 percent in 202023.
Red Lobster’s controlling shareholder Thai Union also hurt the brand, say former employees and analysts.
Thai Union was a top supplier of shrimp to Red Lobster for more than 20 years. In 2016, Thai Union took a $575 million minority stake in the brand. In 2020, Thai Union deepened its financial interest in Red Lobster.
Thai Union saw an opportunity to grow its business and also become a bigger supplier to Red Lobster.
To save money on labor, it also tried pushing Red Lobster’s waitstaff to the limit by going from having waiters cover three tables to having 10 waiters cover 10 tables.
A lot of Red Lobster executives left when Thai Union took over, which caused a lot of turnover in the C-suite. Red Lobster hired a new CEO, CMO, CFO, and CIO in 2021 and 2022. All left the company within two years.
Then came the all-you-can-eat shrimp mishap last year.
Thai Union CEO Thiraphong Chansiri said in November, “We were expecting an increase of 2020% in customer traffic, but the actual number was up to 2040%.”
Two months later, Thai Union said it was pulling its money out of Red Lobster, which cost it $530 million. As well as “sustained industry headwinds, higher interest rates and rising material and labor costs,” the company said the pandemic was to blame. ”.
“I’m going to stop eating lobster,” Chansiri said this year. Ad Feedback Ad Feedback
Is Red Lobster Endless Shrimp a Scam?
How much is endless shrimp at Red Lobster?
Price, of course, is one of the most important considerations for most people when they’re dining out. Endless Shrimp is priced at $20, which is easily the best deal on Red Lobster’s menu. Take, for example, the two-entree combo platter, which comes with two sides.
Does Red Lobster have unlimited shrimp?
Red Lobster has — per a press release — officially brought unlimited shrimp to its permanent menu. Now, you can have a shrimp-eating competition any time of the year. Ultimate Endless Shrimp is a fan-fave promotion that Red Lobster has typically brought back, year after year, for a select period of time.
Is Red Lobster ® ultimate endless shrimp SM coming back?
ORLANDO, Fla., June 26, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Red Lobster ® is kicking off summer with an announcement that is sure to excite shrimp lovers everywhere – guest-favorite Ultimate Endless Shrimp℠ is here to stay! Gone are the days of anxiously awaiting the return of Ultimate Endless Shrimp℠.
Was Red Lobster’s ‘endless shrimp’ deal a good thing?
Red Lobster closing: fired employees have quite the tales about the “Endless Shrimp” debacle. The deal was bad for business. For the employees, it was something else entirely. Too much of a good thing. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images and Getty Images Plus.