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 the stuff of legends. The deal offers unlimited servings of breaded grilled, and scampi shrimp dishes for one fixed price. It’s a bountiful boon for shrimp lovers. But just how endless is this indulgent offer?
As one might expect, the fine print on “unlimited” deals like this isn’t actually infinite Red Lobster imposes some limitations to keep the promotion manageable However, many guests are still surprised just how long they can indulge in shrimp thanks to the incredible value. Let’s take a closer look at what to expect during a Red Lobster all-you-can-eat shrimp extravaganza.
The Origins of Endless Shrimp
Red Lobster first introduced its Endless Shrimp event as a seasonal promotion during the early 1990s. It quickly became popular as customers jumped at the chance to binge on shrimp without breaking the bank.
The event was so successful that Red Lobster eventually added it to the permanent menu in 1996. However, it’s now primarily available for limited-time runs during late summer and early fall when shrimp is in peak season.
Over the years, Red Lobster experimented with tweaking the promotion’s rules and pricing to maximize value for guests and profits. The current Endless Shrimp format has been in place since 2009, much to diners’ delight.
The Official Rules of Endless Shrimp
Here’s a look at the official rules and limitations imposed on the Endless Shrimp feast:
- Pricing – $15.99 during lunch, $21.99 during dinner
- Shrimp dishes offered – Diners can choose from 8 different shrimp preparations. Options include breaded, scampi, grilled, and shrimp tacos.
- Limits per serving – Guests can order up to 3 shrimp dishes per round.
- Serving pace – New servings arrive once all shrimp from the previous round have been finished. Servers allow adequate time between rounds.
- Dine-in only – Endless Shrimp is only available for dine-in customers, not takeout.
- Sharing limitations – No sharing between guests. Only diners who purchase Endless Shrimp can feast.
- Time limits – Servers can limit Endless Shrimp meals to 90 minutes during busy times.
As long as these guidelines are followed, diners are free to indulge to their heart’s content!
How Long Can You Really Feast?
So just how long can you realistically enjoy Endless Shrimp given the promotion’s structure? Experiences may vary based on your appetite and tastes. But most shrimp-loving guests can indulge for a remarkably long time within the 90-minute window.
The serving pace ensures you can steadily enjoy shrimp dish after dish without getting overwhelmed. Three shrimp plates per round spaced 15-20 minutes apart keeps the feast feeling endless. Bonus time is gained since new rounds only start once you finish the last tail.
Many Red Lobster guests report enjoying 7-8 full servings of shrimp through the course of a complete Endless Shrimp meal. At 3 shrimp dishes per round, that equals 21-24 total preparations consumed! And the chain’s restaurants have served some truly insatiable customers 10 rounds or more of Endless Shrimp in one sitting.
At that pace, taking full advantage of the promotion is a feat of strength that would make competitive eaters proud. But more reasonable shrimp lovers can easily get their fill of at least 4-5 rounds thanks to the flexible structure.
Tips for Making the Most of Endless Shrimp
To help make the most of your Endless Shrimp experience, keep these tips in mind:
- Visit during lunch or off-peak hours to avoid time limits.
- Come hungry! Don’t fill up too much on salads or bread.
- Pick lighter shrimp dishes (like grilled) earlier in the meal.
- Balance indulgence with breaks between rounds to pace yourself.
- Request extra lemons and cocktail sauce to keep flavors fresh.
- Split rounds with a partner if you need an extra shrimp boost.
- Savor every bite! Endless Shrimp is only here for a limited time.
Is Endless Shrimp Worth It?
At roughly $16-$22 per person, Endless Shrimp may seem too good to be true. But considering an entree of breaded shrimp alone can cost $15 or more, the value is difficult to beat. Factor in taxes and tips, and you’d easily spend $25 or more on a “normal” shrimp dinner at Red Lobster.
Being able to sample a wide variety of shrimp dishes and eat to your heart’s content for a similar price is an unbeatable deal for seafood enthusiasts. Just beware that all the extra eating can take a toll after round 5 or 6!
While not literally endless, Red Lobster designed the Endless Shrimp promotion to feel that way. Guests are encouraged to indulge to their wildest wishes within reasonable limits. So if you’re a shrimp lover, take advantage of this claw-some deal and see just how long you can make the feast last! Just be sure to bring your appetite.
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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
The Truth About Red Lobster’s Endless Shrimp
FAQ
Who owns Red Lobster in 2024?
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Company type
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Subsidiary
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Revenue
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US$2.6 billion (2018)
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Owner
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Golden Gate Capital (2014–2020)
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Number of employees
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55,000
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Parent
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Darden Restaurants (1995–2014) Thai Union Group (2020–2024)
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What is Red Lobster’s ultimate endless shrimp?
The conceit of Ultimate Endless Shrimp is fairly simple: For a flat fee of $25 per person — at the time of publication and up from its original price of $20 — you can eat as much shrimp as your crustacean-loving heart desires.
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.
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.
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℠.