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The fishy death of Red Lobster

businessinsider.com

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Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#281

Post by mrWiz »

babypuncher wrote: post #210
SoftTalker wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And speaking of food quality, restaurants like Olive Garden and Red Lobster are just terrible. I'd rather get a fast-food fish sandwich, or fish and chips at the local brewpub, than eat anything at Red Lobster.

There's a local italian restaurant that I frequent which is 30% cheaper than Olive Garden and way, way tastier. There are dozens of other local restaurants that are also cheaper, and tastier, than Olive Garden. I don't understand why these huge restaurant companies have such a hard time with the "make good food" part of their business model. It clearly can't be that hard if so many small businesses are able to do do…

I imagine the logistics of sourcing enough ingredients to supply a nationwide chain are much more complicated than a single local establishment, which pushes the nationwide chains towards more-consistent but lower-quality solutions like just buying from Sysco.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#282

Post by jncfhnb »

yifanl wrote: post #256
tensor wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced that is actually true. Can you think of an example? A game that has near universally good reviews but is not successful?

Arguably the best game of 2023, Alan Wake 2: https://wccftech.com/alan-wake-ii-recoup-expenses-tencent

Hard to argue that game was not successful. It was merely expensive to produce.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#283

Post by quantified »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #278
wvenable wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We live in a time where almost everything is getting worse. Products are getting smaller, service is getting worse, businesses are closing, quality is going down. I don't think I've ever experienced such an obvious decline in commercial society in my entire life. Is it the financialization of everything? Is that we reached peak growth and profit increases are only possibly through extreme optimization? Is it financia…

Most people used to believe in Jesus Christ with values built on the Bible. That was true from lay people to Ivy League colleges to even folks in prison. His blessings with His accountability both made many good things happen and limited lots of damage we’d cause. America was prosperous as the Bible said it would be. Over the decades, people turned away from God and those values to chase new ones: money first, pleasu…

When and where did that really ever work? Evidence please. The bible says nothing about America. I assume that abolishing slavery was where we turned away from biblical principles.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#284

Post by weard_beard »

tensor wrote: post #177
jncfhnb wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a lot of games are cute and fun to play that do not succeed

I'm not convinced that is actually true. Can you think of an example? A game that has near universally good reviews but is not successful?

I don't think you're thinking of this in the right way. Crafting media and creative products of all kinds is like playing poker. You can go all in or you can make little bets where you think you can win.

You're making the assumption that the way to win is to GO ALL IN.

When in reality whether you're making AAA games or a small indie digital artist like Darius Kazemi... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw (Went to high school with him. Amazing guy. His senior project in the electronics lab was a teddy bear that could detect seizures.)

You are just buying lottery tickets.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#285

Post by yoyohello13 »

onemoresoop wrote: post #272
emptysongglass wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man I FEEL this deeply. I was just wondering if it's just me feeling like everything is on a highway to terrible. - Prices in my city, just this year, have felt like they've jumped 10 or 15 percent. - I've been working in tech for a decade now and for the first time a new company simply refused to negotiate salary. - I feel financially worse off than 5 years ago making a third of what I make now. - Housing prices…

>Can someone tell me everything is going to get better? Yes but only after it will get much worse.

Yeah, seems like we are just in the same cycle of boom/bust as every other human civilization in history.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#286

Post by selimthegrim »

prepend wrote: post #219
RunSet wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The founder of Costco told a CEO who wanted to raise the prices on Costco's hot dogs: "If you raise the effing hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out." https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/costco-founder-kill-hotdog...

I’m still waiting for a story 20 years from now when they finally raise the hotdog price and the old CEO is 90 and kills the CEO who raised the price. Or maybe it’s not the CEO he threatened, but a new one.

This sounds like a pitch for a Timecop sequel.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#287

Post by vundercind »

Zenzero wrote: post #237
FireBeyond wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's not a secret. Fettucine Alfredo? They open the plastic packet from Sysco, microwave for the appropriate amount of time, same with the sauce, put it on a plate... $18.

You're spot on. I haven't been to any sort of Red Lobster owned property in years. The last time I went to Olive garden it was completely transparent how the microwaved Sysco food is the norm now. I sat there thinking how AI could have just bought the same thing from the frozen aisle at half the price and not had to deal with sitting in a dirty Olive garden.

There are frozen bags of heat-in-a-pan Italian dishes in the grocery store that cost half what Olive Garden does (so, the slightly-fancy frozen meals—there are even cheaper ones) and also taste quite a bit better (though still not great).

They used to at least be better than high-side-of-mid-tier frozen grocery store meals. Not anymore. Their continued existence confuses me.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#288

Post by mattgreenrocks »

asdfman123 wrote: post #158
bachmeier wrote: post #127

To me this is not even slightly surprising. Red Lobster used to be at the top of our list of restaurants. Then in recent years the quality of both the food and service deteriorated. One visit the food was so bad I couldn't even eat it. That was compounded by not having a server to talk to. Took our order and never returned - even had someone else bring out the order. The thing about a restaurant is that you'll always…

Increasingly I think the financialization of everything makes us less capable of understanding the world. "Red Lobster failed because of X corporate restructuring," "Red Lobster succeeded due to Y ad campaign." People go to restaurants for reasons completely unrelated to things like that. Those things are important, but just constitute the small slice of reality that can easily be measured. I saw a Twitter thread arg…

> I saw a Twitter thread arguing how the video game Stardew Valley succeeded due to the way it was marketed. Marketing is important, but maybe the game succeeded because it was cute and had a soul and is fun to play. You can't measure that.

Thought leaders seem to know everything except when to keep their mouth shut for once. But I digress...

If firms are being punished for poor quality, then the system is working, even with enshittification becoming more commonplace. All of the Very Important Business People can sit around and scratch their heads about why the market seems to change on them when they screw up their offering, and they can consult overpriced business fortune tellers to reassure them that it was that pesky market's fault, but that doesn't change the outcome.

I'll miss Red Lobster's cheesy biscuits, but if they've dropped the ball on quality they had this coming to them.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#289

Post by [deleted] »

outop wrote: post #279
outop wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've just repeated and rephrased the claim that I challenged without providing any evidence or argument at all. Your actual answer to both questions is "because I believe this". Can you explain how the math works that PE owners make money from discouraging people from going to a restaurant, and other owners don't have the same incentives?

You've replied with the same trivial urban myths that are endlessly repeated about private equity. You've compared the incentives of private equity and a small business owner . Do you think that Red Lobster was previously a small business? Why can't you answer the question on the different incentives that apply to different owners of large businesses? If a private equity fund can make a profit by buying a successful…

[deleted]

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#290

Post by outop »

stainforth wrote: post #280
outop wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is naive. When (for example) a private equity fund buys a casual dining chain, they will go through how the business is run in painstaking detail and try to understand exactly what makes the experience 'work' and what changes are possible or advisable. If the olives in the salad don't taste as good or there are fewer breadsticks or the lighting makes it feel more relaxed or the greeters have more time or…

Do you think private equity funds could have other end goals when buying a company?

Other end goals than what?

Other end goals than making people happy by serving good quality shrimps for a reasonable price? Obviously they do.

Other end goals than making money? Of course they don't. But neither did Ray Kroc, who was extremely upfront about how McDonald's is a business whose strategy is to acquire real estate, funded by burger sales. Neither do the Waltons, who aggressively cut margins on all their products and compete to drive other retailers out of business. (Neither does General Mills, who used to own Red Lobster, nor Darden Restaurants, the public spin-off that owned Olive Garden and Red Lobster, nor Starboard Value, the activist investor that pushed for Red Lobster to be sold.) None of these companies exists because of a high-minded commitment to customer service, or fair play, or delicious food.

If turning a viable restaurant chain into a chain that no one wants to go to and then selling it is an attractive business proposition for private equity, than it should be for McDonald's and Walmart too. Unless you can point to some specific causal connection between the ownership structure and the decision about whether or not a restaurant should serve stuff that people actually want to eat?

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