The fishy death of Red Lobster • Hacker News Board

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#321

Post by Zenzero » Fri, May 03, 2024, 12:12 AM UTC

vundercind wrote: post #287

Zenzero wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bertolli?

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#322

Post by duped » Fri, May 03, 2024, 12:40 AM UTC

tonymet wrote: post #143

duped wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than half close within a year and it's closer to 80% after five years, but the ones that make it past that point are a lot more likely to thrive. Kinda like turtles going out to sea. > Tons of capital investment I mean it's not that much capital, compared to most businesses. You need way more money to start a software shop than a restaurant.

Well thankfully restaurant & AI startup aren't the only two industries worthy of investing in. Jokes aside, I get mom & pops. But I'm dubious on the "growth" chains like a Shake Shack or Chick Fil A. My current theory is that they are effectively MLMs with different structures: private equity MLM, owner-operator (franchisee) MLM. See Subway for the end result

"MLM" is a sanitized name for "Pyramid Scheme" where the only way for a member to make profit is to bring in new people who pay up into the organization. Franchises aren't pyramid schemes.

I don't know why you'd be skeptical, franchising has been very successful for the last century (McDonalds, 7-Eleven, Ace Hardware, etc) and gives steady returns to investors. And the reason why the food business always has opportunity is because people always need to eat, and are willing to spend disposable income on food. When consumer spending goes up so does the restaurant biz, and that's not going to change. And franchises are just one efficient way to create an international restaurant business. It was actually pretty surprising when Starbucks came along and didn't franchise.

But just because the model is efficient doesn't mean you can't screw it up, like Quiznos. That's just short term thinking run amok.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#323

Post by malshe » Fri, May 03, 2024, 12:42 AM UTC

technofiend wrote: post #71

gadders wrote: post #10

I need to resurrect my idea of a list of companies (especially ones that manufacture goods) that are owned by Private Equity so people can avoid them. In most cases, the brand name stays the same but the quality falls off a cliff.

When I jokingly talk about MBA Disease being the same as Dutch Elm Disease, this is what I mean: parasitic behavior that kills the host. On one side this is a study in destroying a chain restaurant, but what'll be taught in business school will be the other side: was this transaction profitable for one party and if so how do we repeat it? It won't be taught as a cautionary tale unless the hedge fund lost out.

Hedge Funds != Private Equity. They are two very different businesses. For starters, hedge funds don't run other companies.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#324

Post by wvenable » Fri, May 03, 2024, 12:58 AM UTC

graycat wrote: post #317

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…

You are in Denmark? WOW!! From here in the US, my impression of Denmark is a small country of really smart people with gorgeous women having really good lives!!! Your post questions that impression .... Here in the US, there are what seem to be related issues. Opinions about what is wrong and why differ. It can seem that we don't address the issues or what is wrong, for example, it can appear that the media believes…

I think the big successes that you describe are the exception rather than the rule. I think you'll find the majority of economic success comes from simple rent seeking -- whether literally as landlord, or as financial service, or otherwise being in middle.

With all the significant increases in economic productivity that has not benefited the average American. We can see historically that as productivity has increased, the wealth of individuals has decreased. We like to think of utopia where increased productivity means we would all get to work less and have more but that isn't how capitalism works. We have made everything significantly more efficient and continue to do so but who is benefiting? For most people things are getting worse because that is actually more efficient.

> leave individuals with a minimum of taxes and government power and let them try and take the risks.

Living in a country with a good social safety net is pretty helpful for risk taking. It's a lot easier to quit your job and start a business when you don't have to worry about losing health care and potentially dying or going bankrupt.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#325

Post by Stephen_0xFF » Fri, May 03, 2024, 1:14 AM UTC

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…

I stopped going after a waitress mentioned my mozzarella sticks were still in the microwave. As I sat there, thinking about the Sam’s Club cardboard box they might have come from, I realized that many restaurants probably do the same. However, I had hoped Red Lobster would at least use an oven.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#326

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 03, 2024, 1:27 AM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#327

Post by devilbunny » Fri, May 03, 2024, 1:38 AM UTC

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #300

outop wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The example of McDonald's acquiring value through real estate, funded by the business, is pretty poingnant, considering the PE firm here did the exact opposite: sold all the valuable real estate and rented it back from the buyer under crippling rent payments, funded by the business. Why did the PE firm do that when McDonald's didn't?

Because the PE firm had partners who bought the underlying real estate for themselves.

I'm sure that there are PE firms that really do try to make businesses successful and profitable, but the vast majority are in it to sell off anything of value and dump all the ensuing debt into a company that will shortly go bankrupt.

If you own a company, and a PE firm buys one of your clients, that should be a hint to require prepayment for everything they ask for after that. They will leave you holding the bag as a creditor.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#328

Post by asdfman123 » Fri, May 03, 2024, 1:45 AM UTC

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…

Thank you GodGPT

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#329

Post by graycat » Fri, May 03, 2024, 1:57 AM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #324

graycat wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are in Denmark? WOW!! From here in the US, my impression of Denmark is a small country of really smart people with gorgeous women having really good lives!!! Your post questions that impression .... Here in the US, there are what seem to be related issues. Opinions about what is wrong and why differ. It can seem that we don't address the issues or what is wrong, for example, it can appear that the media believes…

I think the big successes that you describe are the exception rather than the rule. I think you'll find the majority of economic success comes from simple rent seeking -- whether literally as landlord, or as financial service, or otherwise being in middle. With all the significant increases in economic productivity that has not benefited the average American. We can see historically that as productivity has increased…

> I think the big successes that you describe are the exception rather than the rule. I think you'll find the majority of economic success comes from simple rent seeking -- whether literally as landlord, or as financial service, or otherwise being in middle.

So, $1 trillion companies versus some guy with $400K a year from 15 well run convenience stores, .... We have a lot of both.

> With all the significant increases in economic productivity that has not benefited the average American.

Maybe not in comparative terms, i.e., maybe the distribution curve for wealth has not changed much.

But in absolute terms, some of what I listed are huge benefits for "the average American":

Nearly no one in the US would want a 1950 Ford, forced to use a typewriter instead of a word processor on a computer, news papers on paper instead of the Internet, no mobile phone or Zoom, 1950s health care, lath and plaster instead of drywall, oak flooring instead of vinyl (cheaper and more durable), microwave ovens, synthetic yarn in cloth and clothing, in general, as in the famous movie, no "plastics", railroads and busses instead of airplanes, no summer air conditioning, no gasoline powered lawn mowers, no calculator aps or pocket calculators instead of adding machines, no computers instead of punched cards, car tires that wear out in 20,000 miles instead of 100,000 miles, elevator operators instead of electrically controlled elevators, etc. ....

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#330

Post by beardicus » Fri, May 03, 2024, 2:12 AM UTC

nickpsecurity wrote: post #293

quantified wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don’t even really need it. You can go right to the roots. Let’s compare two sets of things on a basic level. 1. You know God will judge what good or evil you did at the end of your life. You factor that into your decisions. 2. You think we’re an accident, nothing matters, people are just over animals, actually just chemical reactions, universe itself disappears in enough time, nothing matters in the long term unl…

lol. congrats on working a sermon into a post about red lobster but... this is exceedingly poor argumentation if your goal is to actually convince anybody.

it's spot-on if you just want to feel good about yourself though. you start off with a whopper of a false dichotomy and strawman, and don't improve from there.