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The fishy death of Red Lobster

businessinsider.com

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Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#341

Post by Given_47 »

silverquiet wrote: post #310
nickpsecurity wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As an American Millennial, all my life I've seen Christians who talk about love and charity on Sunday, and then work the rest of the week to lower taxes on the rich, shame women, and get as many guns into as many American hands as possible. Ultimately, they found their political apotheosis in Donald Trump, who seems to be the physical manifestation of the deadly sins. If he was created in a lab by Atheists to prove t…

Somewhat ironical, but I'd be a bit more charitable and simply chalk that up to edge cases; additionally it's no different than typical ideological signaling. I find it less interesting to care about the extent people can bastardize a given idea, also because that's an entirely different, sociological issue.

Tho really any belief system that becomes so institutionalized will inevitably attract flies and become debased over time. However one could cheekily remark that by virtue of its message and who it spoke to, early Christianity was inherently debased, and certaintly ignoble.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#342

Post by pokerface_86 »

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…

what about all the other cute fun to play soulful games that DONT succeed?

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#343

Post by geodel »

FireBeyond wrote: post #202
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.

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.

So good old business of separating fools from their money.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#344

Post by NaOH »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #303
ghaff wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Sysco can provide a lot of different levels of food. Yes, they're most associated in the public eye with the microwaved and boiled examples. But they can also deliver many fresh ingredients or just staples like rice or flour.

What are Sysco alternatives for sourcing?

US Foods (already mentioned) and Shamrock are probably the two biggest alternatives to Sysco. Maybe Roma, too. And those specialty distributors that were mentioned, if I were to guess, probably take a nice double-digit percentage of purchases that restaurants make.

Less well known is what happens in much of the baking world: pre-made mixes. Most commonly, this means a 50-pound bag of all a product's dry ingredients and only wet ingredients are necessary. These products reduce labor, simplify employee training, are more consistent, and bigger buyers can get customization.

All big bakery retailers are using these: Panera, Whole Foods, Costco, HEB supermarkets, etc. Smaller establishments and franchises also. Less obvious uses are industries with constraints that benefit from what these products offer, cruise lines maybe being the best example. While this sounds like just more ultra-processed food, many of the products are legitimately good quality. Yes, a donut is a donut, but products like breads can be fantastic quality and respectably healthful.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#345

Post by graycat »

wvenable wrote: post #333
graycat wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If you gave Americans the option of those old things but also a single income could house, feed, a clothe a family of 5 I think it might be closer than you think. It's not fair to describe what we've gained without describing what we've lost. My parents owned different homes their entire lives. I make significantly more than they ever did and don't and could never afford my own childhood home. My children are even wo…

I agree on house prices.

Maybe some news source would publish a graph over time of the ratio of house prices to, say, prices of gasoline, ground beef, carrots, a wool blanket, a car, a refrigerator, etc.

We are very short on news that has credible information, gets to causes, presents like STEM field information, etc.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#346

Post by wvenable »

graycat wrote: post #345
wvenable wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you gave Americans the option of those old things but also a single income could house, feed, a clothe a family of 5 I think it might be closer than you think. It's not fair to describe what we've gained without describing what we've lost. My parents owned different homes their entire lives. I make significantly more than they ever did and don't and could never afford my own childhood home. My children are even wo…

I agree on house prices. Maybe some news source would publish a graph over time of the ratio of house prices to, say, prices of gasoline, ground beef, carrots, a wool blanket, a car, a refrigerator, etc. We are very short on news that has credible information, gets to causes, presents like STEM field information, etc.

Also the appliances in my childhood home weren't energy inefficient but they were solid. My current fridge is full of cheap (and broken) plastic. My new stove lasted just past a year before a part that cost 1/5 the price of the entire thing broke. You can get appliances with a touchscreen but you can't get one that will last 20 years anymore.

If it wasn't for government safety regulations that 1950's Ford might actually be safer than what would be produced now without them.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#347

Post by antifa »

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…

> Over the decades, people turned away from God and those values to chase new ones:

Most people leaving the church today do so because of how hateful and toxic the modern US church has become over the recent decades. If you don't like Christians leaving the church for Marxism, you shouldn't have let Marxism be the only ideology loving thy neighbors while the church was too busy chasing the delusions of white supremacy and Christian Nationalism.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#348

Post by [deleted] »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #335
CobaltFire wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of wars and genocides that have resulted from arguing over whose god is the right one dwarfs all other ills. Get that fixed and then maybe I’ll listen.

Someone added it up to find atheists and non-religious wars are the majority: https://web.archive.org/web/20201109005141/http://www.godand... In another article, America was rated as the most Christian with the most missionaries. Yet, it’s had hardly any wars motivated by religion. They’re usually about the selfish motivations of non-Christian worldviews. Whereas, Communists have killed tens of millions of people, cu…

[deleted]

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#349

Post by tqi »

aklemm wrote: post #173
tqi wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think "enshittification" means, exactly?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification In this context (the idea of making this unethical), a brand is built on investor money (not profits) and then later profits are achieved by cashing out the brand value. But I'm guessing you knew that and disagree. Care to be more forthright?

> brand is built on investor money (not profits) and then later profits are achieved by cashing out the brand value.

Well for one, every new business is initially built on investor money, not profits, and "cashing out" is in the eye of the beholder, so I'm not sure how you're going to get everyone to agree on where the line is.

Furthermore, I think cory (and many of the folks here who have fallen in love with the term) misunderstands why platforms decay. Facebook doesn't suck because it is trying to please business customers at the expense of its users. Facebook sucks because it is attempting to please 2B users all at once. Every new little feature or notification or ranking change is loved by millions of people and hated by millions more (and merely tolerated by the vast majority). If the former is greater than the latter, it gets shipped to production. Rinse and repeat for 10 years across a myriad of teams, and you get a muddled, confusing mess that has a wider audience but much worse experience for most. That is the root cause of the decay.

Re: The fishy death of Red Lobster

#350

Post by silisili »

SoftTalker wrote: post #116
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #111

Even without private equity's meddling, Red Lobster would have been in a rough spot. Family dining as a segment (lower end restaurants, but with table service) is being squeezed aggressively. Compared to Gen X and before, Millennials on average are valuing food quality over service experience, ballooning the fast casual (order at the counter, but nicer than fast food) segment. This is squeezing family dining from bel…

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.

The one thing Olive Garden has that Red Lobster lacks IMO is great service. Maybe I'm lucky, but I've never once had anything less than awesome service there. I don't go often, and yes it's not fine dining but it's a place to go to enjoy mediocre to good tasting food and be frustration free. I'll take that every single time over a place with better food but unreliable or frustrating service.

Red Lobster well... I've only been twice. Two different locations. The first time service was really, really slow. The second time it was non-existent. After about 15 mins of waiting, we grabbed another waitress who dismissively told us that our waitress just quit and hurried off like it was our problem to figure out. I don't remember the food at all, but even if it was stellar I'd not go back.

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