Elites might laugh at Red Lobster closing, but middle America grew up on it

They said the shrimp were endless, until the shrimp ended them.

Last summer, Red Lobster, a pillar of American casual dining since 1968, offered Americans a delicious deal — $20 endless shrimp as a permanent menu item (rather than a limited-time special).

We tied on the bib and ate it up, costing the company $11 million and forcing it into Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week .

Red Lobster will initially shutter at least 48 of the 578 restaurants it operates in 44 states — with dozens more closures to come.

To coastal elites, who enjoy access to a true buffet of seafood restaurants, this crustacean cataclysm was one big joke.

“Red Lobster Waiter: Sir, are you done? You’ve had 561 scampi and 20lbs of popcorn shrimp.
Me: We’re done when I say we’re done, podcaster and writer Trung Phan memed on X with a still from “Breaking Bad” and the text, “Red Lobster’s bankruptcy explained.”

The riffs rolled in on Reddit , too, comparing Red Lobster customers to the “remorseless eating machine” Homer Simpson during his gluttonous visit to the Frying Dutchman’s all-you-can-eat seafood buffet .

That stinks, because for millions of landlocked Americans the death of Red Lobster threatens a vital culinary lifeline.

Former Red Lobster execs describe ‘miserable’ work environment, botched overhaul before bankruptcy filing: report

I grew up in Nashville, Tenn., before the foodie revolution, when fried river and lake fish were the sole “seafood” option on the menu.

My first memory of trying shellfish was at a special lunch I had with my late grandfather at a Red Lobster, where else?

As a boy, pulling pieces of lobster meat from the fire engine red shell of that alien sea creature, dipping each piece into melted butter, seemed beyond extravagant.

Today, dining at a Red Lobster forms one of my most vivid memories of my grandfather.

I’m sure that there were other restaurants boiling lobster, searing shrimp or chilling crab in Nashville in the mid 1990s.

I’m also sure that they cost far more than our family’s dinner budget at that time.

While the diversity of dining options from Nashville to De Moines has improved dramatically over the past two or three decades, affordability has only gotten worse.

In 2022, US consumers spent an average of 11.3% of their disposable personal income on food, both at home and at restaurants — the most since the 1980s — according to the most recent data from the USDA .

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The inflated price of food is just one knot within a tangled trawling line of cost of living pressures that Americans are facing.

No, wonder Red Lobster’s 64 million annual customers ate so many shrimp.

As more Red Lobsters close, the void will be most acutely felt by middle and working class African Americans, who have been particularly loyal to the restaurant group memorialized in the lyrics of Beyoncé’s “Formation.”

Red Lobster founder Bill Darden opened his first restaurants in the Jim Crow south of the 1930s and was known for defying local segregation laws to welcome everyone to the table.

That may have been more than half a century ago, but it’s a legacy not easily forgotten.

“Sure, we like fish and a good deal — Red Lobster represented something like the strip mall version of the beloved fish fry — but we like being treated equally even more,” wrote Robyn Autry, a sociology professor and director of the Center for the Study of Public Life at Wesleyan University, following the announcement of Red Lobster’s woes.

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Ultimately, if you’re looking for a bad guy to blame for the fall of the house of the Cheddar Bay Biscuit, forget middle America’s waistline.

The true culprit is a familiar figure, the grime reaper of many once-great, American-made businesses: rapacious private equity.

In 2014, Red Lobster founder Bill Darden sold the chain to Golden Gate Capital, a private equity firm, for $2.1 billion.

Today its largest shareholder is seafood distributor and Chicken of the Sea owner Thai Union Group.

Together, Golden Gate and Thai Union drove Red Lobster into the ground, strip mining the company until it was $1 billion in debt, according to its bankruptcy filing.

The restaurant chain has had five CEOs since 2021.

Fishier still: Thai Union used Red Lobster to unload its own shrimp supply .

Bilge-rat executives love to blame their customers when the claw starts to pinch, but they were right about one thing: It was gluttony, or rather greed, that bankrupted Red Lobster.

But the culprits were big business — not big eaters.

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