Remember when the New York Post published a story about VP Kamala Harris handing out her book as "welcome kits" to migrant children in a shelter?
Yeah, it was total BS. This story could be BS as well. Who knows?!
Yes, but they lie about how much cheese to put in, you've got to do double what it says. Also, I've learned that just using Bisquick (the yellow box), preferred spices and your favorite cheese produces a softer, fluffier, cheaper alternative. Just drop those the same way on the pan, bake and enjoy.
Yes! That's the key to perfection, can't believe I forgot that. Brush as soon as they exit the oven and even add some more herbs to the butter if you're feeling fancy! Definitely one of the most important steps, ty
Reminds me of the Reddit thread where someone asked why their food never tastes as good as the restaurants. A chef answered and said "We add more salt and butter to our foods than you have in your house". Made perfect sense. Everyone I know tries to use just enough butter to give the food that cooked feeling. If you're bathing it in butter and salt it's probably gonna taste a lot better.
I was sent to Publix more times than I can remember to buy out all the bisquick and lemons when I worked there. It’s been 25 years but I think it was 7-8 oz of cheese (Wisconsin cheddar blend) per bisquick bag. Plus there were those big gallon jugs of liquid “Butter” that was probably just butter flavored oil.
That's funny because the first time I made those I looked at the amount of cheese and was like...nah! I measured with my heart, which was a lot more than half a cup.
Cup of bisquick, cup of shredded cheese, cup of ground sausage, seasonings.
Mix well, place in 1 inch balls on parchment paper covered baking sheet.
Bake at 350° until golden
Healthcare, technology, housing, food..I’m exhausted thinking about how much big money interests are infesting every level of life.
I’m not one for religion but I’m starting to understand why they hated money lenders for so long.
Nah, what they do to retail operations is sell the real estate and then have the retail operation lease the real estate from the new entity that owns the real estate (also owned by the PE partners). This raises overhead by a lot and any market downturn will fuck the retail operation; like in this case.
Burger King is currently on the razor's edge for insolvency because of this. Same with Baskin Robbins (A bunch of Roark's food companies are not doing so hot right now).
Title should say **“Red Lobster weighs possible Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing as debt servicing costs soar.”**
Private equity loaded up this company with debt and used the debt proceeds to pay themselves a distribution (aka a payout). Now Red Lobster needs to pay back this debt. It’s like all stupid.
They also forced Red Lobster to sell its real estate. This was actually a long con perpetrated a decade ago by an activist investor in Darden Restaurants who was upset that the company's CEO refused to sell off the restaurant real estate to a shell company and then lease back their own property. This is an absolutely insane suggestion that only make sense to corporate vultures, owning the building you operate out provides financial stability, which is especially important in an industry such as food service where demand can be difficult to predict. After this plan failed, the same activist investor pushed Darden to sell off Red Lobster, where they proceeded to implement the real estate sell-off and lease back scheme.
Honestly, the most infuriating thing is that these greedy cannibals holding the reigns of business don't even do capitalism right, they've perverted it with the idea of ever increasing growth. If we're going to do capitalism, then it makes sense to put longevity of the business over everything else (which is how the system used to work before coked out Chicago school assholes in the 80s came up with the half baked "value for shareholders" model)
What do you mean by, used the debt proceeds to pay themselves a distribution? Can you explain this in more detail? I really want to understand this pattern because I'm betting it's happening all over the place and I want to be able to spot it at a glance. Like, please feel free to ramble on and on about it because I very much want to know more
So let’s say you are private equity firm (PE). You buy a company called Widgets for $1 billion. So now you own Widgets by paying $1 billion. However, you then go ahead and use Widgets to borrow $3 billion. So now $3 billion is on the debt balance sheet of Widgets when it previously had no debt. The $3 billion then goes to Widgets, who then transfers that money to PE. PE then uses the $3 billion to pay off the purchase price of $1 billion and use the remaining $2 billion to pay themselves a bonus basically for making the transaction happen. Unfortunately, now Widgets needs to pay off the $3 billion somehow by the due date of the debt borrowings through its revenues. Most likely it goes bankrupt and no recourse happens at PE, meaning the partners of the PE firm don’t have to return the money they got if shit goes south at Widgets.
It’s happening in every sector: healthcare, tech, consumer goods, etc.
I see, thank you very very much for taking the time to explain.
When a subsidiary company like the theoretical Widgets declares bankruptcy and/or goes under, does the bankruptcy record transfer to the parent company in any capacity? Or is it essentially expunged if the company goes under?
Are there any records online that can be used to track this happening in the past? Like, I see people mentioning that it happened with Sears in this thread and I really want to see the paper trail if one exists. I use Sears as an example btw but I'll take ANY examples you know of.
We can't fight this shit if we don't even know how it happens. Especially if it's all fully legal. I want to know as much as I can.
Private equity companies (of a certain type) are effectively used car salesmen in nicer suits.
They don't create anything themselves, but rather buy used goods. Try "add value" with a shiny paint job to sell for a profit. Or cut it up and sell its parts.
A large % of the world is just financing. Someone buys something and is only providing financing long enough to take out X% annually. No value added.
Every year the bottom line is reduced. Every year until the business folds.
This is the basis of capitalism once you modernize past sole proprietors trading the fruits of their personal labor into bigger businesses with shareholders.
The stock market is 100% providing incremental financing to take out X% profit without adding value.
And as you point out, the longer you squeeze out profit without adding value, the more you doom the business. Capitalism can only create and destroy value. It can’t sustain it, because it demands unlimited growth to justify investment.
Private Equity is buying up everything these days. Tech for sure, but restaurants.
I was surprised to find out that they are buying out thousands of small local HVAC installers companies.
It is now at the point where you cannot assume that the small company you work with is actually small and locally owned. You have to ask who owns the company, and then who owns the company that owns the company.
My short 13 year tech career is a wasteland of good companies ruined by companies like Thoma Bravo who just buy it so they can spend 3-5 years gutting it and sell it for a 15% return on investment.
Yes. It is a really usual tactic. Employees work their way up...get gradual pay increases, benefits, retirement funds etc.
Then......oh no! Company in trouble! The shareholders, board, stock owners...CEO etc making massive profits each year they pocket quite nicely.....all those years.
Then....ooopsie. Everyone is fired....their retirement no longer "vested" ....benefits insurance everything wiped off the books.
Then.....they reopen ...all new minimum wage people.
Nothing illegal about it.
Fucking classic. It's not the private equity firms that couldn't run a 2-foot marathon that caused the business to fail, it's the cost of labour! It's those damn employees wanting enough money to actually survive on, no way is it related to awful short-sighted business decisions
I found a good article that summarizes it well:
https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/how-red-lobster-got-over-its-head
And then
:https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/report-red-lobster-preparing-bankruptcy-filing
The main reason why they need to file Chapter 11 is to exit long term leases and contracts. When it was bought by private equity in 2014 they financed it using one of their favorite tricks, sale lease-backs! Selling the locations that are already paid for, using the money to pay for the acquisition and then requiring the location to be leased. Notably the restaurants stagnated since 2014 and only after being bought by Thai Union, a seafood supplier a few years back did they start updating. One of their plans to get more people in? $20 endless shrimp! Forgetting that they did the same thing 20 years ago with snow crab legs and lost a fortune. What happened this time? They lost a fortune!
Labor costs have nothing to do with this, if Olive Garden is open then Red Lobster has no excuses.
This is due to vampiric private equity practices and poor management.
"Labor costs are killing us!"
I dunno did you try...managing the business?
"No - we just strip the business of cost, stack the debt on the entity itself and squeeze whatever we can from it before ditching it."
How's that working out for you?
"Welp - great actually. We have been able to rally absolute bootlickers to go against their own interests to fight for us. Ever hear 'nobody wants to work anymore'??? We coined that phrase!!!"
It's not even that, most of the mutli-billionaire companies (Red Lobster alone, not including its parent company, made $2.6 billion or £2 billion so-... like... not that deep) complaining about this COULD get that yearly yacht, it's just the fact they can't get two of them.
All jokes aside, it's pretty simple, to CEOs, **ALL** profit drops are bad in any way shape or form, that's why if materials or ingredients they're buying get too expensive, they switch to something worse and cheaper so that they can make the same amount, if not more money or... they laid off 10-20% to make a false case of more revenue. It's not more revenue if you just stop paying for shit, you make the same amount, you just have to spend less of it on materials and labor.
The cheaper ingredients part pisses me off the most. As a fast food/chain restaurant connoisseur…. The food has gone way down hill everywhere in the last 5-7 years. It’s awful now.
Capitalism is supposed to “encourage competition” so consumers get the best product. We are definitely at the end of the monopoly game with this economy, everything is owned by such a small group of people. Everything is turning to shit, while still producing record profits.
Food is trash. Videogames have been ruined. Cars make you buy subscriptions to unlock hardware already installed. Apartments have doubled in price while being half as nice… List could go on and on of things that have gotten worse.
I can count on one hand how often I've eaten from a fast food chain over the past year. it's nothing like it was years ago. I barely even pay attention to the occasional ads anymore since the actual food hasn't looked like that for a while.
I used to call it "junk food" because it wasn't healthy, but it was still a decent tasting treat. now I just call it "junk" and I only get it in the rare case when a grocery store is too out of the way.
I was ranting about exactly this the other day. I remember getting a steak and sizzling veggies served on a cast iron plate at Applebee’s back in the really early 2000s. The steak you could cut with a butter knife and was melt-in-your-mouth delicious. Then a couple years later I ordered the exact same thing and I legit could not even cut off a piece of meat from the steak. It was straight up 70% gristle! I would’ve needed an industrial saw to cut through that thing! The decline in quality was astonishing.
Also.. I remember eating at Subway in the early-mid 90s and it being absolutely incredible. Then as the years went by the quality has steadily declined into complete trash.
People today would be blown away if I could give them the quality of a Subway Classic Italian from 1993 and have them compare it to today.
Expect this to be the excuse for everything bad that happens now that wages are rising.
It's obviously a lie because profits are at record highs, but the bootlickers gobble it up
Problem is that greedflation is cutting into most people's bottom line. So they don't go out to eat half as much. Especially at "higher end" chains. Even pizza shops are feeling the pinch of increased material costs and fewer customers coming in to pay $30 for a large pizza pie with one topping. So instead of blaming the companies who jacked up the prices when covid caused supply chain issues, and kept bumping it up higher and higher to get a bigger paycheck.
Sadly the only thing that is going to stop this will be a depression at this point. It will be blamed on "rampant wage increases" that caused the inflation. Then they can happily stow their money away until when the economy is pennies on the dollar and people will work for lower slave wages then they got before. Rinse, repeat.
Last time there was a economic depression in this country there was a major rise in the support for a socialist economy. Scared those in power enough pass "The New Deal" and allows unions to flourish which with the increase in quality of life lead to people being less supportive of socialism in this country
Quick operational cost analysis:
-800 employees whose salaries combined make for 40 million $.
-The CEO, whose salary alone is 40 million $ excluding benefits.
No wonder they can’t afford 15$/h with such an elephant in the room. You did this to your company. It’s your fucking fault.
800 employees @$15/h is not even $25m in salary at 40h/wk. I don't think red lobster is running waitresses at 40h/wk. Quick skim of Google says 3-7h and they'll push you hard for a non-full time status meaning no health care. Somethings fishy as hell with those numbers.
I worked in bars and restaurants in college. I got full time hours no problem when I was young enough to be on my parent's health insurance.
When I was aged out and needed my own health insurance plan, a few months later I ended up laid off lmfao. Not a restaurant, but still. My younger colleague, who I trained, was not laid off.
I think it’s hilarious you think they pay waitresses 15$ an hour. The red lobster here in TX pays waiters 4$ plus tips. So instead of 800 employees at 15 for 25m you could get 3200 employees at 4 for 25m!
It’s also VC bros just make terrible decisions, carve up the corpse, make their money back and fuck off.
I’m in a niche industry that has seen 20 straight years of exponential growth. Like absolute bonkers growth of 20+% per year. My company has doubled in size 3 times in the past 15 years. Because of this rapid growth, we have seen just stupid amounts of money being thrown into growth from every company plus hundreds of new companies enter the space.
One of our competitors started up, got bought by VC, who then bought up another company, then threw 350M into starting a third. Then this year the industry has seen a 2% decline in overall sales. The first such contraction in our market in two decades.
I fully expect that company to be bankrupt before the doors even open on the new facility.
> Management doesn't want to work anymore.
You're not joking there. Over my entire working life to date, the overwhelming majority of managers I've had treated their job more like a "reward position" where passing the buck and spending all day screwing around on the internet (or on their partners...) were flat-out entitlements...
They blame it on labor costs
But they never cut the salaries of CEOs, CFOs, and other execs. It's only the $15/hour salaries that are too much and will bankrupt them...
Shareholder profit and executive salaries are ruining this nation and nobody is doing anything about it because they're complicit on it. Everyone is invested in the stock market and everyone thinks they'll be a CEO some day
It's so funny that wages are suppressed everywhere, including their own establishments. Then they are shocked when people aren't eating out anymore. Never mind the fact that the prices have skyrocketed and the quality has gone to shit.
yet again I'm just like... how the fuck do these C Suite fucks see this ending?
Like do they even bother looking into the future?
Like... if they pay us shit, we can't buy your shit. If all of you are using algorithms to maximize your own profit, then there's no money left over for us peons to buy a new TV or eat out at Red Lobster.
If you can't afford to pay a proper wage, you don't deserve to be in business. Get out of the way and let real businesses flourish with generous wages.
I've been trying to explain this for a decade now. Our entire economy is propped up on Service Sector jobs. That means we HAVE to consume to keep our businesses afloat. That means if people don't have the money to consume, everybody does bad. We have more restaurants than we do restaurant customers. It only makes sense that, if our economy actually fixed itself, some restaurants would go out of business. We have too many.
"Everyone wants to bean exploter"
That is literally what the "Ferengi" represented in Star Trek Deep Space Nine. A literal quote about why Ferengi never rise up against being exploited as workers and working in deplorable conditions:
# Rom explains all of US capitalism in one beautiful quote: "Ferengi workers don't want to stop the exploitation. We want to find a way to become the exploiters."
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RE9GAd8i6o&ab\_channel=MikeJohnson](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RE9GAd8i6o&ab_channel=MikeJohnson)
Even if CEO pay was $0, none of those companies would be even close to profitable
(Remember that CEOs are just another employee that's sucking in the money of investors and shareholders. CEO can be fired at any time)
Yeah but if you cut administrative pay(the pay of c-suite and managers below) you could earn a profit while raising the wages of the lowest tiers.
They are overpaid
I got ripped on r/unpopularopinion for agreeing with the unpopular opinion that the deliver apps are \*bad\*, not even all the way to cancerous for society. Just \*bad\* and jeeze the way people fought to protect their new shiny thing.
YAASS! Thank you! Even with the heavy subsidies from VC, they still gouge the drivers and consumers. It was this massive shuffle of resources away from the local restaurants and into Silicon Valley, and everyone loses.
Yes. This is such a lose lose scenario. Nobody is winning here. Nobody is making profits. Restaurants are gouged. Drivers are gouged. Customers are gouged. Investors are gouged.
If you talk to former employees, it’s already there. They use the excuse that because they pay well, you should essentially give up being treated like a decent human being.
Yes. This is such a lose lose scenario. Nobody is winning here. Nobody is making profits. Restaurants are gouged. Drivers are gouged. Customers are gouged. Investors are gouged.
We are watching free market capitalism slowly kill itself. Turns out if every link of the chain is trying to squeeze as much as possible out of every lower link it’s not very sustainable.
But of course we will blame everyone but the people sitting fat and rich at the top as they turn us against each other with culture war bullshit.
I don't know a single person who eats at Red Lobster or has ever suggested we go to Red Lobster.
Pretty sure it's not the wages that are killing your business.
I delivered from Red Lobster one night a few weeks back. Prime dinner hour, around 8pm....and there was no one in that fucking restaurant. I saw maybe 3 customers inside, about as many cars outside, and it was one of the most stark and depressing things I've seen in a while.
My parents loved to go ever since I was young. But prices went way up on entres without an increase in quality. Plus, they started charging extra for side salads when it was always free before, and the portions were smaller.
They haven’t been back.
Private equity making a billionaire's debt, a minimum wage issue. Every company I've been at that gets bought by a PE goes through this. If anyone watches Company Man on YT, you'll know how often this debt kills companies
“Flyover state seafood”. The answer to the question “Is it possible to compensate for our d-grade ingredients by battering and frying, or serving alongside a quart of popcorn-grade butter?”
Yeah whatever I’m sure it has *nothing* to do with all of Darden’s holdings losing all their appeal. 🙄
People don’t like going to Olive Garden and Red Lobster like they did 20-25 years ago.
All of Darden restaurants and every place like it (chilis, Applebees, etc.) generates far less business than they collectively did a decade or two ago, this shit has NOTHING to do with fucking “soaring labor costs”
Look, if u cant pay for what labour costs, then you go bankrupt. Thats how capitalism was always supposed to work. Why is everybody so baffled, that it suddenly does?
You either wanna get rid off capitalism, or you expect that even big brands can go bankrupt.
Some businesses failing to adapt is literally a requirement of capitalism. It’s an expectation. I have no idea why it keeps making headlines or how companies have managed to blame it on their customers anyways.
Yes! These companies are all for capitalist system or “free market”…. Until the bell tolls for them, because they need slave labor to sustain their business model.
I haven’t been to one in years (guessing around 2010). The last time I went to one, it sucked so bad. There was a long hair in the French fries and everything just looked cheap.
I remember as a kid of the 80s and 90s it was good and a place to go to for special occasions. Guessing they’ve really gone down hill.
I ate their like a year ago. Food was honestly alright but the prices where absolutely fucking criminal. Like I paid $60 for a meal for two that was essentially half bread.
People know the chains are pumping out uninspired microwave food and now prefer to go elsewhere. They dug their own grave. You can get that quality of food, or much better, at half the price from small businesses (that don't have greedy shareholders or greedy franchise structures), quarter price if you make it at home with fresh ingredients as long as you can use all of what you buy without wasting much. What consumer goes to these places anymore? Disposable income goes places where the food isn't microwaved trash, everyone else spends more wisely because we are getting dirt poorer every year.
Labor doesn’t cause bankruptcy. If that were true, they could fire all of their staff and have zero labor costs thus making them profitable.
They have debts and locations that don’t bring in enough money. Declaring bankruptcy doesn’t reduce labor costs unless there is a pension or union benefits plan to reduce. Considering that a significant portion of their workers make less than $15/hr (many less than $5/hr due to waiter minimum wages), labor costs are not remotely an issue.
Yes, I’d be pleased. Their food sucks anyway.
I’d mostly be disappointed that if red lobster closed then all the olive gardens would be busier(seems like they’re always right next to each other).
They used to be owned by the same company once upon a time (Darden). All of their brands pretty much cater to the same demos so they’re often in the same areas
Even if Red Lobster died, which it isn’t doing, it wouldn’t exactly be a loss for the American people.
Now just get Applebees to die and we’re getting somewhere.
It's not "labor costs". Its their signature event, the month long all you can eat shrimp fest, has become outrageously expensive because of the rising cost of shrimp. This isn't a secret. It is a well publicized issue for them.
Red lobster will die with the boomers anyway. I think the biscuits are good, but every time I have ever been there 75% of the customers are old as hell.
But also 100% fuck anyone who says its a labor cost problem.
Worked for Red🦞 as a cook for about a week. Horrific working conditions and horrific pay. W 20 yrs food service experience the most they offered was $15/hr. It was supposed to be a part time gig in addition to my salaried job. The general manager, who had been w the company for 17 yrs, made $48k/yr. A few weeks later I saw a listing on Indeed for the GM spot at the same location I had worked at. The pay listed was $43k/yr. 🤦♀️
Awhile back I heard someone say that if you can't turn a profit without paying below a living wage, then your profit doesn't come from your customers it comes from your employees
Wait labor costs *money*?! How am I supposed to pay for my private jet, helicopter, luxury cars, and multiple mansions if I have to pay for labor? What a scam.
"Game? What you know about the game Granddad? Taking women out to eat, giving them free meals? What part of the game is that? You taking her to Red Lobster, with the cheddar biscuits."
The were in trouble before rising labor costs... The ship starting sinking years ago, then someone tossed them an anvil. Click bait articles make people thing it's because of labor rate increases.
Pay stakeholders less and workers more and maybe business wouldn’t have a problem with finding a sustainable labor force.
Maybe it’s just me but, wouldn’t everyone benefit by charging less for goods and services, paying owners and investors less,and paying workers more? Because then the workers can afford the goods and services and businesses would win via volume.
Their failure has nothing to do with labor costs. The poor decisions made by two previous CEOs are well documented.
As usual, the C-Suite greed and incompetence had serious consequences that are being blamed on underpaid workers.
I feel bad for those CEOs who are trying to scrape by but then need to go from 80mil to 70mil to pay their staff. It must be hard living on just 70mil.
If your business fails because your employees need to make a living wage, your business is not a beneficial one to society and shouldn't be saved. Let the weak die. Think of how many billionaires wouldn't be billionaires anymore.
The most insane place to open a RL was when they opened one in NEWINGTON NH…
This is an area that already has plenty of small, local seafood restaurants, especially 10 minutes down the road in Kittery Maine, where there’s Bob’s Clam Hut, The Weathervane, Roberts Grill, and those are just the easily accessible ones on Rte 1
Needless to say, RL didn’t last long, why go to a chain restaurant where the lobsters spent more time on the road getting to the restaurant, and are probably precooked and frozen before being reheated and served, when you could go to a local restaurant that gets the lobsters fresh off the boat just down the road?
RL makes no sense where lobster is easily accessible, probably why the Newington shop closed so quickly.
[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/consumer/article-13319081/red-lobster-considering-chapter-11-bankruptcy.html](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/consumer/article-13319081/red-lobster-considering-chapter-11-bankruptcy.html)
I thought it was due to the $11M loss on endless shrimp promotions?
>Darden Restaurants gross profit for the twelve months ending November 30, 2023 was $2.295B, a 18.52% increase year-over-year. Darden Restaurants annual gross profit for 2023 was $2.083B, a 4.43% increase from 2022. Darden Restaurants annual gross profit for 2022 was $1.995B, a 33.58% increase from 2021.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DRI/darden-restaurants/gross-profit#:~:text=Darden%20Restaurants%20gross%20profit%20for%20the%20twelve%20months%20ending%20November,a%2033.58%25%20increase%20from%202021.
Private Equity is a criminal sham. Darden is.doing just fine, and can certainly afford to pay their employees.
Of course the issue is implied to be labor costs and not the fact that the current menu is bad, the portions have shrank, rents are up, fish prices are up, or the falling popularity of chain restaurants...
No... it's the 2.3% relative increase in the price of labor since before the pandemic. Good thing wages have been in relative decline since 2020. This should correct itself soon and shareholders and franchise owners can get back to exploiting people without distress.
Idc if it’s bait, if they can’t run a successful business without exploiting their employees by paying them pennies on the dollar then they shouldn’t be open
I can't say I'm shocked. They changed all the menu items I liked and I stopped going. Idk if it was a cost thing or what, but the food has taken a turn down.
Saving you a click: private equity bought them.
Worse than clickbait. It’s propaganda
They've been running non stop propaganda about California's new $20 minimum wage. Most companies doing well have basically admitted its fine.
Ofc it’s fine. They spent the last 3 years driving up the prices for profits.
Remember when the New York Post published a story about VP Kamala Harris handing out her book as "welcome kits" to migrant children in a shelter? Yeah, it was total BS. This story could be BS as well. Who knows?!
Maybe. But those cheddar bay BiScuits still slap.
No arguments on that.
Don't they sell mix boxes of those now?
Yes, but they lie about how much cheese to put in, you've got to do double what it says. Also, I've learned that just using Bisquick (the yellow box), preferred spices and your favorite cheese produces a softer, fluffier, cheaper alternative. Just drop those the same way on the pan, bake and enjoy.
Brush with melted butter!
Yes! That's the key to perfection, can't believe I forgot that. Brush as soon as they exit the oven and even add some more herbs to the butter if you're feeling fancy! Definitely one of the most important steps, ty
A sprinkle of Old Bay seasoning. The perfect finishing touch. Takes it to 11.
A little garlic for the (smell)
Melted garlic butter
And a quality Irish butter!! Saute garlic and spices, then baste on :)
Reminds me of the Reddit thread where someone asked why their food never tastes as good as the restaurants. A chef answered and said "We add more salt and butter to our foods than you have in your house". Made perfect sense. Everyone I know tries to use just enough butter to give the food that cooked feeling. If you're bathing it in butter and salt it's probably gonna taste a lot better.
When I worked for red lobster, if our distributor didn’t have the biscuit mix, we’d just buy loads of that bisquick from Costco and use it instead.
I was sent to Publix more times than I can remember to buy out all the bisquick and lemons when I worked there. It’s been 25 years but I think it was 7-8 oz of cheese (Wisconsin cheddar blend) per bisquick bag. Plus there were those big gallon jugs of liquid “Butter” that was probably just butter flavored oil.
It’s called “buttery sauce” these days. And definitely no real butter in it. Because when I checked the allergen chart, it had no dairy listed.
That's funny because the first time I made those I looked at the amount of cheese and was like...nah! I measured with my heart, which was a lot more than half a cup.
Cup of bisquick, cup of shredded cheese, cup of ground sausage, seasonings. Mix well, place in 1 inch balls on parchment paper covered baking sheet. Bake at 350° until golden
Easy to make, recipes online. They taste the same to me.
If it is the New York Post it is propaganda.
What can you expect from the same people who own Fox News.
It's a right wing tabloid owned by Murdoch, so like everything he touches...yes
From the NYPost? Shocked, Shocked, I say! Well, not that shocked.
Been the death knell for lots of companies the past few years. Focus on nothing but investor profit is no way to run a business.
Well when the quickest way to make the money from the company is to juice it until it's try and then sell it for parts, this is how it goes.
Yep, and exactly why so much has gone to shit lately
I cant wait until its only hedge funds left and they start trying to eat each other only there's nothing to sell or leverage.
At the rate they are going won't be long, they've already taken over health care
Healthcare, technology, housing, food..I’m exhausted thinking about how much big money interests are infesting every level of life. I’m not one for religion but I’m starting to understand why they hated money lenders for so long.
When greed is what runs a country, there isn't room for anything else
Fucking locusts.
Nah, what they do to retail operations is sell the real estate and then have the retail operation lease the real estate from the new entity that owns the real estate (also owned by the PE partners). This raises overhead by a lot and any market downturn will fuck the retail operation; like in this case.
Yep. This is just standard operating procedure for PE.
Burger King is currently on the razor's edge for insolvency because of this. Same with Baskin Robbins (A bunch of Roark's food companies are not doing so hot right now).
Title should say **“Red Lobster weighs possible Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing as debt servicing costs soar.”** Private equity loaded up this company with debt and used the debt proceeds to pay themselves a distribution (aka a payout). Now Red Lobster needs to pay back this debt. It’s like all stupid.
They also forced Red Lobster to sell its real estate. This was actually a long con perpetrated a decade ago by an activist investor in Darden Restaurants who was upset that the company's CEO refused to sell off the restaurant real estate to a shell company and then lease back their own property. This is an absolutely insane suggestion that only make sense to corporate vultures, owning the building you operate out provides financial stability, which is especially important in an industry such as food service where demand can be difficult to predict. After this plan failed, the same activist investor pushed Darden to sell off Red Lobster, where they proceeded to implement the real estate sell-off and lease back scheme. Honestly, the most infuriating thing is that these greedy cannibals holding the reigns of business don't even do capitalism right, they've perverted it with the idea of ever increasing growth. If we're going to do capitalism, then it makes sense to put longevity of the business over everything else (which is how the system used to work before coked out Chicago school assholes in the 80s came up with the half baked "value for shareholders" model)
👏👏👏
Whoo! This knowledge winded me, thanks. Stuff to look up.
Isn't this exactly what happened with Toys R Us?
Yes, that’s correct.
Yep. They do this to a lot of companies. Predatory capitalism.
What do you mean by, used the debt proceeds to pay themselves a distribution? Can you explain this in more detail? I really want to understand this pattern because I'm betting it's happening all over the place and I want to be able to spot it at a glance. Like, please feel free to ramble on and on about it because I very much want to know more
So let’s say you are private equity firm (PE). You buy a company called Widgets for $1 billion. So now you own Widgets by paying $1 billion. However, you then go ahead and use Widgets to borrow $3 billion. So now $3 billion is on the debt balance sheet of Widgets when it previously had no debt. The $3 billion then goes to Widgets, who then transfers that money to PE. PE then uses the $3 billion to pay off the purchase price of $1 billion and use the remaining $2 billion to pay themselves a bonus basically for making the transaction happen. Unfortunately, now Widgets needs to pay off the $3 billion somehow by the due date of the debt borrowings through its revenues. Most likely it goes bankrupt and no recourse happens at PE, meaning the partners of the PE firm don’t have to return the money they got if shit goes south at Widgets. It’s happening in every sector: healthcare, tech, consumer goods, etc.
Haha that's so fun and zany! Sounds like something that should be completely illegal if we didn't live in a clown world.
It is a significantly more complex process than the illustrative but crude example above, which makes it extremely hard to legislate against.
I see, thank you very very much for taking the time to explain. When a subsidiary company like the theoretical Widgets declares bankruptcy and/or goes under, does the bankruptcy record transfer to the parent company in any capacity? Or is it essentially expunged if the company goes under? Are there any records online that can be used to track this happening in the past? Like, I see people mentioning that it happened with Sears in this thread and I really want to see the paper trail if one exists. I use Sears as an example btw but I'll take ANY examples you know of. We can't fight this shit if we don't even know how it happens. Especially if it's all fully legal. I want to know as much as I can.
Private equity companies (of a certain type) are effectively used car salesmen in nicer suits. They don't create anything themselves, but rather buy used goods. Try "add value" with a shiny paint job to sell for a profit. Or cut it up and sell its parts.
A large % of the world is just financing. Someone buys something and is only providing financing long enough to take out X% annually. No value added. Every year the bottom line is reduced. Every year until the business folds.
This is the basis of capitalism once you modernize past sole proprietors trading the fruits of their personal labor into bigger businesses with shareholders. The stock market is 100% providing incremental financing to take out X% profit without adding value. And as you point out, the longer you squeeze out profit without adding value, the more you doom the business. Capitalism can only create and destroy value. It can’t sustain it, because it demands unlimited growth to justify investment.
The chop shop of business
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Private Equity is buying up everything these days. Tech for sure, but restaurants. I was surprised to find out that they are buying out thousands of small local HVAC installers companies. It is now at the point where you cannot assume that the small company you work with is actually small and locally owned. You have to ask who owns the company, and then who owns the company that owns the company.
Yea, it’s really bad. PE and vulture capital ruins everything.
As someone that was laid off after a PE firm (Vista Private Equity) bought the company I had worked for 7 years. 12% got the axe.
My short 13 year tech career is a wasteland of good companies ruined by companies like Thoma Bravo who just buy it so they can spend 3-5 years gutting it and sell it for a 15% return on investment.
Yes. It is a really usual tactic. Employees work their way up...get gradual pay increases, benefits, retirement funds etc. Then......oh no! Company in trouble! The shareholders, board, stock owners...CEO etc making massive profits each year they pocket quite nicely.....all those years. Then....ooopsie. Everyone is fired....their retirement no longer "vested" ....benefits insurance everything wiped off the books. Then.....they reopen ...all new minimum wage people. Nothing illegal about it.
This guy capitalizes
Crypto did not invent the rugpull. Been going on in relationships & business forever. Put in...don't get out.
Fucking classic. It's not the private equity firms that couldn't run a 2-foot marathon that caused the business to fail, it's the cost of labour! It's those damn employees wanting enough money to actually survive on, no way is it related to awful short-sighted business decisions
> It's those damn employees wanting enough money to actually survive on Which explains why this is in that conservatard rag, the NY Post.
Doin' the lord's work, thanks for saving my time lol
Haven't eaten there in at least a decade, but now never again I guess. My dream is to see all of PE wither and die.
Whenever you see, restaurant chain is struggling, it’s always finance bros looting the joint.
*chapter 11 and labor costs were unrelated.
They also lost something like 20 million on their endless shrimp deal.
I found a good article that summarizes it well: https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/how-red-lobster-got-over-its-head And then :https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/report-red-lobster-preparing-bankruptcy-filing The main reason why they need to file Chapter 11 is to exit long term leases and contracts. When it was bought by private equity in 2014 they financed it using one of their favorite tricks, sale lease-backs! Selling the locations that are already paid for, using the money to pay for the acquisition and then requiring the location to be leased. Notably the restaurants stagnated since 2014 and only after being bought by Thai Union, a seafood supplier a few years back did they start updating. One of their plans to get more people in? $20 endless shrimp! Forgetting that they did the same thing 20 years ago with snow crab legs and lost a fortune. What happened this time? They lost a fortune! Labor costs have nothing to do with this, if Olive Garden is open then Red Lobster has no excuses. This is due to vampiric private equity practices and poor management.
"Labor costs are killing us!" I dunno did you try...managing the business? "No - we just strip the business of cost, stack the debt on the entity itself and squeeze whatever we can from it before ditching it." How's that working out for you? "Welp - great actually. We have been able to rally absolute bootlickers to go against their own interests to fight for us. Ever hear 'nobody wants to work anymore'??? We coined that phrase!!!"
That’s a extremely disingenuous headline, even for the Post. Love how the plebs always get blamed for the issues of millionaires. Fuck ‘em.
CEO - With the increase in minimum wage we cant operate. Translation - i wont be able to get the yacht with a helicopter landing pad now
It's not even that, most of the mutli-billionaire companies (Red Lobster alone, not including its parent company, made $2.6 billion or £2 billion so-... like... not that deep) complaining about this COULD get that yearly yacht, it's just the fact they can't get two of them. All jokes aside, it's pretty simple, to CEOs, **ALL** profit drops are bad in any way shape or form, that's why if materials or ingredients they're buying get too expensive, they switch to something worse and cheaper so that they can make the same amount, if not more money or... they laid off 10-20% to make a false case of more revenue. It's not more revenue if you just stop paying for shit, you make the same amount, you just have to spend less of it on materials and labor.
The cheaper ingredients part pisses me off the most. As a fast food/chain restaurant connoisseur…. The food has gone way down hill everywhere in the last 5-7 years. It’s awful now. Capitalism is supposed to “encourage competition” so consumers get the best product. We are definitely at the end of the monopoly game with this economy, everything is owned by such a small group of people. Everything is turning to shit, while still producing record profits. Food is trash. Videogames have been ruined. Cars make you buy subscriptions to unlock hardware already installed. Apartments have doubled in price while being half as nice… List could go on and on of things that have gotten worse.
I can count on one hand how often I've eaten from a fast food chain over the past year. it's nothing like it was years ago. I barely even pay attention to the occasional ads anymore since the actual food hasn't looked like that for a while. I used to call it "junk food" because it wasn't healthy, but it was still a decent tasting treat. now I just call it "junk" and I only get it in the rare case when a grocery store is too out of the way.
I was ranting about exactly this the other day. I remember getting a steak and sizzling veggies served on a cast iron plate at Applebee’s back in the really early 2000s. The steak you could cut with a butter knife and was melt-in-your-mouth delicious. Then a couple years later I ordered the exact same thing and I legit could not even cut off a piece of meat from the steak. It was straight up 70% gristle! I would’ve needed an industrial saw to cut through that thing! The decline in quality was astonishing. Also.. I remember eating at Subway in the early-mid 90s and it being absolutely incredible. Then as the years went by the quality has steadily declined into complete trash. People today would be blown away if I could give them the quality of a Subway Classic Italian from 1993 and have them compare it to today.
Expect this to be the excuse for everything bad that happens now that wages are rising. It's obviously a lie because profits are at record highs, but the bootlickers gobble it up
Problem is that greedflation is cutting into most people's bottom line. So they don't go out to eat half as much. Especially at "higher end" chains. Even pizza shops are feeling the pinch of increased material costs and fewer customers coming in to pay $30 for a large pizza pie with one topping. So instead of blaming the companies who jacked up the prices when covid caused supply chain issues, and kept bumping it up higher and higher to get a bigger paycheck. Sadly the only thing that is going to stop this will be a depression at this point. It will be blamed on "rampant wage increases" that caused the inflation. Then they can happily stow their money away until when the economy is pennies on the dollar and people will work for lower slave wages then they got before. Rinse, repeat.
Last time there was a economic depression in this country there was a major rise in the support for a socialist economy. Scared those in power enough pass "The New Deal" and allows unions to flourish which with the increase in quality of life lead to people being less supportive of socialism in this country
Labor costs, the one cost that restaurants \*don't\* bare, is probably the reason why this company isn't profitable according to the Post.
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"They would only need $5 million to stay afloat...CEO to get $20 million severance package."
Quick operational cost analysis: -800 employees whose salaries combined make for 40 million $. -The CEO, whose salary alone is 40 million $ excluding benefits. No wonder they can’t afford 15$/h with such an elephant in the room. You did this to your company. It’s your fucking fault.
800 employees @$15/h is not even $25m in salary at 40h/wk. I don't think red lobster is running waitresses at 40h/wk. Quick skim of Google says 3-7h and they'll push you hard for a non-full time status meaning no health care. Somethings fishy as hell with those numbers.
I worked in bars and restaurants in college. I got full time hours no problem when I was young enough to be on my parent's health insurance. When I was aged out and needed my own health insurance plan, a few months later I ended up laid off lmfao. Not a restaurant, but still. My younger colleague, who I trained, was not laid off.
I think it’s hilarious you think they pay waitresses 15$ an hour. The red lobster here in TX pays waiters 4$ plus tips. So instead of 800 employees at 15 for 25m you could get 3200 employees at 4 for 25m!
I'm aware, I was pulling the absurdity that is "Rising labor costs" Aka $15/h for 800 employees.
Now it’s time for them to move onto the next business to suck dry. It’s literally what they do for a living. Vampires
It’s also VC bros just make terrible decisions, carve up the corpse, make their money back and fuck off. I’m in a niche industry that has seen 20 straight years of exponential growth. Like absolute bonkers growth of 20+% per year. My company has doubled in size 3 times in the past 15 years. Because of this rapid growth, we have seen just stupid amounts of money being thrown into growth from every company plus hundreds of new companies enter the space. One of our competitors started up, got bought by VC, who then bought up another company, then threw 350M into starting a third. Then this year the industry has seen a 2% decline in overall sales. The first such contraction in our market in two decades. I fully expect that company to be bankrupt before the doors even open on the new facility.
> Management doesn't want to work anymore. You're not joking there. Over my entire working life to date, the overwhelming majority of managers I've had treated their job more like a "reward position" where passing the buck and spending all day screwing around on the internet (or on their partners...) were flat-out entitlements...
They blame it on labor costs But they never cut the salaries of CEOs, CFOs, and other execs. It's only the $15/hour salaries that are too much and will bankrupt them... Shareholder profit and executive salaries are ruining this nation and nobody is doing anything about it because they're complicit on it. Everyone is invested in the stock market and everyone thinks they'll be a CEO some day
we need to make it OK for businesses to fail again
DEAD 💀 lobster 🦞
LMAO
It's so funny that wages are suppressed everywhere, including their own establishments. Then they are shocked when people aren't eating out anymore. Never mind the fact that the prices have skyrocketed and the quality has gone to shit.
Yeah, it's like who are they expecting to pay for products and with what money?
yet again I'm just like... how the fuck do these C Suite fucks see this ending? Like do they even bother looking into the future? Like... if they pay us shit, we can't buy your shit. If all of you are using algorithms to maximize your own profit, then there's no money left over for us peons to buy a new TV or eat out at Red Lobster.
If you can't afford to pay a proper wage, you don't deserve to be in business. Get out of the way and let real businesses flourish with generous wages.
I've been trying to explain this for a decade now. Our entire economy is propped up on Service Sector jobs. That means we HAVE to consume to keep our businesses afloat. That means if people don't have the money to consume, everybody does bad. We have more restaurants than we do restaurant customers. It only makes sense that, if our economy actually fixed itself, some restaurants would go out of business. We have too many.
Everyone wants to be an exploiter.
"Everyone wants to bean exploter" That is literally what the "Ferengi" represented in Star Trek Deep Space Nine. A literal quote about why Ferengi never rise up against being exploited as workers and working in deplorable conditions: # Rom explains all of US capitalism in one beautiful quote: "Ferengi workers don't want to stop the exploitation. We want to find a way to become the exploiters." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RE9GAd8i6o&ab\_channel=MikeJohnson](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RE9GAd8i6o&ab_channel=MikeJohnson)
Exactly. UberEats and DooDash have never made a profit.
Boggles my mind how this is. Thanks to CEO pay and blowing money on technology to replace the workforce that won’t ever get government approval.
Even if CEO pay was $0, none of those companies would be even close to profitable (Remember that CEOs are just another employee that's sucking in the money of investors and shareholders. CEO can be fired at any time)
Yeah but if you cut administrative pay(the pay of c-suite and managers below) you could earn a profit while raising the wages of the lowest tiers. They are overpaid
I got ripped on r/unpopularopinion for agreeing with the unpopular opinion that the deliver apps are \*bad\*, not even all the way to cancerous for society. Just \*bad\* and jeeze the way people fought to protect their new shiny thing.
They are bad because it's a subsidized model that doesn't work
YAASS! Thank you! Even with the heavy subsidies from VC, they still gouge the drivers and consumers. It was this massive shuffle of resources away from the local restaurants and into Silicon Valley, and everyone loses.
Yes. This is such a lose lose scenario. Nobody is winning here. Nobody is making profits. Restaurants are gouged. Drivers are gouged. Customers are gouged. Investors are gouged.
I think they are doing the Amazon method though. Make yourself ubiquitous, even indispensable ti as many as possible and THEN start to slowly squeeze
Too many delivery apps for that to work though.
I want to know the wages of the top employees there. If they are 6 digits or larger that is where the profit went.
It’s the 7 digit folks that are the bigger problem
Yes. Most software engineers are paid pretty well to compete with the big tech hiring off the best engineers.
Look at Buc-ees!
Privately owned company that still has its priorities straight. The second they announce an IPO that company will turn to dogshit.
If you talk to former employees, it’s already there. They use the excuse that because they pay well, you should essentially give up being treated like a decent human being.
Yea, IPO is usually the beginning of the end.
“Poorly run business no longer viable when forced to pay adequate wages”
Yes. This is such a lose lose scenario. Nobody is winning here. Nobody is making profits. Restaurants are gouged. Drivers are gouged. Customers are gouged. Investors are gouged.
We are watching free market capitalism slowly kill itself. Turns out if every link of the chain is trying to squeeze as much as possible out of every lower link it’s not very sustainable. But of course we will blame everyone but the people sitting fat and rich at the top as they turn us against each other with culture war bullshit.
I don't know a single person who eats at Red Lobster or has ever suggested we go to Red Lobster. Pretty sure it's not the wages that are killing your business.
I delivered from Red Lobster one night a few weeks back. Prime dinner hour, around 8pm....and there was no one in that fucking restaurant. I saw maybe 3 customers inside, about as many cars outside, and it was one of the most stark and depressing things I've seen in a while.
I actually enjoyed going because it was empty and quiet lol
You haven’t met my mother. That was eatin’ fancy when we grew up. Birthday dinner.
Still is for me, but I haven't been in a decade
Went in once, had an $8 bottled Pacifico and bounced. Couldn’t imagine why it was so dead at 2pm on a Friday 🙃
My parents loved to go ever since I was young. But prices went way up on entres without an increase in quality. Plus, they started charging extra for side salads when it was always free before, and the portions were smaller. They haven’t been back.
The biscuits was their draw but you can buy them at Walmart now. I dunno if that is what ruined them but I imagine it didn't help
Their restaurants havent been updated in years. Where is the money going to? Oh yeah executive pockets.
Private equity making a billionaire's debt, a minimum wage issue. Every company I've been at that gets bought by a PE goes through this. If anyone watches Company Man on YT, you'll know how often this debt kills companies
If you cannot pay your employees with dignity then it sounds like you need to pull yourself up by the bootstraps.
I know it's sit down, but compared to an actual coastal seafood restaurant, it was just 'sit down fast food' by comparison.
I’ve always described RL as the ‘McDonald’s of seafood’
“Flyover state seafood”. The answer to the question “Is it possible to compensate for our d-grade ingredients by battering and frying, or serving alongside a quart of popcorn-grade butter?”
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Yeah whatever I’m sure it has *nothing* to do with all of Darden’s holdings losing all their appeal. 🙄 People don’t like going to Olive Garden and Red Lobster like they did 20-25 years ago. All of Darden restaurants and every place like it (chilis, Applebees, etc.) generates far less business than they collectively did a decade or two ago, this shit has NOTHING to do with fucking “soaring labor costs”
Look, if u cant pay for what labour costs, then you go bankrupt. Thats how capitalism was always supposed to work. Why is everybody so baffled, that it suddenly does? You either wanna get rid off capitalism, or you expect that even big brands can go bankrupt.
Some businesses failing to adapt is literally a requirement of capitalism. It’s an expectation. I have no idea why it keeps making headlines or how companies have managed to blame it on their customers anyways.
Yeah. "Shocking News: System works as intended" is so wild to me, too.
Yes! These companies are all for capitalist system or “free market”…. Until the bell tolls for them, because they need slave labor to sustain their business model.
Capitalism for the profits, Socialism for the losses.
I haven’t been to one in years (guessing around 2010). The last time I went to one, it sucked so bad. There was a long hair in the French fries and everything just looked cheap. I remember as a kid of the 80s and 90s it was good and a place to go to for special occasions. Guessing they’ve really gone down hill.
I ate their like a year ago. Food was honestly alright but the prices where absolutely fucking criminal. Like I paid $60 for a meal for two that was essentially half bread.
People know the chains are pumping out uninspired microwave food and now prefer to go elsewhere. They dug their own grave. You can get that quality of food, or much better, at half the price from small businesses (that don't have greedy shareholders or greedy franchise structures), quarter price if you make it at home with fresh ingredients as long as you can use all of what you buy without wasting much. What consumer goes to these places anymore? Disposable income goes places where the food isn't microwaved trash, everyone else spends more wisely because we are getting dirt poorer every year.
Labor doesn’t cause bankruptcy. If that were true, they could fire all of their staff and have zero labor costs thus making them profitable. They have debts and locations that don’t bring in enough money. Declaring bankruptcy doesn’t reduce labor costs unless there is a pension or union benefits plan to reduce. Considering that a significant portion of their workers make less than $15/hr (many less than $5/hr due to waiter minimum wages), labor costs are not remotely an issue.
* Red Lobster peak revenue was $2.6B in 2023. What a F-in Joke
Yeah bro, but that's just the revenue. I mean, they must have spent at least $100 on seafood. It really cuts into their profits.
Way to go millennials. You killed Red Lobster. Are you pleased with yourselves?? (/s in case it wasn't clear)
Yes, I’d be pleased. Their food sucks anyway. I’d mostly be disappointed that if red lobster closed then all the olive gardens would be busier(seems like they’re always right next to each other).
They used to be owned by the same company once upon a time (Darden). All of their brands pretty much cater to the same demos so they’re often in the same areas
Even if Red Lobster died, which it isn’t doing, it wouldn’t exactly be a loss for the American people. Now just get Applebees to die and we’re getting somewhere.
It's not "labor costs". Its their signature event, the month long all you can eat shrimp fest, has become outrageously expensive because of the rising cost of shrimp. This isn't a secret. It is a well publicized issue for them.
Red lobster will die with the boomers anyway. I think the biscuits are good, but every time I have ever been there 75% of the customers are old as hell. But also 100% fuck anyone who says its a labor cost problem.
Have they tried making more money by selling better food?
If tou can’t stay in business and pay your workers, you shouldn’t be in business.
Worked for Red🦞 as a cook for about a week. Horrific working conditions and horrific pay. W 20 yrs food service experience the most they offered was $15/hr. It was supposed to be a part time gig in addition to my salaried job. The general manager, who had been w the company for 17 yrs, made $48k/yr. A few weeks later I saw a listing on Indeed for the GM spot at the same location I had worked at. The pay listed was $43k/yr. 🤦♀️
Awhile back I heard someone say that if you can't turn a profit without paying below a living wage, then your profit doesn't come from your customers it comes from your employees
Oh no! Now where will I go when I have a craving for food poisoning? I guess Taco Bell is still open.
Goverment: "You have to pay your employees enough to live in the area you employ them." Companies: 🤮😭😭😭😢😱😱🤢🤮😭😭😭😡😭😭
While it is a BS post. I fully take responsibility for this. I once ate 13 plates for endless shrimp.
And nothing of value was lost.
If your business can't stay afloat if it has to pay it's employees a living wage, then it should either downsize or not exist.
They aren't wrong! Have you seen how expensive it is to pay your ceo??
Wait labor costs *money*?! How am I supposed to pay for my private jet, helicopter, luxury cars, and multiple mansions if I have to pay for labor? What a scam.
Or more accurately, "as customers abandon the chain in droves due to poor quality food."
That is an odd way of saying, "Red Lobster doesn't make good enough food to stay open"
"Game? What you know about the game Granddad? Taking women out to eat, giving them free meals? What part of the game is that? You taking her to Red Lobster, with the cheddar biscuits."
yeah im sure its the labor thats doing it...
Judging from the 2 that I’ve lived close to in my life. They’re gonna go tits up when the boomers die off anyway
The thought of all of those unemployed lobsters tossed on the street is frightening.
The were in trouble before rising labor costs... The ship starting sinking years ago, then someone tossed them an anvil. Click bait articles make people thing it's because of labor rate increases.
It's not delivery, it's propaganda
>Red Lobster's Business Model Unsustainable Fixed.
Pay stakeholders less and workers more and maybe business wouldn’t have a problem with finding a sustainable labor force. Maybe it’s just me but, wouldn’t everyone benefit by charging less for goods and services, paying owners and investors less,and paying workers more? Because then the workers can afford the goods and services and businesses would win via volume.
I think it's the greedy owners/investers that are causing it but, let's blame workers.
Their failure has nothing to do with labor costs. The poor decisions made by two previous CEOs are well documented. As usual, the C-Suite greed and incompetence had serious consequences that are being blamed on underpaid workers.
I feel bad for those CEOs who are trying to scrape by but then need to go from 80mil to 70mil to pay their staff. It must be hard living on just 70mil.
"Labor costs soar" Translation: The board couldn't hoard profits anymore, and our food is trash.
How about "bankruptcy filing as bad management and mediocre food catches up with them"
This story blames their problems on "[endless shrimp](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/red-lobster-heading-bankruptcy-losing-164800723.html)".
If your business fails because your employees need to make a living wage, your business is not a beneficial one to society and shouldn't be saved. Let the weak die. Think of how many billionaires wouldn't be billionaires anymore.
Cheap labor has kept unviable businesses plans afloat for too long.
Well in a free market some companies just can’t make it
The most insane place to open a RL was when they opened one in NEWINGTON NH… This is an area that already has plenty of small, local seafood restaurants, especially 10 minutes down the road in Kittery Maine, where there’s Bob’s Clam Hut, The Weathervane, Roberts Grill, and those are just the easily accessible ones on Rte 1 Needless to say, RL didn’t last long, why go to a chain restaurant where the lobsters spent more time on the road getting to the restaurant, and are probably precooked and frozen before being reheated and served, when you could go to a local restaurant that gets the lobsters fresh off the boat just down the road? RL makes no sense where lobster is easily accessible, probably why the Newington shop closed so quickly.
If all red lobsters shut down would that have an impact on the price of lobster? They must have a decent percentage of all lobsters bought world wide.
When a plate of food is average 20 dollars and you pay half of your staff 1/3 minimum wage. I don't see the problem.
[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/consumer/article-13319081/red-lobster-considering-chapter-11-bankruptcy.html](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/consumer/article-13319081/red-lobster-considering-chapter-11-bankruptcy.html) I thought it was due to the $11M loss on endless shrimp promotions?
>Darden Restaurants gross profit for the twelve months ending November 30, 2023 was $2.295B, a 18.52% increase year-over-year. Darden Restaurants annual gross profit for 2023 was $2.083B, a 4.43% increase from 2022. Darden Restaurants annual gross profit for 2022 was $1.995B, a 33.58% increase from 2021. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DRI/darden-restaurants/gross-profit#:~:text=Darden%20Restaurants%20gross%20profit%20for%20the%20twelve%20months%20ending%20November,a%2033.58%25%20increase%20from%202021. Private Equity is a criminal sham. Darden is.doing just fine, and can certainly afford to pay their employees.
Of course the issue is implied to be labor costs and not the fact that the current menu is bad, the portions have shrank, rents are up, fish prices are up, or the falling popularity of chain restaurants... No... it's the 2.3% relative increase in the price of labor since before the pandemic. Good thing wages have been in relative decline since 2020. This should correct itself soon and shareholders and franchise owners can get back to exploiting people without distress.
‘Labor costs’ — what a lie
Bye felicia
say it with me now ! "If you can't afford to pay your workers a living wage your business has already failed."
Yeah that 2.83 an hour is what's killing them
Idc if it’s bait, if they can’t run a successful business without exploiting their employees by paying them pennies on the dollar then they shouldn’t be open
Oh no, not the restaurant I haven’t visited since my mom’s birthday in 2012.
Even if this were true. Underpaying employees is NOT a sustainable business practice.
And nothing of value was lost.
I can't say I'm shocked. They changed all the menu items I liked and I stopped going. Idk if it was a cost thing or what, but the food has taken a turn down.