When I was a kid, the highlight of any trip downstate to my grandparents was the eventual trip to Red Lobster.
Growing up in a town of nine hundred people, it would be safe to say that we didn’t have any big restaurant chains in our area. Going to Red Lobster we might as well have been going to the fanicest place for two hundred miles in any direction.
Of course, as I got older and found other seafood places that offered fresher variety, I went to Red Lobster less and less.
However, I will say that I still hold a special place in my heart for that joint.
Which makes it all the more sad that recently Red Lobster filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and as of this writing has closed several dozen locations in an attempt to restructure.
There are many reasons for the demise of this once great chain.
For starters, Biden forced too many businesses in the service industry to spend way too much time on the sidelines with the silly COVID restrictions.
For way more time than was necessary, Biden forced restaurants to stay closed and this hurt Red Lobster greatly. Ordering a to go plate from a seafood restaurant is not exactly something too many people are willing to do and it hurt the standing of the chain.
Then they tried a Hail Mary that might have been the nail in the coffin for them. Sometime last year, they attempted to make a comeback with an endless shrimp promotion. The price was hideously cheap and people were eating enough shrimp to choke an orca.
Seriously. One YouTube video that I watched around the time showed a person eating about three hundred dollars worth of shrimp.
I mean, I like me some shrimp but I can’t imagine I am going to eat that much. But enough people ate enough shrimp on a super low price that it cost the company way more money than it had.
Now, because of several different factors it seems that Red Lobster is going to soon go the way of many other businesses that were around for decades but Biden allowed to wither on the vine…
