Red Lobster Considering Bankruptcy Filing

[Bagels]

I made only a couple visits to the Irvine El Torito Grill, as there was no free parking. One visit was after they first opened. I recall that much of the menu overlapped with El Torito. For example, the Sizzlin’ Fajita was identical but priced a couple dollars more. They had steak fajitas made with lean, center cut sirloin - all El Toritos added this to their menu.

[ClownLoach]

I made only a couple visits to the Irvine El Torito Grill, as there was no free parking. One visit was after they first opened. I recall that much of the menu overlapped with El Torito. For example, the Sizzlin’ Fajita was identical but priced a couple dollars more. They had steak fajitas made with lean, center cut sirloin - all El Toritos added this to their menu.

In the last few years of that location I also had stopped going there because they were no longer validating the parking. It used to be free with any purchase, and Friday/Saturday nights valet was free too.

They had about a dozen overlapping dishes, but the preparation was different. All meats were grilled over Mesquite Wood Santa Maria style grills, while regular El Torito used gas grills. Huge difference in the flavor. All tortillas, corn and flour, were made fresh to order instead of coming from a bag (until again the chain was deteriorating under Xperience), and they would bring baskets of the burning hot flour tortillas along with three fresh made in house salsas (and the unusual honey butter which actually worked with the smoky salsa). No frozen anything at Grill, while the regular El Torito seemed to use frozen shrimp and probably frozen chicken alongside factory prepped bagged produce. The Grill had all produce prepped and sliced in house, no steam table batch cooked food so the fajitas took a long time to come out but the quality was light years from the regular chain.

The last time I visited that Irvine location I walked in on a Friday night and that Santa Maria grill up front under the incredibly dated looking neon lit hood and glass block wall was not lit, and it appeared to have been staged as a decoration with logs and fake plastic peppers. They were using the spinning comal to warm bagged tortillas instead of making from scratch. The unusual red flour chili tortillas and blue corn were gone, just white flour and white corn. That was when they had cut all of my favorite dishes from the menu, and I never returned. About three years later they closed it to convert to SOL.

I think their next closures will be that new Vegas SOL, that Irvine SOL, and I also think the Solita behind Angels Stadium was dead on arrival. That restaurant was horrifically mismanaged from day one. I tried several times to get a table a couple of hours before a hockey game but they quoted 45 minutes plus wait. Meanwhile they had two large dining rooms each with a dozen tables or so closed. I asked and they said they hadn't staffed for those tables to be used, and I then asked if they didn't think major events when either the arena or stadium are running would be nights they should be fully staffed. The manager said they use a computer system to predict scheduling needs. I could better predict with two pieces of paper, the stadium schedule and the arena schedule where they should have been "all hands on deck" 3 hours in advance. I am sure that they were never able to get any of the Ducks or Angels season ticket holders to adopt them as a pre-game restaurant because they were so busy chasing them away from all the empty tables and patio that probably has never been used.

Xperience had also downgraded the food quality in new locations from the original concept that originated in Huntington Beach before they acquired the small chain to expand it. The original was similar to El Torito Grill in that it used both fresh made tortillas and wood fired grills; Solita used white oak. Some of the unusual meats like a beer braised beef barbacoa were gone, they also used to have multiple preparations of chicken for the tacos and had reduced to just one. The new locations get tortillas in a bag and gas grills but charge the same prices as the original. Last night I went to an Angels game and parked in my usual discounted lot across Katella. Walked past Solita and it had zero customers going in or out before and after the game. Zero customers on the patio. And it was the busiest I've seen the stadium in years with what appeared to be a near sell out, even the top nosebleed sections were mostly full despite inconsistent Angels play. I don't think this Solita will make it to the end of the Angels season. I wonder if they ruined the original too, because their review scores have plummeted from years of nearly perfect before being acquired.

So it seems the Xperience corporation dumbs down and cheapens the menus in the same ways, removing live wood fires and fresh tortillas. I'm pretty sure the sauces and salsas under their ownership are from a can or a bag. Then they have the nerve to put surcharges on the menu "because we are a local California family business" which is complete BS since the Cano family hasn't had anything to do with the company in decades. Unfortunately they deserve to go out of business at this point.

And I have found my wood fired meats at a hole in the wall in Anaheim that has half a dozen giant Santa Maria grills out behind the restaurant fire roasting a dozen different meats plus vegetables to make every salsa from scratch. Everything from basic carne asada to PRIME Filet Mignon or Ribeye tacos with perfect Santa Maria seasoning. The line is half an hour to get in at any given moment, and they're currently having to double the size of their outside patio.

[storewanderer]

I tried a chain called Sharky's. The menu looked a lot like Baja Fresh, salsa bar seemed bigger and better, had 3 types of iced tea, interior atmosphere was much better than Baja Fresh. Employees were exceedingly friendly, location was very clean. Marketing up about Organic ingredients etc. I was very impressed. Got the food - what is this. Made/folded well, hot, looked like a burrito should look. Got into it. No flavor in the chicken, rice tasted like it was flavored with low salt chicken broth and nothing else. The beans tasted like (plain) beans. The salsa semi saved this but I could not believe it. I was really disappointed by the lack of flavor to the meat especially.

[buckguy]

Useless trivia- millennials became the first generation whose go-to food was not Italian. We prefer Mexican… but Gen Z prefers Asian. Tastes are diversifying.

Depends where you live. DC never had much in the way decent Italian and the pizza only started to get better when styles from elsewhere in the US were "imported", although we also got stuck with NC and Atlanta pizza which thankfully has gone away. Instead, Asian food was long popular for take-out and dining in and it helped that there was such a big variety here. Before then, it was meat and potatoes and some southern food, although good BBQ has been long difficult to find. Asian food has been a staple in many places for decades and easily competed with Italian even in places like Cleveland that never had a large Chinatown or Asian immigrant population. Asian food has benefit from boomlets in Thai, Indian, Vietnamese and regional Chinese food, but you also have many local variations---the Japanese and Korean food are better known and more popular in some places than others.

Greek-Americans ran lunch counters, diners, and neighborhood restaurants in many cities in the East and Midwest, but Greek food in DC? Difficult to find even now, even though there once were many places owned by Greeks. The best loved, long running Mediterranean place is run by a Lebanese family. No place adopted Greek food like Chicago and corner gyros places were everywhere at one time

Mexican Food or at least some version of Tex-Mex seemed to crowd out everything else until well after Asian immigrants became numerous in Texas and parts of the Southwest and it's still difficult to find a decent taqueria in Atlanta.

The biggest change in the last couple generations is that people have travelled and developed new tastes, plus the variety and standard of restaurant food has gotten much better in the last 20-30 years almost everywhere. Still, you have places like Atlanta with large Mexican-American populations, but the go-to Latin places are Cuban. DC has had few Mexicans or good Mexican restaurants until recently. It took a long time for Salvadoran food like Papusas to catch on and there probably are more Peruvian chicken places than Mexican restaurants.

The big chain ethnic food operations probably are destined to have short lives. Venture capital dumbed down the operations or people eventually get exposed to something more authentic or better bastardizations and move on. Bibibop seems to be simultaneously doing well with an Asian concept that is vaguely Korean but basically American-ized pan-Asian, as well as relatively healthy: two concepts that have not translated very successfully to fast-food or fast casual chains, in the past. That should be a signal that we're entering an era where some of the crappyist places' ability to throw off cash to their owners won't keep them in business.

[ClownLoach]

I tried a chain called Sharky's. The menu looked a lot like Baja Fresh, salsa bar seemed bigger and better, had 3 types of iced tea, interior atmosphere was much better than Baja Fresh. Employees were exceedingly friendly, location was very clean. Marketing up about Organic ingredients etc. I was very impressed. Got the food - what is this. Made/folded well, hot, looked like a burrito should look. Got into it. No flavor in the chicken, rice tasted like it was flavored with low salt chicken broth and nothing else. The beans tasted like (plain) beans. The salsa semi saved this but I could not believe it. I was really disappointed by the lack of flavor to the meat especially.

Sharkys wasn't very good. I always found it to be lacking flavor even if you could see the quality of ingredients was good. The steak was tender and juicy, but still flavorless which negates the quality of the ingredient. I was surprised to see they are being relaunched in the Vegas market where there's plenty of competition. Good luck to them because they are going to need it.

Baja Fresh was unparalleled in their early years as I mentioned but dropped off when they decided to franchise out and grow exponentially. Their original concept was intentionally stark, plain, sparking clean, and utilitarian--the founders were copying In-N-Out's interiors because they wanted to show a sharp contrast to bad stereotypes American customers had about Mexican restaurants. They wanted the American customer to try real Mexican food prepared the traditional ways, but on a fast casual model.

The location I ate at most frequently was in Long Beach and I believe it was store #5 or #6 in what was at the time a mini chain. This was the mid 90s when they were first opening up and nobody had seen a fast casual, made to order, non Americanized restaurant like this. Many (non Hispanic) customers were confused about lack of hard shell tacos, no ground beef, just corn tortilla onion and cilantro then add your own salsa, obviously not Taco Bell. (They finally caved under franchising and added "Tacos Americanos" to the menu with flour tortilla, lettuce tomato and cheese). They had a real chef running the restaurant and all prep was done from scratch daily in the restaurant. Chips hand cut and fried every few minutes and always included. Guacamole made every few minutes. No freezers, heat lamps, cans, cryovac etc. which used to be painted in large letters over the menu boards but had to be removed chainwide under corporate ownership changes. That Long Beach location is no longer is in operation, it closed about ten years ago to make room for a Pieology pizza place. Unfortunately they failed in all the same ways as others, prioritizing growth over consistency by franchising, then selling out to big corporate ownership who immediately engineered the food into pre-made, pre-cooked sous vide beef for example, guacamole made from bagged processed avocado. Cooking moved to the fast food model of grilling massive batches in advance then letting the ingredients sit for hours on a steam table so they could slash labor to the bone. By the time they were done ruining it then it sold to another corporation that had picked up other now failing concepts including La Salsa and moved to their prefabricated salsas, further ruining the concept.

[ClownLoach]

Great story about the collapse of the Red Lobster empire.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/05/03/food ... bankruptcy

[ClownLoach]

Another big wave of closures hit today. This time they all are listed on an auction site. It is obvious they need money immediately as the sites are being auctioned in entirety, "winner takes all" with bids due before auctions close this Thursday.

Here is the partial list and auction. Note reports are over 50 closures without announcements, but this list only has 48.

https://www.tagexbrands.com/red-lobster/

[storewanderer]

Many of the closures seem to be in smaller/medium type markets. I am a little surprised they were in some of these markets in the first place.

I think they should reconcept themself.

Similar to the Jerrys-Black Bear re-concepting decades ago. Throw out all the frozen food, start to make food fresh, present a better value equation to the customer while at the same time increasing prices.

[reymann]

I don't see Red Lobster surviving too much longer, seafood restaurant chains have just really have been on the decline for good while now. The all you can eat is what did Red Lobster in and the best they can do is try to sell off the real estate.

[ClownLoach]

Many of the closures seem to be in smaller/medium type markets. I am a little surprised they were in some of these markets in the first place.

I think they should reconcept themself.

Similar to the Jerrys-Black Bear re-concepting decades ago. Throw out all the frozen food, start to make food fresh, present a better value equation to the customer while at the same time increasing prices.

Aside from promotions I don't see where they could raise prices without knocking themselves out of the market and becoming the most expensive place in town for seafood. Just like how franchises have too many mouths to feed, so do these private equity firms buried in debt. The money needed to improve food quality, move to fresh, etc. is squandered on debt service and interest expenses. I was looking at the menu for Kings Fish House which is all fresh and can keep costs down because they are owned by a wholesale distributor so no markup. Their prices are within a few dollars of Red Lobster on what seemed to be comparable menu items (Kings has a much larger variety of seafood) except for the Red Lobster ad/sale items where they're probably losing money (like a pound of king crab legs for $24 today, they're not making money on that). The only category that seemed extraordinarily expensive was lobster itself and I'm betting that they're larger and higher quality. I don't eat seafood but I have seen what Red Lobster is trying to pawn off and they're the smallest ones that they could legally harvest, low grade.

If Red Lobster upgraded quality based on current prices and needed to raise each entree between $10 and $25 depending on the size/variety etc. They would be over the prices of a local competitor like Kings and even encroaching on the prices at some steakhouses that also do lobster and other fresh seafood.

I will keep saying it but I don't know what exactly these PE firms are thinking when they keep buying into consumer resale firms like stores or restaurants. Maybe when they're buying into industrial firms, real estate, etc. They have the ability to pack in debts and make profits but not in these retail sectors which are highly competitive. There will always be someone who can operate on a lower cost structure because they don't carry debt and don't need dividend payments, "management fees" and all the other profit draining that PE specializes in. And here they tried to offset that by selling a large share to a overseas seafood distributor which didn't work because whatever discount they were able to provide was negated by their lack of operational experience.