The demise of Red Lobster is a perfect case study in how to kill a business

Crack0n7uesday , 25 days ago

I was reading how some fishing company bought out a bunch of Red Lobsters to deliberately sell them marked up product so that even in bankruptcy the parent company was making record profits.

4grams , 26 days ago

I can’t tell you how many articles I’ve read lately that can just be summed up as “late-stage capitalism”. This is the death throes of the nation.

norbert , 25 days ago

"Shitty overpriced chain restaurant unable to compete with shitty, overpriced but locally owned restaurant."

4grams , 25 days ago

Yeah, but shitty chain restaurant that may have had a chance to improve had it not had its organs harvested while still alive. I honestly don’t give a shit about red lobster but I hate the corporate theft that we just let happen.

norbert , 25 days ago

Red Lobster has been going downhill for decades. It's probably better to put it out of its misery than let it limp along for 20 more years.

I don't see any "corporate theft" here at all. It's not like a mom & pop was bought and then closed. It's just another shitty corporate owned business unable to operate as if it's still 1970 closing their doors. Nothing of value was lost.

4grams , 25 days ago

I mean, the article goes into how their real estate was gutted, which could have provided a safety margin for them to restructure. But again, I care nothing for red lobster, but I see the same pattern as happened with so many others. Read into Sears or Toy-R-Us for example. It’s the pattern of these parasitic private equity firms. They look for these struggling businesses that have assets they can come in to exploit, hastening the demise.

In the end it’s not so much that I care about these businesses survival as I angers me to see a few corporate fucks stripping away the value that workers had built over the years and leaving destruction in the wake.

FlyingSquid , 26 days ago

They’re going to start charging for cheddar biscuit refills, aren’t they?

Tikiporch , 26 days ago

Sure, about $785,000 each should do the trick.

return2ozma OP , 25 days ago

Let me split up that payment with Klarna.

girlfreddy , 26 days ago

Red Lobster first opened in Lakeland, Florida, in 1968 and was acquired by the food conglomerate General Mills in 1970. General Mills then spun the chain off in 1995 along with the rest of its restaurant division, which also included Olive Garden, as Darden Restaurants. In 2014, amid flagging sales and pressure from investors, Darden sold Red Lobster for $2.1 billion to Golden Gate Capital, a San Francisco private-equity firm.

To raise enough cash to make the deal happen, Golden Gate sold off Red Lobster’s real estate to another entity — in this case, a company called American Realty Capital Properties — and then immediately leased the restaurants back. The next year, Red Lobster bought back some sites, but many of its restaurants were suddenly strapped with added rent expenses. Even if Darden had kept Red Lobster, it’s not clear it would have taken a different route: A press release from the time says it had contacted buyers to explore such a transaction. But in Maze’s view, the sale of the real estate was sort of an original sin for Red Lobster’s current troubles. He compared it to throwing out a spare parachute — chances are, you’ll be OK, but if the first parachute fails, you’re in deep trouble.

First thing private equity does is sell the property, whether the business is a LTC home or a restaurant chain.

Fuck private equity. I hope every one of those bastards rots in hell where they belong.

bluGill , 26 days ago

Irrelevant. If you have a business that owns property you should have two divisions for accounting reasons, one that runs the business and one that leases the property to the business. Both sides should be making money. This should just be an accounting trick but you need to watch it, if you can't make money with either side alone that means you don't have a good business.

There are good reasons to own your own real estate, and good reasons to lease. However either way you need to make the accounting numbers work.

Dkarma , 26 days ago

Not irrelevant. If they had kept the property the company would have assets. They liquidated the assets and sold the name which was now saddled with debt. That’s not even remotely irrelevant it’s the literal cause of the bankruptcy…can you even read???

funkless_eck , 25 days ago

this wasn’t two B/U in a single umbrella though, they sold estate to another company who then leased it back to them.

bluGill , 25 days ago

Which is perfectly fine to do.

ChicoSuave , 25 days ago

This article just said “don’t sell real estate because it is an unsustainable expense.”

Private equity hate spending their own money or they overspend in an attempt to be an entrepreneur. They will buy something, squeeze all the value out of it, and then try to sell it off to be juiced by some other dumb schmuck with deep pockets and dreams.

Constant profitability is a cancer and you are giving advice on how to kill a business, with the example being Red Lobster used your “plan” and just died.

bluGill , 25 days ago

Red Lobster was already dead, they just hadn't held the funeral yet.

ThrowawayPermanente , 25 days ago

Well done you guys, let’s downvote the only person in the entire thread who knows what they’re talking about. Brilliant stuff.

venusaur , 26 days ago

They should end all their leases and look for smaller properties to rebrand as a lobster roll shack type of spot near beaches.

Fried fish, shrimp, Maine lobster, clam chowder. Have a bar, serve east coast oysters. You could even do Cajun shrimp like Boiling Crab. Serve the seafood people want. They should try to be a more affordable cross between Bubba Gump and Legal Seafood.

SpaceNoodle , 26 days ago

That sounds like significantly more effort than microwaving frozen garbage for suburban vulgarians.

venusaur , 25 days ago

Yeah. The vulgarians aren’t getting the bills paid.