Posted on 05/17/2014 4:37:41 PM PDT by rickmichaels
America's changing eating habits are killing Red Lobster.
The chain's parent company, Darden Restaurants, announced on Friday it was selling Red Lobster to a private-equity firm for $2.1 billion after years of sagging sales. While it may sound strange to call a chain with such a high price tag "dying," much of that $2.1 billion covers Red Lobster's real estate. What's left of the brand's value is "fairly minimal," Sterne Agee analyst Lynne Collier wrote in a note.
The cheddar-biscuit purveyor's demise is being hastened by a growing American preference for micro-managing meals that can be scarfed down quickly. The era of families sitting down to a meal conceived by food scientists and prepared in a kitchen they can’t see is fading. That is bad news for a host of other chains, including Olive Garden, which Darden still owns.
"Even as consumer spending has improved, many consumers have still been less willing to spend on sit-down meals," noted a recent report from market research firm IBISWorld. "Instead, consumers have shown a preference for cheaper fast-casual concepts.”
(Excerpt) Read more at huffingtonpost.com ...
Someone gave me a gift card for Chipotle.
I had never been there before.
I walked in ,looked around and walked out and gave the gift card away.I didn’t like the feel of the place and didn’t like how the food looked.
Oh there’s gourmet Mexican food. Not at Chipotle which is a fastfood joint, but in other places. A lot of gourmet food started as poverty food, the recipes people figured out to make this cheap stuff tasty are quite effective. There’s a lot of status involve in rich people food, it’s often times not as good as the rep because there’s that crowd that eats it just because of the price.
When money gets tight, either through lack of jobs or rising expenses (inflation). The food bill is the first thing people look at because they have a lot of say in that.
Same for entertainment. Both are good markers for how the economy is really doing.
but the one i really don't like is Joe's Crap Shack\k... they show you huge buckets of items and when you get them they SEEM huge but if you take them out and put them on your plate it's like half a small plate.
I took my daughter there ONCE~! we at some stuff, ordered more, and left with a $75 bill... and we had to stop to get something to eat on the way home.
they huge serving pails they show in the menu are filled with stuff to fill up the bucket and make it LOOK LIKE there is a lot of food.
Since the chain kowtowed to Moochelle’s demands for her idea of good food, and the fact they us crappy shrimp I never go there.
Same here. It’s hard to get a table at either one here. Always full. Always busy. Always a long wait.
We split 1.5 lbs. of snow crab and get an extra salad. That’s it—tasty and lean. Mmmmm. Of course, it is tempting to over indulge the lowly cheesy biscuits. It’s a good deal and the kitchen doesn’t stink.
We used to love Red Lobster many years ago. Now their service is terribe, restaurants dirty/poorly managed and it’s obvious their overpriced food was taken out of a freezer and nuked.l
I have bottles of it in stock for my dogs along with Laxaire to move everything “out”, ASAP.
[I know...that is *so* surprising, isn’t it?]
;D
Should be mentioned that if you take prescription meds, the charcoal will totally render them inert so be careful.
Living down here on Galveston Bay and so close to the Gulf of Mexico always mean fresh seafood is minutes away.
... cooked either at home or one of the local restaurants.
And when I say local, I don't mean one of the Landry chain restaurants that the tourist from Houston flock down for.
Ironically, just today I drove past boarded-up four fast-food restaurants that closed down recently. A Checker, Burger King, Sonic, and coffee drive-thru stand, all within a few blocks of each other. I guess it has nothing to do with whether or not the place is “sit down” or not.
Wow! Thanks. I will give that a try, but hopefully I won’t have too.
Two more in Red England that HATE seafood...I did have tuna years ago, but my wife won’t even go that far.
0bastard did say he was gonna make "fuel prices skyrocket"!
I agree. We should not be giving any hits to HuffPo, but link to other sources.
I hope Red Lobster will cut the number of restaurants and reorganize the menu.
Then park them in front of murder simulators for decades. What could go wrong?
Both are more intelligent than Democrats and Rinos.
They wouldn’t need the food wilting heat lamps if they would just
get the lead out of their asses. We see food service differently.
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