Red Lobster

Fake news red lobster bankruptcy doesn’t have to do with the economy.

“Red Lobster’s Demise Was Never About the Endless Shrimp
Blame private equity and a decade of mismanagement instead”

“… But again, it wasn’t because of the shrimp. Following the sale of Red Lobster to Golden Gate, the chain’s real estate assets were also sold off, which meant that the restaurants now had to pay rent on these locations to their parent company. As such, the company was stuck in leases for underperforming restaurants that it couldn’t afford. As with other private equity forays into industries like retail and media, Red Lobster’s new private equity owner saddled it with tons of debt...”

https://www.eater.com/24160929/red-lobster-bankruptcy-endless-shrimp-closing-locations

It's not all Biden's fault, but he is not a business friendly president. Unless the business is corruption and dark money kickbacks.

Red Lobster isn't going under due to the economy - they're going under because they were bought out by a private equity firm that sold all their real estate assets and forced the restaurants into leaseback agreements, drastically driving up costs during the Trump administration to levels that were unsustainable just before the pandemic hit.

This, like Twitter, is a cautionary tale of the excesses of capitalism and debt - while buying companies and loading them with debt will make a few people extremely rich, it destroys their ability to sustainably create products and services, which will ultimately put thousands out of work and kill the brand.

Sure, keep telling yourself how well the economy is doing. Perhaps just like you're telling yourself that Biden isn't suffering from significant cognitive decline?

Please explain how, with Bidenomics firing on all thrusters, these are also Trump's fault?

- Macy's laying off 2,350 employees, closing 5 stores
- WalMart lays off 2,000 warehouse employees at five US warehouses, closed 24 locations in 2023
- Walgreens lays of 650 employees, closes 150 locations
- Foot Locker plans to close up to 400 locations by the end of 2025
- Journeys (footwear) to close over 100 locations
- Rite Aid filed for bankruptcy last October, closing 150 underperforming pharmacy locations
- CVS announced in November 2021 plans to close over 900 retail stores in the next three years
- CVS (wow, the economy is doing so well that they're on the list twice!) announced in March that it plans to close “dozens” of pharmacy locations inside Target stores.
- Barnes & Noble closed 34 locations nationwide throughout 2023
- Best Buy closed approximately 20-30 locations in 2023
- Party City filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in May. 2023. In August, 2023 they announced plans to close over 30 locations.
- Office Depot, over 40 locations were reported to have closed in 2023
- Target announced in September, 2023 plans to close 9 locations, citing issues related to theft and organized crime as the reasons
- Bath And Body Works announced last year plans to close 50 stores located in malls.
- GAP closed over 30 locations in 2023
- Bed Bath And Beyond filed for bankruptcy last April, and then closed the remaining 360 stores, reaching a total of nearly 900 closures in 2023.
- Tuesday Morning, the discounted home goods retailer, went out of business in 2023 after nearly 50 years

Oh yeah, Bidenomics is a BOOMING!!! 🤣🤣🤣

The answer to most of your questions comes down to optimizing spends to capture profits, or in layman's terms, corporate greed.

Sure, Macy's is closing 5 stores (out of 783) and laying off 2,350 employees (out of 85,581), but it's stock is around $6/share higher than it was 6 months ago.

Walmart, same story - closed 24 stores (out of more than 10,500), laid off 2000 employees (out of 2,300,000), and their stock is up nearly $15 over 6 months ago.

As for the actual losers on your list, most of whom were never able to leave their mall-first business models, how many of those have been bought up and parted out by private equity? 80%? 90%? 95%?

Online shoppers are killing bricks-and-mortar stores.

It wasn't the economy that did Red Lobster in - it was the poor business decision of offering endless "All you can eat shrimp" promotions.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/20/business/what-went-wrong-at-red-lobster/index.html

I feel pretty bad about this... I was probably the one that did it.. lmfao I must have eaten 40 lbs of shrimp during the special :D

Don't blame yourself when the truth is that it's all Biden's fault...

:D So I can get some more shrimp? lol

Wow! How much microplastics did you ingest with all that shrimp?

Enough to shit out a Pool noodle lol

LoL, a hedge fund buys a restaurant chain with decades of Brand recognition, sells the land the restaurants own to another company it owns, which then charges the chain above market lease rates.

Then declares bankruptcy to get out of all the debt they took on.

Welcome to capitalism.

I think objective, rational folks are blaming Biden, since he destroys everything he touches.

See my earlier post in reply to CtrlFreq for this meme:

imgflip.com/i/8qonmz?nerp=1716324428#com31600442

Blaming a president for a hedge fund declaring bankruptcy is neither objective nor rational.

"I think objective, rational folks are blaming Biden" is quite possible the most unhinged thing I've ever seen in print.

You don't get it man. Nobody believes you. It's like you are saying watch out for meteors in a clear blue sky.

Except in this analogy the sky is filled with streaks of fire and you keep tripping over the still-smoking space rocks all over the ground.

That's not capitalism. Bankruptcy is not part of capitalism.

So...would you say that someone who declares bankruptcy is bad at capitalism?