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Notes -
It seems far more plausible that Red Lobster unleashed unlimited shrimp as a last stand to stay open, hoping it would be a loss-leader that would enable them to pay off whatever debt they had to go into to run it, and that they were in dire straights to even consider it. If unlimited shrimp was the only problem they would have simply revoked the deal and moved on.
"People don't drink that much anymore" seems like a far more plausible explaination -- tables eating free shrimp all night is no problem if they are also getting hammered on $12 Crantinis or whatnot. I could believe that R.L. was slow to update their business model to take this into account I suppose.
Yeah, they probably assumed somebody eating unlimited shrimp would, on average, drink 3 $5
bud lightscoors lights and an $8 winearita, and that it would be a loss leader for that reason. But to run that deal I suspect they were already looking at some bad numbers and desperately trying to get people in the door to do their $5 light beer drinking at RL instead of chilis.More options
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