Thread by @TrungTPhan

Details from Red Lobster’s bankruptcy filing are wild and so much mismanagement:

▫️$1B in debt, $30m in cash
▫️Previous PE owner sold land and leased it back to Red Lobster at “above market rates”
▫️$20 Endless Shrimp cost it $11m but the interesting part is that one of the chain’s owners is Thai seafood firm Thai Union (which also owns Chicken By The Sea) and it may have used Endless shrimp to dump its own shrimp supply through the 578 restaurants in North America
▫️Thai Union became the only Red Lobster shrimp vendor, overcharging for shrimp and skipping quality reviews (Thai Union has written off its $500m+ investment)
▫️Red Lobster has had 5 CEO in the last 5 years (!!!)
▫️Sales down 30% since 2019

Link: document.epiq11.com/document/getdo…

Red Lobster needed Yukitaka Yamaguchi — aka Japan’s Tuna King (sleeps 3 hours a day and knows where any fish is from on a single bite) — to run quality control.

This dude would not have put up with low-quality seafood slop. readtrung.com/p/becoming-the…

Also, never forget Beyoncé name dropped Red Lobster with some R-rated verses in 2016 (“Formation”) and Red Lobster social responded and there was actually a brief sales surge.

I wonder if Thai Union was eyeing Bubba Gump Shrimp as another potential captive shrimp buyer. There are levels to this game!

Either way, my initial Red Lobster analysis when the Red Lobster bankruptcy was floating was way off:

SCOOP: Multiple anonymous sources tell me there may be a new potential Red Lobster acquirer

@minchoi regarding quality review