- Sep 13, 2002
- 96,673
- 199,350
- 113
Crazy:
By last year, the spirit of warmth and generosity had vanished, and Endless Shrimp had made the dining room “hellish and chaotic,” as one manager put it. Some customers planted themselves there for hours, ordering nothing but shrimp and water.
“We called them campers,” said Zachary Spain, a manager at the Red Lobster in Times Square. “This one couple, they came in every Sunday, and I’d say they ate about 100 shrimp apiece, maybe 120. And we’d see people all the time, scraping shrimp into Tupperware on their lap.” . . .
Ultimate Endless Shrimp had long been an annual promotion, timed for the back-to-school period in September, when restaurant numbers dip. The rest of the year, it was a Monday-only offering. Now, it would be as permanent as the plastic bibs. The company announced on June 26, 2023, that Endless Shrimp was “here to stay!”
The impact was instantaneous. There were lines out the door — because many guests wouldn’t leave. For a few months, there were no time limits, and no rules against sharing with friends or demanding to-go bags. And the influx of shrimpaholics skewed young and boisterous, changing the ambience of the restaurant and putting off core customers.
“Endless Shrimp brought out the worst in people,” said Mr. Varsava, who was then working in the Orem restaurant. “They complained that the shrimp was not coming out fast enough, or that it sat under the heat lamps for too long. And when they complained to corporate, it counted against our bonus.”
Overstretched waiters were asked to cover eight tables instead of four. They quit so often that Mr. Clarke spent much of his time trying to recruit new hires.
“I’d do 16 interviews over the weekend, and hire them all,” he recalled. “Three would show up. If we were lucky, they’d last a week or two. A bunch quit the same night they started. And I totally understood. We were hiring these kids and treating them like animals.”
For some locations, Endless Shrimp was a disaster in other ways. To make publicity easy and add a bit of buzz, the promotion cost the same $20 in rural Ohio as it did in Manhattan. That meant that in higher-income ZIP codes, Red Lobster lost about $3 every time an Endless Shrimper walked through the door.
This wouldn’t have mattered if, as hoped, diners had added high-margin items, like mango mai tais, to their tabs, or brought friends who wanted $40 surf and turf. It didn’t happen. In Orem, the average check fell to $28 from $36.
By last year, the spirit of warmth and generosity had vanished, and Endless Shrimp had made the dining room “hellish and chaotic,” as one manager put it. Some customers planted themselves there for hours, ordering nothing but shrimp and water.
“We called them campers,” said Zachary Spain, a manager at the Red Lobster in Times Square. “This one couple, they came in every Sunday, and I’d say they ate about 100 shrimp apiece, maybe 120. And we’d see people all the time, scraping shrimp into Tupperware on their lap.” . . .
Ultimate Endless Shrimp had long been an annual promotion, timed for the back-to-school period in September, when restaurant numbers dip. The rest of the year, it was a Monday-only offering. Now, it would be as permanent as the plastic bibs. The company announced on June 26, 2023, that Endless Shrimp was “here to stay!”
The impact was instantaneous. There were lines out the door — because many guests wouldn’t leave. For a few months, there were no time limits, and no rules against sharing with friends or demanding to-go bags. And the influx of shrimpaholics skewed young and boisterous, changing the ambience of the restaurant and putting off core customers.
“Endless Shrimp brought out the worst in people,” said Mr. Varsava, who was then working in the Orem restaurant. “They complained that the shrimp was not coming out fast enough, or that it sat under the heat lamps for too long. And when they complained to corporate, it counted against our bonus.”
Overstretched waiters were asked to cover eight tables instead of four. They quit so often that Mr. Clarke spent much of his time trying to recruit new hires.
“I’d do 16 interviews over the weekend, and hire them all,” he recalled. “Three would show up. If we were lucky, they’d last a week or two. A bunch quit the same night they started. And I totally understood. We were hiring these kids and treating them like animals.”
For some locations, Endless Shrimp was a disaster in other ways. To make publicity easy and add a bit of buzz, the promotion cost the same $20 in rural Ohio as it did in Manhattan. That meant that in higher-income ZIP codes, Red Lobster lost about $3 every time an Endless Shrimper walked through the door.
This wouldn’t have mattered if, as hoped, diners had added high-margin items, like mango mai tais, to their tabs, or brought friends who wanted $40 surf and turf. It didn’t happen. In Orem, the average check fell to $28 from $36.
