Understanding Red Lobster’s Popularity Among Black Diners
April 05, 2011 08:07 AM
by Steven Barboza
Why is Red Lobster so popular, particularly among African Americans?
The chain – a key brand of multi-chain operator Darden Restaurants, which serves 400 million meals each year and has $7 billion in annual sales – consistently ranks high in national restaurant surveys. Industry analysts chalk up Red Lobster’s success to good management and fine-tuned marketing campaigns such as the “Lobsterfest” promo. Darden’s spokesman ties company success to a message point on how Darden focuses on the total “guest experience,” adding, “We nurture a relationship with all of our guests,” not just African Americans.
All of the above might be true. But there could well be a simpler reason for the chain’s popularity among black people: eating at Red Lobster may be the next best thing to attending a fish fry.
The chain’s dinner menu alone, filled with reasonably priced items, is a kind of nirvana for diners who simply cannot resist fried food. An informal review turned up some 30 fried or partly fried dishes, from popcorn shrimp to hand-battered fish and chips. And it’s a well-known fact that fried fish is deeply rooted in the African American culinary experience – a tried-and-true staple of “soul food” cookery.
“The reality of it is Red Lobster isn’t the best seafood restaurant to go to, nor is the quality of it the best, but it’s economically correct and it doesn’t taste like dirt,” said Jeffery Lewis, owner of the Houston-based Little Black Box Company, a catering concern specializing in gourmet Southern comfort food. “It’s definitely food for the masses,” he added, saying Red Lobster is one step removed from fast food.
Darden is among the world’s largest casual dining companies, with more than 180,000 employees. “We are one of the largest private buyers of seafood in the world,” said Rich Jeffers, Darden spokesman. “We look at our guests holistically and we’re proud of the fact that we have a diverse guest base, and we have a diverse workforce that reflects that guest base.” He said 42% of Darden employees are minorities, but would not divulge how many were African American.
It’s difficult to gauge just how popular Red Lobster is among African Americans. Jeffers refused to divulge guest demographics and “for competitive reasons” wouldn’t even say which states, let alone which restaurants, rang up the most Red Lobster business.
Still, it is a well-known “open secret” that the casual dining chain ranks high on the dining-out lists of black people across the nation. Crystal Swiggett, who worked as a server in a suburban Cleveland Red Lobster for two and a half years, noted that black guests kept the joint jumping. The restaurant was located in Beachwood, Ohio, where the population is 87% white and 9% black, but the restaurant’s clientele was a complete flip flop of the town’s racial makeup.
“Ninety percent of guests were black,” Swiggett said. “It was the busiest restaurant I ever worked in. It stayed busy.” Though Swiggett no longer works at Red Lobster, she dines there regularly with her family. She has cut back on fried fish, saying, “Family health issues led me
A study, Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke, reported recently in the medical journal “Neurology” found that African Americans eat far more fried fish than whites. Researchers collected data from 21,675 participants.
“Specifically, what we found was that African Americans were three and a half times more likely than whites to eat two or more servings of fried fish each week,” said the study’s author, Dr. Fadi Nahab of Emory University. “African Americans on average were eating twice as much fried fish than whites.”
Nahab believes these differences may account for a higher incidence of stroke among blacks in the so-called “stroke belt” – North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana.
The region has a 20% higher rate of death from stroke than the rest of the nation, and in the so-called “buckle” of the stroke belt – North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia – people are 40% more likely to die from stroke, he said. Nahab cited another study that found that 90% of African Americans fry their fish.
Fish fries are popular paper-plate affairs across the South, gatherings where “working people’s food” gets cooked, according to food author John T. Edge. Using traditions or even recipes traced back to slavery, fish fries often are organized against a backdrop of family reunions and are popular campaign stops for political candidates. House Majority Leader Jim Clyburn (D-SC), arguably the most powerful black politician in the nation after President Obama, has served as host of an annual fish fry in Columbia, South Carolina, since 1992. Popular items on the menu: presidential politics – and fried whiting.
“I think more than anything we are more concerned about flavor. A lot of fine dining experiences aren’t fine dining to us because we like our food seasoned, sometimes overly seasoned,” said Lewis of Little Black Box. “In fried food, that’s one way you can spread the flavors all the way through and cook it fast and quick, and you can cook again for the masses. You can deep fry a whole bunch of shrimp faster than you can grill it.”
To be fair, Red Lobster’s success is not entirely due to fried fish, but to its wide choice of cooking methods. The menu in fact is a study in diversity, with blackened, grilled, broiled and fried dishes and a variety of fresh fish available daily.
In 2008, the chain installed wood-fired grills in its restaurants. The oak wood grills are designed to bring out the natural flavor of seafood. Darden reportedly trained, certified and dispatched 3,500 “grill masters” to handle the cooking platform. (The company doesn’t skimp on training; Olive Garden sends its chefs to a culinary institute in Tuscany, Italy).
In addition, although the Center for Science in the Public Interest has dubbed a Darden dish (Olive Garden’s 1,030-calorie Lasagna Fritta appetizer, at 1,030 calories) “food porn,” the calorie- and carb-conscious magazine “Men’s Health” in 2010 crowned Red Lobster the “healthiest sit down chain restaurant in America,” a place where patrons can sit and “without guilt” eat such entrées as the pound-and-a-quarter, 298-calorie “Live Maine Lobster.”
Darden spokesman Jeffers said black patronage is appreciated, but that blacks are not specially targeted. “The success of our company is driven in large part by our focus on the guest experience and that’s treating everybody with warmth, with hospitality, and making sure that they have a phenomenal experience in our restaurants – and that’s regardless of who that is,” Jeffers said.
There are nearly 700 Red Lobster restaurants across the nation, and the chain has locations in Japan. Red Lobster, together with another dining giant, Olive Garden, are Darden’s best-known brands. Olive Garden is the nation’s largest Italian restaurant chain, with nearly 1,000 locations, a well-known slogan (“When you’re here, you’re family”), and TV commercials featuring hunger-inducing close-ups of steaming food.
Quarterly sales for Darden, reported in March, were above estimate, up 5.5%, to $1.98 billion. Olive Garden was up 4.3% to $907 million, and Red Lobster was up 1.2% to $663 million. Market research firm Robert W. Baird & Co. reported that Red Lobster is “the dominant player in the casual seafood segment,” and projected an increase in U.S. restaurant sales for 2011, up 3.6% over 2010
Darden is headed by Clarence Otis Jr., a rare commodity in the nation’s c-suites: he is one of only five black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. The son of a janitor and a homemaker, Otis was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and grew up in the Watts ghetto of Los Angeles in the 60s. He attended Williams College, then graduated from Stanford Law School and after a series of Wall Street jobs, he was eventually recruited by Darden, and named treasurer. He climbed the corporate ladder and was named CEO in 2004, building a record of strong sales.
The company today is an undeniable success. In December, Baird analyst David Tarantino reportedly called Darden one of the best-run restaurant chains in the nation.
The company built a jewel of a corporate campus: a $152 million, 469,000-square-foot headquarters complex in Orlando. The three-story building was “cooked-to-order,” one reporter said, complete with employee amenities such as a banking center, a fitness center, dry-cleaning facilities, a cafeteria that prepares take-home meals, a gift shop, a coffee house, and a half-mile walking path.
“We’ve got roughly 1,400 people that work in this building, that support 1,800 restaurants across the country, so that’s fewer than one person per restaurant,” Jeffers said. “We’ve really brought the ability for a much more collaborative work environment across our six brands and all the people that are part of supporting our restaurants out in the field. It’s a much stronger collaboration because it’s all under one roof.”
Otis touts Darden’s success, tying it to his own experience, saying: “Given my own personal journey, I’ve had the opportunity to experience the broad socio-economic spectrum in this country. And I believe that experience has been beneficial in leading an organization that serves such [a] diverse guest base.”
While Otis appreciates black patronage, according to Jeffers, his perspective on the restaurant business isn’t limited to one demographic: “It’s not just about the African American community; it’s about all of our guests. That’s the way Mr. Otis looks at it.”
http://atlantapost.com/2011/04/05/u...popularity-amongst-african-american-diners/4/
April 05, 2011 08:07 AM
by Steven Barboza
Why is Red Lobster so popular, particularly among African Americans?
The chain – a key brand of multi-chain operator Darden Restaurants, which serves 400 million meals each year and has $7 billion in annual sales – consistently ranks high in national restaurant surveys. Industry analysts chalk up Red Lobster’s success to good management and fine-tuned marketing campaigns such as the “Lobsterfest” promo. Darden’s spokesman ties company success to a message point on how Darden focuses on the total “guest experience,” adding, “We nurture a relationship with all of our guests,” not just African Americans.
All of the above might be true. But there could well be a simpler reason for the chain’s popularity among black people: eating at Red Lobster may be the next best thing to attending a fish fry.
The chain’s dinner menu alone, filled with reasonably priced items, is a kind of nirvana for diners who simply cannot resist fried food. An informal review turned up some 30 fried or partly fried dishes, from popcorn shrimp to hand-battered fish and chips. And it’s a well-known fact that fried fish is deeply rooted in the African American culinary experience – a tried-and-true staple of “soul food” cookery.
“The reality of it is Red Lobster isn’t the best seafood restaurant to go to, nor is the quality of it the best, but it’s economically correct and it doesn’t taste like dirt,” said Jeffery Lewis, owner of the Houston-based Little Black Box Company, a catering concern specializing in gourmet Southern comfort food. “It’s definitely food for the masses,” he added, saying Red Lobster is one step removed from fast food.
Darden is among the world’s largest casual dining companies, with more than 180,000 employees. “We are one of the largest private buyers of seafood in the world,” said Rich Jeffers, Darden spokesman. “We look at our guests holistically and we’re proud of the fact that we have a diverse guest base, and we have a diverse workforce that reflects that guest base.” He said 42% of Darden employees are minorities, but would not divulge how many were African American.
It’s difficult to gauge just how popular Red Lobster is among African Americans. Jeffers refused to divulge guest demographics and “for competitive reasons” wouldn’t even say which states, let alone which restaurants, rang up the most Red Lobster business.
Still, it is a well-known “open secret” that the casual dining chain ranks high on the dining-out lists of black people across the nation. Crystal Swiggett, who worked as a server in a suburban Cleveland Red Lobster for two and a half years, noted that black guests kept the joint jumping. The restaurant was located in Beachwood, Ohio, where the population is 87% white and 9% black, but the restaurant’s clientele was a complete flip flop of the town’s racial makeup.
“Ninety percent of guests were black,” Swiggett said. “It was the busiest restaurant I ever worked in. It stayed busy.” Though Swiggett no longer works at Red Lobster, she dines there regularly with her family. She has cut back on fried fish, saying, “Family health issues led me
A study, Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke, reported recently in the medical journal “Neurology” found that African Americans eat far more fried fish than whites. Researchers collected data from 21,675 participants.
“Specifically, what we found was that African Americans were three and a half times more likely than whites to eat two or more servings of fried fish each week,” said the study’s author, Dr. Fadi Nahab of Emory University. “African Americans on average were eating twice as much fried fish than whites.”
Nahab believes these differences may account for a higher incidence of stroke among blacks in the so-called “stroke belt” – North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana.
The region has a 20% higher rate of death from stroke than the rest of the nation, and in the so-called “buckle” of the stroke belt – North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia – people are 40% more likely to die from stroke, he said. Nahab cited another study that found that 90% of African Americans fry their fish.
Fish fries are popular paper-plate affairs across the South, gatherings where “working people’s food” gets cooked, according to food author John T. Edge. Using traditions or even recipes traced back to slavery, fish fries often are organized against a backdrop of family reunions and are popular campaign stops for political candidates. House Majority Leader Jim Clyburn (D-SC), arguably the most powerful black politician in the nation after President Obama, has served as host of an annual fish fry in Columbia, South Carolina, since 1992. Popular items on the menu: presidential politics – and fried whiting.
“I think more than anything we are more concerned about flavor. A lot of fine dining experiences aren’t fine dining to us because we like our food seasoned, sometimes overly seasoned,” said Lewis of Little Black Box. “In fried food, that’s one way you can spread the flavors all the way through and cook it fast and quick, and you can cook again for the masses. You can deep fry a whole bunch of shrimp faster than you can grill it.”
To be fair, Red Lobster’s success is not entirely due to fried fish, but to its wide choice of cooking methods. The menu in fact is a study in diversity, with blackened, grilled, broiled and fried dishes and a variety of fresh fish available daily.
In 2008, the chain installed wood-fired grills in its restaurants. The oak wood grills are designed to bring out the natural flavor of seafood. Darden reportedly trained, certified and dispatched 3,500 “grill masters” to handle the cooking platform. (The company doesn’t skimp on training; Olive Garden sends its chefs to a culinary institute in Tuscany, Italy).
In addition, although the Center for Science in the Public Interest has dubbed a Darden dish (Olive Garden’s 1,030-calorie Lasagna Fritta appetizer, at 1,030 calories) “food porn,” the calorie- and carb-conscious magazine “Men’s Health” in 2010 crowned Red Lobster the “healthiest sit down chain restaurant in America,” a place where patrons can sit and “without guilt” eat such entrées as the pound-and-a-quarter, 298-calorie “Live Maine Lobster.”
Darden spokesman Jeffers said black patronage is appreciated, but that blacks are not specially targeted. “The success of our company is driven in large part by our focus on the guest experience and that’s treating everybody with warmth, with hospitality, and making sure that they have a phenomenal experience in our restaurants – and that’s regardless of who that is,” Jeffers said.
There are nearly 700 Red Lobster restaurants across the nation, and the chain has locations in Japan. Red Lobster, together with another dining giant, Olive Garden, are Darden’s best-known brands. Olive Garden is the nation’s largest Italian restaurant chain, with nearly 1,000 locations, a well-known slogan (“When you’re here, you’re family”), and TV commercials featuring hunger-inducing close-ups of steaming food.
Quarterly sales for Darden, reported in March, were above estimate, up 5.5%, to $1.98 billion. Olive Garden was up 4.3% to $907 million, and Red Lobster was up 1.2% to $663 million. Market research firm Robert W. Baird & Co. reported that Red Lobster is “the dominant player in the casual seafood segment,” and projected an increase in U.S. restaurant sales for 2011, up 3.6% over 2010
Darden is headed by Clarence Otis Jr., a rare commodity in the nation’s c-suites: he is one of only five black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. The son of a janitor and a homemaker, Otis was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and grew up in the Watts ghetto of Los Angeles in the 60s. He attended Williams College, then graduated from Stanford Law School and after a series of Wall Street jobs, he was eventually recruited by Darden, and named treasurer. He climbed the corporate ladder and was named CEO in 2004, building a record of strong sales.
The company today is an undeniable success. In December, Baird analyst David Tarantino reportedly called Darden one of the best-run restaurant chains in the nation.
The company built a jewel of a corporate campus: a $152 million, 469,000-square-foot headquarters complex in Orlando. The three-story building was “cooked-to-order,” one reporter said, complete with employee amenities such as a banking center, a fitness center, dry-cleaning facilities, a cafeteria that prepares take-home meals, a gift shop, a coffee house, and a half-mile walking path.
“We’ve got roughly 1,400 people that work in this building, that support 1,800 restaurants across the country, so that’s fewer than one person per restaurant,” Jeffers said. “We’ve really brought the ability for a much more collaborative work environment across our six brands and all the people that are part of supporting our restaurants out in the field. It’s a much stronger collaboration because it’s all under one roof.”
Otis touts Darden’s success, tying it to his own experience, saying: “Given my own personal journey, I’ve had the opportunity to experience the broad socio-economic spectrum in this country. And I believe that experience has been beneficial in leading an organization that serves such [a] diverse guest base.”
While Otis appreciates black patronage, according to Jeffers, his perspective on the restaurant business isn’t limited to one demographic: “It’s not just about the African American community; it’s about all of our guests. That’s the way Mr. Otis looks at it.”
http://atlantapost.com/2011/04/05/u...popularity-amongst-african-american-diners/4/
