For food critics, it’s common convention to never post your face on social media, lest you be recognized at a restaurant you’re tasked with reviewing and get preferential treatment. With the same surreptitious style, incoming Red Lobster CEO Damola Adamolekun frequented locations of the seafood chain months before he took the helm, assessing its food and how to improve the company.
In May, Adamolekun began visiting Red Lobsters around the U.S., snacking on crab legs, Maine lobster tail, and its famed Cheddar Bay biscuits, the Wall Street Journal reported. But Adamolekun’s status as the restaurant’s future CEO was unbeknownst to Red Lobster fellow dinners. Adamolekun, for the most part, enjoyed the food. He spoke with employees and regular customers to better understand if it was worth taking a dive to lead a seafood joint with a washed-up reputation.
Restaurant goers “just want quality food in a comfortable setting and to connect with the history of the brand,” he told WSJ. “That’s the first step.”
That step will be more of a leap. Red Lobster filed for bankruptcy in May, shuttering dozens of North American restaurant locations and auctioning off equipment from more than 50 spots. The chain blamed its struggles on an unsustainable $20 all-you-can-eat shrimp promotion that wound up contributing to $11 million in losses, the toils of inflation, sluggish traffic, and quarrels with a former owner Thai Union. Powerhouse private equity firm Fortress Investment Group tapped him as Red Lobster’s CEO in August. The $49 billion investment management company will take over as Red Lobster’s parent as it emerges from bankruptcy.
The 56-year-old restaurant chain will put its trust in the 35-year-old CEO, who defined his early career by being a small fish in a big pond. Growing up in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and the Netherlands before moving to the U.S. at age 9, Adamolekun was a high school speech and debate champ and college investment nerd. Three years after graduating from Harvard Business School in 2017, he became CEO of pan-Asian restaurant chain P.F. Chang’s. He left the position in 2023 and joined private equity firm Garnett Station Partners this year.
Undercover boss
Adamolekun has prided himself on an unconventional approach that blurs the boundaries of leisure and work—or a sit-down seafood meal and a reconnaissance mission.
“My life is my work. My work is my life,” he told Fortune in 2023. Adamolekun…
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