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Hedge fund gobbled for raping capital.
Forced sale by Darden by activist (hedge) investors.
New hedge fund owned RL company immediately sells all its property (land & buildings) to separate property company owned by hedge funds.
Big dividends for hedge funds! Billions sucked out of company into shareholder pockets.
New RL then leases all properties, incurring higher costs (now paying rent!)
Pandemic.
5 year leases all up! Property company raises rent!
RL can’t afford higher rent on all locations, no longer has capital to borrow against (all sold 5 years ago), and goes bankrupt.
MBAs are destroying the world.
How did we ever get to the point where an MBA is a highly respected degree? Those skills have no utility on their own and yet we allow essentially uneducated people to run basically all businesses. I want to see engineers run companies that make things, chefs run restaurants, and doctors run hospitals, not these idiots whose only skills involve making graphs and excel sheets.
Oh they can’t make graphs or excel sheets either don’t worry.
The only pivot they know is the quote from Friends
I want to see engineers run companies that make things
I see you’ve never worked with engineers.
I am an engineer so take what you like from that information. I know the stereotype well but the best business leaders I’ve ever worked with directly were good engineers before they were anything else. I don’t think it’s possible to have a sustainable business plan without a rigorous understanding of every part of the process of making whatever it is that you’re selling. There isn’t anyone out there who knows that better than the engineers who design and build it.
Dog, we’re all engineers. And the worst business leaders I’ve ever worked with directly were good engineers before they got promoted into positions of management (or started their own terrible business, as the case might be) in which they had no business being because the skill requirements for engineering are not automatically transferable to managing people. It’s called the Peter Principle, and there’s some real truth to it.
Haha yeah that’s true but I don’t think it negates what I’m saying. Some people aren’t cut out for management and that’s perfectly fine. However, getting an MBA isn’t going to change you from one type of person to the other. Assuming that the basic characteristics of a manager are present in either case then I absolutely believe that an engineer will make a better high level leader than an MBA.
However, getting an MBA isn’t going to change you from one type of person to the other.
Sure, an MBA is sort of useless. Management is largely based around personality. And you can’t really teach personality. It’s the same way for a lot of professions, like teaching, actually. In fact, I’d say the management pool should be drawn from people who were accomplished high school teachers. There’s a lot of crossover there in terms of organization, planning, and dealing with a bunch of people who all hate the work you make them do.
I’d rephrase it to be, “People who’ve worked their way up the ranks within the company have the most experience at all levels and understand what it takes to provide a good product. Those people can make good managers.”
Jag-offs that graduate Stanford and just want to extract money are leaches and should be salted immediately.
Again, it comes back to Reagan.
“Deregulation” was a green light for every greedhead to go all out. Small local banks suddenly became giant investment machines.
Look up the adventures of Neil Bush, son and brother to Presidents.
Sounds great expect that most small business owners do a shit job of running the operations of a business. At best they stumble through it. It’s just not their passion to deal with legalities, OSHA, taxes, payroll, accounts payable, accounts receivable, etc.
The problem with MBAs is that they have little or no practical experience with the business they’re running (seasonality, how to motivate employees, etc). There are some good MBAs out there but there are so many more poor ones. They aren’t looking at the human factor at all. It’s a space that the universities don’t teach for. Everything is KPI related instead. That’s their ultimate downfall.
It’s just not their passion to deal with legalities, OSHA, taxes, payroll, accounts payable, accounts receivable, etc.
All of that should be handled by lawyers, accountants, and finance people. The MBA is not generally the one doing any of that directly though. They’re the ones managing the people that do that work and telling them what to prioritize. And therein lies the problem as you correctly pointed out; those are all secondary business functions. They are important parts of any business but are not the fundamental driver of any real business. What the company makes or sells or consults about or whatever else is the actual business and MBAs don’t generally know a thing about that part. Letting them steer all of the corporate ships in America is a huge miscalculation and it’s also a big part of why things are getting more and more fucked up for everybody.
They aren’t looking at the human factor at all.
That is an important point. It’s also a pretty good summary of the problem. MBAs ignore everything that made a business successful (people being a huge factor here) and focus on eternally increasing profits, which inevitably leads to making the product as shitty as it can possibly be while still somewhat meeting expectations, and even that last part is becoming less and less important.
Great response expansion!
Same way you need a bachelor’s for an entry level job.
Not surprised, they’ve gone downhill and are way too expensive, but im sure they have bankruptcy plan to get back to the way they were!
agreed to sell its business to a new entity wholly owned and controlled by its lenders, a so-called stalking horse arrangement.
Oh. Nvm, time to write them off for good…
I think people outside of flyover states are tired of these old corporate chain restaurants with terrible food and high prices.
They were restaurants that were entirely propped up by advertising. Applebee’s food never looked as good in person as it did on TV, and definitely didn’t taste that great.
Once Millennials started streaming video content and blocking ads there was no way they could dupe people into eating their terrible food.
Millenials were forced to go to Darren Group restaurants and Applebee’s almost exclusively growing up.
Blocking advertising isn’t what hurt them with millenials, it’s an entire childhood of awful food.
My parents never took me to these places, so I always felt like I missed out. Now they’re all way too expensive to justify but it doesn’t really feel like I missed out on much. McDonald’s is the weirdest one. I used to think everyone hated it, until way later when I realized, nope. It was just my dad that hated it and made it so we couldn’t have it. He wouldn’t even drink Coke
Sounds like a good dad, all things considered.
lol. That’s an overly-generous way to look at it.
If only those were the only ways he forced everyone in his family to agree to support his personal preferences
For the lessons you’re maybe thinking of, I’d give credit to my mom. She wouldn’t let us have things like chef boyardee (had to look up the spelling. lol) because she’d say it wasn’t as real but then would instead make legit pasta with store-bought ingredients. Whereas my dad would just prefer Burger King instead of McDonald’s for some reason. Dude just hated things that were popular and happened to be right a couple of times. Bonus points if kids really wanted something he didn’t care for - then he happily rubbed our faces in how we were dumb for wanting what everyone else wanted.
All said, they were immigrants so advertising def had to hit different for them
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I go out to eat often and haven’t been to a Red Lobster in over 20 years. When I drive by them they’re basically invisible to me
I agree with you in regards to the restaurants but am aggrieved by the use of the phrase “flyover states”. It’s incredibly rude and dismissive.
It’s not really a dig at these states more just stating how things are. Chain restaurants like these are the main game in town due to low wages and much lower population density.
The phrase “flyover state” is a pejorative used by coastal dwellers. It’s a put down and every person I’ve ever interacted with who uses it is a bigot or an enormous douche-canoe; often both.
Chain restaurants like these are the main game in town due to low wages and much lower population density.
I’d contest that, the smaller the city or town the less likely they are to have these kinds of chain restaurants. A place with a population of 60,000 may only have a handful of chain restaurants and anywhere with less than 30,000 may not have any at all. In my experience the smaller the population the higher the number of mom and pop restaurants.
Lol found the flyover state resident
It’s amazing what people can turn into an insult.
I live in a “flyover state”. What does that say about me?
I mean, surely it means something, or you said it for no reason.
Please, psychoanalyze me based on where I live.
It means you live in an area with relatively low population, and therefore low national corporate presence, and happen to be between two regions with relatively high populations, leaving the only convenient means of travel between the densely populated regions to be air travel?
Yes, and? You supposedly work in tech and should damn well know that place of residence has absolutely nothing to do with a persons value.
Yet there you are…showing your bigoted ass to the entire world.
Hmm never commented on your value as a person, just a conjecture/joke based on your apparent hate for the term flyover states.
Also, do you think that phrase applied to any non-coastal state? Because it doesn’t, it applies to the boring ass states, like say Wyoming that has nothing interesting going on whatsoever and mostly comprised of small population towns.
There are plenty of non-coastal states that are not considered flyover states, like Nevada.
like say Wyoming that has nothing interesting going on whatsoever and mostly comprised of small population towns.
Billion Dollar Solar Projects, FAANG DCs popping up like mushrooms, world leading rare earth mineral discoveries, billion dollar wind farms, world first carbon sequestration projects, world class fly fishing, the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone National Park. Yup, you’ve got us figured out all right. There’s nothing going on here at all. 😆😆😆
Wow dude. You need to talk to someone if it bothers you this much.
I hear ya. I can’t stand when bigots call where I live “the east coast”. Like wtf learn some manners, amIright?
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So apparently there’s foul play.
Last summer, under Thai Union, Red Lobster turned $20 endless shrimp into a permanent item on the menu for the first time, instead of its traditional limited-time offer deal. The change cost the company $11 million and cut into Thai Union profit. In its bankruptcy filing, Red Lobster said it is investigating the circumstances of that promotion, which the company’s management opposed.
And then later…
But the company in its bankruptcy filing blamed Thai Union for the losses. Noting that under the guise of a “quality review,” Red Lobster eliminated two of its breaded shrimp suppliers, leaving Thai Union with an exclusive deal. That led to higher costs for the restaurant chain, and did not comply with the company’s typical decision-making process for picking suppliers based on projected demand.
Sounds like Red Lobster got juiced. I’ve never eaten there, but this is some evil stuff.
How is their shrimp supplier determining what promotions they run and when?
yeah that part confused me too. is a supplier an owner too?
The Thai Union owns 49% of the stock. That shouldn’t be enough to control the company, but the fact that “none” of the C suite agreed with getting rid of the other suppliers but it happened anyway?
Maybe. Perhaps Thai Union was going for vertical integration and wanted to have control of the fried shrimp lifecycle all the way to your mouth, but bit off more than they could chew.
In 10 years there will be no real businesses left because they were bought by private equity, then gutted and resold.
Damn, back to local then. What a shame.
Nah, it’ll just be Amazon and Walmart and that’s it lol. Oh, and ghost kitchens under them that are pretending not to be them.
Welcome to Costco. I love you.
This is the price they must pay for offering unlimited shrimp when there aren’t unlimited shrimp on the planet.
Technically there are, just not at any single given time, and only for as long as the consumption rate does not exceed the reproduction rate.
At least until the Sun runs out.
Before the Sun goes cold, it will enter a red giant stage which will bake and then envelop Earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun
The Sun does not have enough mass to explode as a supernova. Instead, when it runs out of hydrogen in the core in approximately 5 billion years, core hydrogen fusion will stop, and there will be nothing to prevent the core from contracting. The release of gravitational potential energy will cause the luminosity of the Sun to increase, ending the main sequence phase and leading the Sun to expand over the next billion years: first into a subgiant, and then into a red giant.[139][142][143] The heating due to gravitational contraction will also lead to expansion of the Sun and hydrogen fusion in a shell just outside the core, where unfused hydrogen remains, contributing to the increased luminosity, which will eventually reach more than 1,000 times its present luminosity.[139] When the Sun enters its red-giant branch (RGB) phase, it will engulf (and very likely destroy) Mercury and Venus. According to a 2008 paper, Earth’s orbit will have initially expanded to at most 1.5 AU (220 million km; 140 million mi) due to the Sun’s loss of mass. However, Earth’s orbit will then start shrinking due to tidal forces (and, eventually, drag from the lower chromosphere) so that it is engulfed by the Sun during the tip of the red-giant branch phase 7.59 billion years from now, 3.8 and 1 million years after Mercury and Venus have respectively suffered the same fate.[143]
By the time the Sun reaches the tip of the red-giant branch, it will be about 256 times larger than it is today, with a radius of 1.19 AU (178 million km; 111 million mi).[143][144] The Sun will spend around a billion years in the RGB and lose around a third of its mass.[143]
After the red-giant branch, the Sun has approximately 120 million years of active life left, but much happens. First, the core (full of degenerate helium) ignites violently in the helium flash; it is estimated that 6% of the core—itself 40% of the Sun’s mass—will be converted into carbon within a matter of minutes through the triple-alpha process.[145] The Sun then shrinks to around 10 times its current size and 50 times the luminosity, with a temperature a little lower than today. It will then have reached the red clump or horizontal branch, but a star of the Sun’s metallicity does not evolve blueward along the horizontal branch. Instead, it just becomes moderately larger and more luminous over about 100 million years as it continues to react helium in the core.[143]
When the helium is exhausted, the Sun will repeat the expansion it followed when the hydrogen in the core was exhausted. This time, however, it all happens faster, and the Sun becomes larger and more luminous. This is the asymptotic-giant-branch phase, and the Sun is alternately reacting hydrogen in a shell or helium in a deeper shell. After about 20 million years on the early asymptotic giant branch, the Sun becomes increasingly unstable, with rapid mass loss and thermal pulses that increase the size and luminosity for a few hundred years every 100,000 years or so. The thermal pulses become larger each time, with the later pulses pushing the luminosity to as much as 5,000 times the current level. Despite this, the Sun’s maximum AGB radius will not be as large as its tip-RGB maximum: 179 R☉, or about 0.832 AU (124.5 million km; 77.3 million mi).[143][146]
Models vary depending on the rate and timing of mass loss. Models that have higher mass loss on the red-giant branch produce smaller, less luminous stars at the tip of the asymptotic giant branch, perhaps only 2,000 times the luminosity and less than 200 times the radius.[143] For the Sun, four thermal pulses are predicted before it completely loses its outer envelope and starts to make a planetary nebula. By the end of that phase—lasting approximately 500,000 years—the Sun will only have about half of its current mass.[citation needed]
The post-asymptotic-giant-branch evolution is even faster. The luminosity stays approximately constant as the temperature increases, with the ejected half of the Sun’s mass becoming ionized into a planetary nebula as the exposed core reaches 30,000 K (29,700 °C; 53,500 °F), as if it is in a sort of blue loop. The final naked core, a white dwarf, will have a temperature of over 100,000 K (100,000 °C; 180,000 °F) and contain an estimated 54.05% of the Sun’s present-day mass.[143] The planetary nebula will disperse in about 10,000 years, but the white dwarf will survive for trillions of years before fading to a hypothetical super-dense black dwarf.[147][148] As such, it would give off no more energy for an even longer time than it was a white dwarf.[149]
Clearly we just need to keep inching the earth away from our star as needed. Simple as that. Any last questions?
I’m sick of seeing these types of chains anyways in every small town and big city. We generally make it a point to only ever go to local places if we are eating out, which we rarely do anyways. Eating out is like…$30 /person. $30/groceries per person goes a lot longer and usually tastes way better, imo.
$30 in groceries won’t get you very far :(
It gets you much further than a single meal at a restaurant
True, it’ll get you, what, fries and half a drink?
He highlighted the fact that dining costs have outweighed groceries, and that 50% of U.S. states had increased their minimum wages, further reducing Red Lobster’s profit margin.
If you can’t survive unless you’re allowed to pay starvation level wages then the time for your business has come and gone.
The employees may have been payed starvation-level wages, but dollars to donuts the C-suite was well compensated.
Reading that quote in isolation from the rest of the article sounds like, “and this didn’t help the situation”, not “if it hands been for these higher wages, we would have been totally fine.”
Let’s face it, if business is hard, any increased expense is going to hurt (and is going to be mentioned in your bankruptcy filing), even if it’s insignificant in isolation.
The shrimp must flow!
