RED LOBSTER: MARKET RESEARCH REVEALS WHATS FRESH TODAY

BACKGROUND
1968: Foundation:
Red Lobster was founded in 1968 by entrepreneur Bill Darden and Charley Woossby. Originally billed as a “Harbor for seafood Lovers”, the original restaurant in Lakeland, Florida, was followed by several others throughout the Southest.
1970:
General Mills acquired Red Lobster in 1970 as a five-unit restaurant company and rapidly expanded the company nationwide.
As it reached more parts of the country, Red Lobster continually introduced guests to fresh dishes that quickly became favorites, with many guests getting their first taste of calamari, snow crab and Key lime pie here – not to mention the fact that it is where popcorn shrimp was invented. (after 1970, until 1980)
In 1980, this year was one of the most important for the company, reaching and being in their stage of maturity, a stage in which all companies desire to be in there.
In 1983, Red Lobster opened its first restaurant in Canada (Windsor, Ontario)
Finishing, in 1995, after decades of success and growth, Red Lobster, together with Olive Garden and later Bahama Breeze, became part of Darden Restaurants, with Joe at the helm until 2005, when he turned the reins over to current CEO and Chairman Clarence Otis.
Over the years, their passion for seafood and delicious experiences has kept Red Lobster evolving. Their menu has grown and changed with their guests’ tastes and their ability to bring the best of the sea to your table. The atmosphere has evolved to keep up with the times and to provide their guests a comfortable place to dine, enjoy and celebrate. But even as Red Lobster continues to grow, they remain dedicated to the standards of excellence and excitement for the sea that inspired Bill Darden in the first place.
Today, there are more than 680 Red Lobster locations in the United States and Canada. Their reputation as seafood experts is known the world over. And they are still as excited as ever to give customers a great meal and feed their passion for seafood.

UPDATING

8/17/2009 RED LOBSTER NAMED TOP SEAFOOD CHAIN IN AMERICA

7/20/2009 RED LOBSTER SERVES UP ‘THE NEXT FOOD NETWORK STAR’ WINNING RECIPE

8/7/2008 RED LOBSTER WRAPS UP SUCCESSFUL INTEGRATION INTO “THE NEXT FOOD NETWORK STAR”

6/23/2008 RED LOBSTER MENU TO FEATURE WINNING DISH FROM "THE NEXT FOOD NETWORK STAR" EPISODE 4

5/15/2008 RED LOBSTER HONORED WITH PRESTIGIOUS MENUMASTERS AWARD

1/24/2008 RED LOBSTER BRINGS FRESH DESIGN TO COLLEGE STATION

1/24/2008 FRESH, DELICIOUS FISH HIGHLIGHTS LENTEN SEASON

8/20/2007 RED LOBSTER REFRESHES WITH DIGITAL DELIGHTS

8/15/2007 FRESHNESS HALLMARKS THE NEW RED LOBSTER

8/15/2007 RED LOBSTER BRINGS FRESH DESIGN TO LATEST RESTAURANT

3/20/2007 RED LOBSTER OPENS FIRST RESTAURANT IN INGLEWOOD

3/14/2007 FISH AND OMEGA-3S: GOOD FOOD = GOOD MOOD

1/29/2007 RED LOBSTER OPENS FIRST RESTAURANT IN GILBERT

12/21/2006 RED LOBSTER: TOP RESTAURANT CHOICE OF AN AMAZING 9-YEAR-OLD HERO!

11/2/2006 RED LOBSTER UNVEILS VIRTUAL FRESH FISH COOKBOOK

11/2/2006 METAIRIE RED LOBSTER FULLY OPERATIONAL IN TIME FOR EXPANDED FRESH FISH OFFERINGS

6/7/2006 RED LOBSTER OPENS FIRST RESTAURANT IN WINCHESTER

3/23/2006 RED LOBSTER OPENS NEW RESTAURANT IN CHRISTIANA

3/9/2006 RED LOBSTER REOPENS METAIRIE RESTAURANT IN TIME FOR LOBSTERFEST

2/28/2006 LOBSTERFEST PRESENTS TERRIFIC NEW RED LOBSTER DISHES

1/30/2006 RED LOBSTER OPENS NEW RESTAURANT IN OAKDALE

1/30/2006 RED LOBSTER ANNOUNCES MANAGEMENT TEAM FOR NEW RESTAURANT IN OAKDALE

1/16/2006 RED LOBSTER ANNOUNCES MANAGEMENT TEAM FOR NEW RESTAURANT IN MYRTLE BEACH

1/16/2006 RED LOBSTER OPENS NEW RESTAURANT IN MYRTLE BEACH

1/11/2006 RED LOBSTER KICKS OFF NEW YEAR WITH A BIG IDEA:JUMBO SHRIMP

1/9/2006 RED LOBSTER OPENS FIRST RESTAURANT IN MAPLEWOOD

1/9/2006 RED LOBSTER ANNOUNCES MANAGEMENT TEAM FOR NEW RESTAURANT IN MAPLEWOOD

ORGANIZATION INVOLVED
Red Lobster is a U.S. chain of seafood restaurants. It also operates in Canada, the UAE and Japan. It is aimed at the mid-level "casual dining" segment of the market. The menu includes a variety of specialty seafood and non-seafood entrees, appetizers, salads, and desserts.
Red Lobster was founded in 1968 by entrepreneur Bill Darden and Charley Woodsby. Originally billed as a "Harbor for Seafood Lovers", the original restaurant in Lakeland, Florida was followed by several others throughout the Southeast. General Mills acquired Red Lobster in 1970 as a five-unit restaurant company. The chain expanded rapidly in the 1980s.
In 1995, Red Lobster (along with Olive Garden and other sister chains) became part of Darden Restaurants, which was spun off from General Mills as an independent, publicly traded corporation. Today, there are nearly 700 Red Lobster locations throughout the United States.
Red Lobster twice offered an endless snow crab leg promotion. However, in 2003 the promotion resulted in parent company Darden Restaurants taking a $3 million charge to third quarter earnings resulting in President Edna Morris' departure from the company. The ill-timed promotion was launched amid high wholesale crab legs prices. The chain also underestimated how many times guest would order more. Further complicating matters at the restaurant level was the amount of time guests spent tableside in the restaurant cracking crab legs which increased wait times in the lobby and overall diminished guest capacity per hour. In more recent years, the chain has usually offered an endless shrimp promotion once per year.

- Culinary Institute of Tuscany for Olive Garden: is a family of more than 750 local restaurants committed to providing every guest with a genuine Italian dining experience. It’s what we like to call Hospitaliano!: our passion for 100% guest delight.

As part of that commitment, we’re proud to serve fresh, delicious Italian food served in a comfortable, home-like setting where everyone is welcomed as a member of our family.
Story

Italy is the inspiration behind our restaurants, from the ingredients we use to our award-winning wine list. Most of all, we are inspired by the Italian culture – warmth, genuine hospitality and the importance placed on family.
Our passion for Italy led us to establish both the Olive Garden Culinary Institute of Tuscany, located on the grounds of the Rocca delle Macie winery, and the Italian Chef Council, a group of chefs based in Italy who meet and collaborate with the Olive Garden executive chefs. To further demonstrate our commitment to Italy, we send a select group of employees each year to the Culinary Institute to become immersed in the culture, gain inspiration and learn the fundamentals of Italian cooking. To date, more than 1200 Olive Garden team members have traveled to Tuscany to participate in this experience.

PEOPLE INVOLVED
Kim Lodrup:
Is the President of Red Lobster and Senior Vice President of Darden Restaurants.
Kim joined Darden Restaurants in November 2003 as Executive Vice President of Marketing for Red Lobster and was named President in May 2004. He has been in the restaurant industry since 1985 and has extensive operations, marketing and brand management experience. Kim was previously Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, North America, for Burger King Corporation. He led that company’s 8,500 North American restaurants to record guest satisfaction while turning around declining same-store sales.
Before Burger King, Kim spent 16 years with Dunkin’ Brands (previously called Allied Domecq Quick Service Restaurants), the parent of Dunkin’ Donuts, Baskin-Robbins and Togo’s. He turned around Dunkin’ Donuts’ previously-declining coffee business as that brand’s Product Marketing Manager for Beverages. Later, as Vice President of Marketing, he managed Dunkin’s hugely successful “Time to make the Donuts” ad campaign starring Fred the Baker. And as Chief Executive Officer of Dunkin’ Brands’ 3,500-unit international division, he took that business from record loses to record profits and dramatically accelerated its growth.
Kim began his career in brand management at Procter & Gamble, working on brands such as Folgers Coffee and Citrus Hill Orange Juice.

Salli Setta:
Salli Setta is Executive Vice President of Red Lobster Marketing and leads the Brand Marketing, Culinary and Beverage, Consumer Insights and Media and Communications teams.
Salli joined Red Lobster in April 2005 after serving as Senior Vice President, Culinary and Beverage at Olive Garden for four years. In that role, she led the technical and creative development of Olive Garden’s award-winning menu and wine list, bringing more approachably authentic Italian dishes and extensive selection of wine to Olive Garden guests. In 2003, her culinary team garnered a Menu Master’s award for “Best Menu Revamp” from Nation’s Restaurant News. In February 2003, Salli received the honor of Restaurant Business’ “Menu Strategist of the Year” in the casual dining industry. That same month, she was named as one of Nation’s Restaurant News’ “Top 50 R&D Culinarians.”

Before that, Salli was Vice President of Brand Marketing, managing all local and national marketing and advertising for Olive Garden. She joined Olive Garden in 1990 as a sales promotion assistant and worked in nearly every marketing capacity at the restaurant company.
In addition, thanks to her marketing research and investigation, one of the most important things that costumers evaluate and judge, as it had been said before, was the freshness of their products. By this way, it help a lot of seafood restaurants, approaching this factor, that led organizations to know and to care costumer’s needs and attitudes.
Salli is involved with the Women’s Foodservice Forum and participates in Darden Restaurants’ Mentor Program and Diversity Council.

MAIN PROBLEM
The main problem of RED LOBSTER was discovered thanks to a marketing study that was conducted at the seafood chain in order to develop a make over to the restaurant, with the idea of converting it into something more attractive.
This problem was focused on the consideration that the restaurant was outdated and unappealing to Potential customers, so they should find ways to devise strategies to bring the brand out of this typecasting.
The problem was that at first, RED LOBSTER wasn’t used to change the habits of customers and they weren’t constantly paying attention to the different dishes that their clients would prefer.
Also the problem was related to the wait time that customers had to face when making their order, because it was too long.
Finally, another mistake that led to the outdating problem was that the restaurant wasn’t taking into account the preferences of customers, and the products weren’t subjected to intensive testing processes.

STRATEGIES
In order to solve the problem, Lodrup, the RED LOBSTER president, decided to divide it into three different areas, based on the consideration that the restaurant was outdated and unappealing to potential customers.
• The first one was the need of improve Operations for customers not to wait too long your order.
• The second was Improving the image and shifting the focus from low prices to freshness.
• The third and last was increase sales.

RED LOBSTER had to improve in different aspects of these three areas, in order to position itself in the market as the best seafood chain.
In order to improve, they were more responsive to customer needs and they also managed to decipher some aspects of great importance to enable them to provide better service; thanks to this, the restaurant started to show some good results, changing the old perception and being able to increase not only their image but also their sales.
An important fact that we can not ignore is the care that they had with testing processes that are currently performed before each Launching without any exception.

QUESTIONS
1. Why do you think Red Lobster relies so much on Internet surveys to track customer opinions, preferences, and criticisms? What are the advantages of online questionnaires versus traditional surveys conducted over the phone or through the mail?
In our opinion, Red Lobster are based on online surveys to track the opinions, preferences and criticism from customers, because it is through this medium they can attract a large number of customers, collects much more information and above all lets you know number big criteria in a short time.
Today the media play an important role in society, especially the Internet, where it is currently this is the most used by people therefore, "Red Lobster" wanted take advantage of this situation to reach more easy people.
Today, from the economic point of view the Internet is the most effectiveness and efficient way to pick up information, because, as mentioned above, the Internet can reach out to our passives and actives customers to know through surveys that how good is the quality of the product and which aspects should be improved.
Moreover, the advantages of making surveys is that it allows companies to analyze without much effort to customers who are interested in the brand. We consider it very important to enable the surveys in the Internet page, in addition to improving product quality and service, by showing customers the interest they have over them.
This information who collects the company is very useful because helps to achieve better efficiency and effectiveness of the company.
On the other hand, we can see that the traditional way of conducting surveys (by phone or e-mail) have the characteristic of being very draining, expensive and does not cover a large number of customers. Further, this type of survey has additionally feature that in many cases the information hereby pickup does not have enough data or do not have the information you were looking for.

2. Go to www.redlobster.com and click around. How well do you think the site appeals to the educated, affluent, and over-50 crowd that the chain wants to reel in? What are the primary messages that it communicates about the restaurant, and how effective are they? How does the site attempt to capture information about its customers?
Information on the seafood industry can be found on the page, is more than just the restaurant menu is also to be able to see the chef's kitchen where you can meet the chefs, read about the ingredients, information healthy, and gives tips on cooking seafood. The site is pretty easy to navigate making it more attractive to the largest consumer in which we analyze the target market.
The main message communicated through the web site is freshness. This idea communicates well by providing the customers that their products are cool because their facilities are full of fresh fish seven days a week, the message that their products have a number of health benefits due to the minerals, protein that is rich in seafood. Another important point is that part of the cuisine of his chef's place as well as the ability to read about the seafood industry and how Red Lobster is committed to serving quality seafood. The site is capable of capturing information about its customers by offering customers the ability to join the club for seafood lovers where you can create a profile. They also have a contact portion of the site where customers can post questions, suggestions and comments to the company.

3. Red Lobster’s closest competitor in the seafood- dining business is Joe’s Crab Shack. Check out their website at www.joescrabshack.com and compare it to Red Lobster’s. How does their marketing approach differ? Do you think they’re appealing to the same types of customers? How does the web site try to get information from its customer?
In our opinion, Joe’s Crab Shack and Red Lobster both of them sell seafood, but they are totally different companies. The main difference is the target market. The target market for Red Lobster is customers with a high ability to pay, also older than 50 years, educated and cultured. In contrast with Joes Crabs customers, who are young people that like to eat in quantities but with a low price.
In the part of collecting information from its costumers, Joes crab has a part in their page called “contact us”, where customers have the opportunity to write suggestions and opinions about the product and service the company has offered them. Joes crabs also have a segment called “Joe mail” where customers give their e-mail to the company, in order to receive information about new products and events, but we can say that this benefits are not the same to the benefits that Red Lobster offers to their customers .Red Lobsters offers to their customers, the opportunity to be part of a club, the “Club Red Lobster”, who offers them not only information of their products and restaurant, customers also receive different discounts.

4. Suppose Red Lobster was wondering how well its new interior design was being received by customers at a redecorated restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, and hired you to create a questionnaire. Write one of each: an open-ended questions, a closed-ended question (either dichotomous or multiple choice), and scaled-response question.
1. Did you notice any difference about the interior design of Red Lobster?
a) Yes
b) No

2. In a scale from 1 to 5, how much did you like the new interior design?
1. I didn’t like it at all
2. I didn’t like it
3. It doesn’t make any difference to me
4. It is okay
5. I liked it very much

3. What was the first thing that came to your mind when you saw the new interior design?
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4. How would you classify Red lobster Restaurant?
a) American Seafood Restaurant
b) Contemporary Seafood restaurant
c) Old Seafood Restaurant
d) Classic Seafood Restaurant
e) None of the above

5. Do you think that the pictures project a contemporary ambiance?
a) Yes
b) No

6. To you, what is the most striking thing you find about the new restaurant design?
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7. Is there something you would rather change about the new interior design?
a) Yes
b) No

8) If your answer was a) Yes, what would it be and why?
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9) Do you find the new restaurant design more appealing?
a) Yes
b) No
c) I find it the same appealing as before

10) If there is something you would add to the new restaurant design that could emphasize the contemporary ambiance, what would it be?
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