First off, a facelift for Red Lobster is dated & long overdue. So they’re thinking is correct there.

The Red Lobster brand already has its audience. It’s a mistake to co-mingle the audience it already has with a more upscale market. They’ll end up pleasing no one if their current customer-base feels a cost increase is too much.

Like Toyota & Lexus, it’s best to either create a new restaurant brand for the upscale market, or buy an existing restaurant and grow it in select markets first.

They should play up the “Zagat” angle more too. And stop with the slogans and focus on “healthy eating” as a campaign.

Their homework or the Richards Group should have told them this in the first place. It seems like they want a new business strategy.

Another idea is to create an alternative for the working crowd that wants to pick up & take home & eat (nothing to fix). And maybe partner with a company like Schwans for delivery.

Can’t blame them for trying.

I am SO amazed that no one in the restaurant business ever thought of that. What a remarkable idea!

Do you think the more upscale clients will understand the concept????

Seriously, those things have pinchers–and in the immortal words of ZZ Top, they know how to use them. David, it sounds like you need a dip in the tank in the lobby, with the rubber bands off. I bet there are some of those “recently (what?) friendly wait persons” who can help you get settled in.

Agreed, the marketing is schmaltzy and the blog idea is counter to the target audience’s apparent objective and means to outsource food preparation. It is as costless and riskless a brand awareness strategy as there is, though.

In my town the Big Red is a lot more like Legal Seafoods than Long John Silver’s Seafood Shoppe. Actually, there’s quite a lot of space between the three of them and I don’t find the Lob’s positioning as off-the-wall as this author seems to.

Baby steps, fellas. If Red Lobster’s president claimed she was aspiring to make her “brand” the Lexus of the seafood chain world, your response no doubt would have been: “HAHAHAHAHAHA.” (D’oh!)

What you overlook from your yuppie perch is the fact that Toyota has brilliantly positioned itself at virtually every price point in the market. You present the choices as being between the lower-end Corolla and the upscale Lexus. (This is not 1982, by the way: Toyota is no longer equated with cheap, functional Corollas. Toyotas are not seen so much as “sturdy” (huh?) and affordable, but as reliable, quality automobiles.)

You are overlooking the vast middle- and upper-middle class market in the middle—the folks who have made the midpriced Camry the “number one selling car in America.” It is this enormous market that the Red Lobster “brand” is (sensibly) chasing.

To carry this dreaded metaphor a bit further: Red Lobster doesn’t want to be the Corolla anymore; it aspires to be the Camry. With luck, it will attract some of the Lexus crowd—but it is a large, national chain, not a small, rarefied, urban hipster hangout.

But, like seriously, tone down the ‘tude, dudes.

“So, this guy should really be like… we want to be the Lexus of sea food while Long John Silver’s and McGrath’s are the Corolla’s. We’re nitpicking, but this is where words really matter both in practice within your company, but then just as importantly to the press.”

HUH???? Not to “nitpick,” but what the hell are you talking about? The Red Lobster president’s Toyota quote did bring a smile to my face because it was such wretched corporate speak—but her strategy seems relatively sound. I can’t fathom your point: How does what the Lobster prez said differ from or contradict your argument about differentiating its (ahem) “brand” from Long John Silvers? And if the company is really trying to differentiate itself as a more upscale dining establishment, why ever would she mention the dreaded “Long John Silvers” in the same breath as Red Lobster?????

Dudes: Maybe it’s time to start, like, that MBA-at-night program! And per your headline, wouldn’t “upscale” be more appropriate than “highbrow,” which would imply intellectual rather than culinary elitism?

See you dudes at the all-you-can-eat crab buffet….