The rumors are true. Seafood chain Red Lobster is bringing back its famous and costly Endless Shrimp promotion. For customers looking to gorge themselves on far too much shrimp, this is great news. But employees at the restaurant aren’t thrilled, complaining that bringing back the promotion is a mistake. And on top of price increases and other changes, it’s led to some staff allegedly jumping ship.
Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that Red Lobster was planning to bring back the Endless Shrimp promotion, letting customers pay once to eat as much shrimp as they can stomach. And yesterday, Red Lobster confirmed the report and announced that starting April 20, for a limited time, the famous shrimp deal would return to Red Lobster. This comes at a time when the chain is desperate for customers as it struggles to deal with massive debt from aging, unprofitable locations attached to pricey leases. The solution? Offer people a great deal on shrimp, apparently.
“This is about putting our guests first and bringing back something they truly love,” said Damola Adamolekun, CEO of Red Lobster. “Endless Shrimp has been a part of Red Lobster’s legacy for 20 years, and our guests have never stopped asking for it. We’re excited to bring it back, for a limited time, in a way that works for our business today and honors what made it special from the beginning. Because when our fans talk, we listen.”
Many employees aren’t excited or happy about the return of Endless Shrimp. Across the Red Lobster subreddit, you can find people who claim to work at the chain sharing harsh opinions about the move.
Employees complain about bad tips, shitty customers, and Red Lobster leadership
“Tables eating ridiculous amounts of food, running their server like crazy, and staying there for hours, and tip barely $5 if they tip at all,” complained one Reddit user who claims to be a server. “Plus, the servers have to tip out for every sale. So some servers end up paying for a table they waited on for two hours and running their butts off. It’s ridiculous!”
When someone asked how bad things can get during the promotion and asked employees to rank the chaos on a scale from 1 to 10, a user claiming to work there replied with “11” and explained: “People will sit there for hours eating constant refills of shrimp and only tip you on the low price, not that they held up a table for hours. At least this time they raised the price from like $19 to $24.99.”
Someone else replied:
With the endless shrimp, you’ll get the most atrocious people coming in running you rampant for five dollars to maybe 15 if you’re lucky. Right now, business is slow anyway because people aren’t happy with menu prices and menu changes. Recently, I haven’t been coming home with over 100. It’s usually been under, so I’m looking for new employment. And it’s not because of bad service, it’s because of the lack of tables and currently other impacts with people not coming in. I don’t know what you suggest working here ever… let alone eating there.
Another user claims that during the promotion, they’ve encountered teens who eat a ton of shrimp, puke in the bathroom, leave a horrible mess, and then go back for more. Apparently, some people even ask for to-go boxes and have tried to grab them from the back area without permission after being told no.
Other staff shared concerns that the Endless Shrimp promo would end up hurting the company financially, which it did back in 2023. Before then, Red Lobster had done Endless Shrimp as a limited-time deal, often when it had excess shrimp to sell. But three years ago, Red Lobster leadership decided to make the deal permanent. That was a pricey decision and cost the company over $11 million in losses, likely being one of many reasons the seafood chain filed for bankruptcy in 2024.
Apparently, if a customer asks about the last time Endless Shrimp returned and caused the company to go into bankruptcy, some staff claim they have been told to reply: “We figured out a way to make it happen.” However, some employees aren’t convinced, and point to more menu items being removed, salad sizes shrinking, and other changes as signs that Red Lobster isn’t long for this world.
When one employee floated the idea of staff boycotting to force the chain to think twice about the promotion and other changes, another employee responded:
“I’m not boycotting nothing, I already quit,” said one alleged staff member. “Restaurant is genuinely a sinking boat. I would jump off while you can.”
