(WTAJ) — Red Lobster was hoping to drive customers to its restaurants with an endless shrimp deal and it worked a little too well.
In June, the company offered its Ultimate Endless Shrimp — typically a limited offer — on their regular menu for $20. The attempt to get more people into the store worked, but it came at a cost.
Red Lobster posted an operating loss of more than $11 million in Q3, according to Restaurant Business. It’s a loss that owner Thai Union Group said the Ultimate Endless Shrimp was a “key factor” in creating.
“We knew the price was cheap, but the idea was to bring more traffic in the restaurants,” said Thai Union CFO Ludovic Regis Henri Garnier, according to a transcript.
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Garnier said that more people were choosing the endless shrimp than the company thought would.
According to Men’s Journal, the shrimp fiasco is set to leave the company with a $20 million loss for the year. Seafood news site SeafoodSource said that the company attributed most of the losses to industry challenges, including inflation and labor costs.
To continue Ultimate Endless Shrimp as a regular menu item, the company said they’ll bump the price up to $25.
