The Times Square Red Lobster outpost in New York City is up for rent, The Post has learned — but not for reasons you may think.
Attracted by endless shrimp, competitive-eating TikTokers and languishing inflation are what drowned the parent company of Red Lobster in so many losses that the global seafood joint was struggling to find a buyer. Now, through a bankruptcy filing, it hopes to get its financial house in order.
While not among the dozens of locations now shuttered, and it isn’t immediately clear if it will be, The Post found the fish eatery’s flagship Times Square eatery is open for business during a visit this past week.
Newmark brokers are marketing the valuable space at the base of 5 Times Square simply because its lease is up next month — and it’s a way to lure other restaurants to the space to make any renewal deal more competitive.
The asking rent for the 16,482 square feet on three levels is $2.2 million, sources say.
The Post broke the news in 2002 that the seafood mecca was heading for Times Square, and again a few months later when it finally signed what was then reported as a 10-year lease.
Since such deals come with options to renew, that initial lease was extended.
The Newmark brokers offering the space did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The property is owned by RXR and SL Green.
Once owned by Olive Garden’s parent, Darden Capital, the sea monster of a chain was sold to Golden Gate Capital in 2014 for $2.1 billion — and again in pieces starting in 2016 to Thailand-based Thai Union, which took over completely in 2020.
Red Lobster lost $33 million in 2022. While its 650 storefronts did $2.6 billion in annual revenue in 2023, it still lost a reported $22 million due to the expansion of its popular endless shrimp promotion — and wrote off $530 million, according to the Sunday bankruptcy filing.
Although store traffic was up by 2%, as inflation and increasing wages bumped costs, many restaurant goers opted for the numerous $20 all-you-can eat shrimp options. They were expanded from just Mondays to every day and all the time, and the company had to raise the price — first to $22 and later to $25.
“We need to be much more careful regarding what is the entry point and what is the price point we’re offering for this promotion,” Thai Union CFO Ludovic Garnier said in a November earnings call. By January, the company had pulled the plug and was seeking a sale.
It was a repeat of Red Lobster’s 2003 disaster, when then-CEO Edna Morris relied on a $20 endless snow crab promotion to boost its fortunes, which sank its stock price and her job as snow crab eaters simply ate too many at a time when its market price was rising.
