HOW RED LOBSTER'S 36-YEAR-OLD CEO PLANS TO DELIVER THE BOLDEST RESTAURANT COMEBACK IN HISTORY

WITH THE BEARING of a former college football player and the polish of a private equity dealmaker, Damola Adamolekun commands the attention of a room before he says a word.

- BY RUTH UMOH

The Red Lobster CEO—at 36, the youngest chief executive in the fast casual chain’s nearly six-decade history—has the swagger of a man who has already won a battle, which in one sense he has. During his three-year tenure as CEO of P.F. Chang's, he guided the company through the chaos of COVID shutdowns and returned the chain to profitability. But an even bigger war lies Ahead: fixing Red Lobster, a beloved but troubled dining franchise emerging from a painful bankruptcy.

The job might seem like a poisoned chalice: high-risk, thin margin for error, and enormous public scrutiny. But for Adamolekun, the sheer scale of the task is what drew him to the role he started a year ago, he tells Fortune. “This can be the greatest comeback in the history of the restaurant industry,” he says. “To lead that would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

The problems that led to Red Lobster’s bankruptcy last year are not simple ones to solve. The chain posted a $76 million net loss in fiscal year 2023 (with $2 billion in revenue) as guest traffic plunged by double digits. Years of strategic stumbles and extractive private equity tactics had hollowed out the company and left it burdened with above-market leases on the 687 restaurants it owned at the time. The brand's reputation had been further damaged by cost cutting that eroded food quality, and a notoriously ill-conceived “endless shrimp” promotion.