{"id":45534,"date":"2024-05-15T19:47:42","date_gmt":"2024-05-15T23:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=45534"},"modified":"2024-05-15T20:04:21","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T00:04:21","slug":"red-lobster-facts-a-look-back-at-seafood-restaurant-chains-history-and-things-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/05\/15\/red-lobster-facts-a-look-back-at-seafood-restaurant-chains-history-and-things-to-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Lobster facts: A look back at seafood restaurant chain&#8217;s history and things to know"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Below are things to know about Red Lobster, the seafood restaurant&#8217;s founders, and its history in Florida and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"538\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1110px) 100vw, 1110px\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/redlobsta.jpg?resize=1024%2C538&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-45422\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/redlobsta.jpg?resize=1024%2C538&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/redlobsta.jpg?resize=300%2C158&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/redlobsta.jpg?resize=768%2C403&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/redlobsta.jpg?resize=1536%2C806&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/redlobsta.jpg?w=1800&amp;ssl=1 1800w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Red Lobster was founded by restaurateur Bill Darden, who opened several restaurants called The Green Frog in Georgia beginning in 1938. Darden partnered with Charles Woodsby, founder of Texas Cattle Co.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Red Lobster co-founder Bill Darden of Lakeland, Florida, had been running restaurants since age 19.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The first Red Lobster seafood restaurant opened in 1968 along U.S. 92 with a view of Lake Parker in Lakeland, Florida. The restaurant was an immediate hit and became a destination for the community.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Around the time Red Lobster first opened, the only chain restaurants were fast-food places, such as McDonald&#8217;s.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The concept of Red Lobster? Open a seafood restaurant in a landlocked community and see if it can be franchised. Larry Ross, a professor of business administration at Florida Southern College who worked at the original Red Lobster in Lakeland, described the goals of Bill Darden and Charles Woodsby in a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jacksonville.com\/story\/news\/2014\/04\/14\/dining-pioneer-red-lobster-looking-at-future-challenges\/26950131007\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">2014 Lakeland Ledger story<\/a>: &#8220;What they did was test a seafood restaurant in a landlocked community and prove if (it) can fly here, (it) can fly anywhere.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Former Gov. Lawton Chiles, a Lakeland native, was an early investor in Red Lobster. Chiles, who died in 1998, purchased the land and built the buildings that housed the first four Red Lobster locations along with his one-time legal partner Bill Ellsworth.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>General Mills bought the first five Red Lobster restaurants in 1970 and created a nationwide chain, which, at the time, included more than 700 restaurants in the U.S. and Canada. In 1995, General Mills spun off the chain, creating Darden Restaurants, a publicly traded company. (Darden Restaurants operated other chain restaurants like Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, Bahama Breeze, the Capital Grille, Seasons 52, and the Yard House.)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ten years ago, on May 16, 2014, Darden Restaurants announced it would sell the Red Lobster seafood chain to Golden Gate Capital for $2.1 billion to improve the parent company&#8217;s financial performance. Darden announced the completion of the sale of Red Lobster to Golden Gate Capital on July 28, 2014.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jacksonville.com\/story\/lifestyle\/2020\/07\/26\/rare-blue-lobster-donated-to-akron-zoo-by-red-lobster-restaurant\/42085879\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">2020, a rare blue lobster was caught<\/a>\u00a0(a one-in-200-million chance, according to the University of Maine Lobster Institute) and saved from being a catch of the day at the Cuyahoga Falls Red Lobster location, according to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dispatch.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Columbus Dispatch<\/a>. Restaurant workers noticed the lobster&#8217;s rare blue color among the live lobster delivery. It was donated to the Akron Zoo in Akron, Ohio, and later named &#8220;Clawde&#8221; after the famous Red Lobster mascot.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The original Red Lobster site closed in May 1997 after 29 years and moved to 3706 U.S. 98, Lakeland, in front of Lakeland Square Mall. The Red Lobster restaurant location in Lakeland was still open as of May 15, 2024.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Below are things to know about Red Lobster, the seafood restaurant&#8217;s founders, and its history in Florida and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45422,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"9","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[8526],"class_list":["post-45534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-red-lobster-facts-a-look-back-at-seafood-restaurant-chains-history-and-things-to-know"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45534"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45536,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45534\/revisions\/45536"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}