<p class="ingestion featured-caption">I tried Red Lobster's endless shrimp promotion and thought it was an excellent deal — but could see why it proved disastrous for the chain.Erin McDowell/Business Insider</p><ul class="summary-list"><li>I tried Red Lobster's infamous endless shrimp promotion and thought it was a good value for $30.</li><li>I could also see why it proved disastrous for the chain when offered every day.</li></ul><p>A few weeks after <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/red-lobster-endless-shrimp-bankruptcy-private-equity-debt-real-estate-2024-5">Red Lobster filed for bankruptcy</a>, I visited the chain's Times Square location to try its now-infamous Endless Shrimp promotion for the first time.</p><p>This wasn't my <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/review-red-lobster-chain-restaurant-dinner-2024-2">first time eating at a Red Lobster</a>. When I've gone in the past, it's been on the weekend. Now, here I was — on an otherwise dull Monday night — prepared to eat my weight in bottomless shrimp at a Times Square chain restaurant.</p><p>Red Lobster's Endless Shrimp has quite the reputation.</p><p>The promotion was originally launched as a $20 once-a-week deal. Customers were pleased with the deal, so in the summer of 2023, Endless Shrimp became available every day of the week.</p><p>However, inflation and the rising cost of seafood meant Red Lobster would raise the price of Endless Shrimp twice, eventually landing at a base price of $25 to cope with demand and improve profits. At the location I visited in New York City, it was priced at $30.</p><p>Despite the increased price to offset expenses, the all-you-can-eat strategy backfired. In the two quarters following the initial launch of the daily endless shrimp promotion, Red Lobster reported <a target="_blank" rel href="https://www.businessinsider.com/red-lobster-home-of-the-endless-shrimp-mulls-bankruptcy-2024-4"><u>operating losses of $11 million and $12.5 million</u></a>.</p><p>Discussing the company's low profits in an earnings call in November, Ludovic Garnier, the global chief financial officer of the chain's owner, Thai Union Group, told investors the overwhelming response to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/red-lobsters-all-you-can-eat-endless-shrimp-backfires-2023-11">endless shrimp had led to the losses</a>.</p><p>"For those who have been in the US recently, $20 was very cheap," Garnier said. "We don't earn a lot of money at $20."</p><p>Garnier added the deal "did not deliver what we were expecting" and was "one of the key reasons for the losses we generated in Q3 2023."</p><p>Once a daily promotion, Endless Shrimp is now only available on Mondays, which is when I found myself at the revolving doors of Red Lobster's Times Square location on a hot summer night.</p>