Red Lobster has offered an endless snow crab leg promotion twice in its history (as of September 2003). However, in 2003, the promotion resulted in its parent company, Darden Restaurants, taking a $3 million charge to third-quarter earnings, resulting in president Edna Morris's departure from the company.
The chain also underestimated how many times a customer would order more. Further complicating matters at the restaurant level was the time customers spent table-side in the restaurant cracking crab legs. This resulted in increased waiting times in the lobby and overall diminished customer capacity per hour.
from wikipedia:
This is like that Simpsons episode where Homer sues the all you can eat place for throwing him out
Fuck, wish I couldve been there that day in 2003
Did they do test runs of the all you can eat deal in a smaller subset of locations? Wonder how they could've have estimated that poorly.
there were some REALLY cheap snow crab deals from restaurants in 2023. Which was the year I read about snow crab stocks in alaska plummeting by 90%
feels like they figured they'd just overfish it while the getting was good
that's terrifying, the general crab food populations have been plummeting for decades