The real story behind Red Lobster’s $20 Ultimate Endless Shrimp fiasco: How an American seafood icon lost its way

The TikTok creators arrived first. It was the summer of 2023, and Red Lobster had announced what it billed as an “iconic first”: “Ultimate Endless Shrimp Is Here to Stay All Day, Every Day.” The casual-dining chain was offering customers all the shrimp they could eat for $20—scampi, coconut, Alfredo-ed, skewered, or butterflied and deep-fried—not as a seasonal promotion but as a permanent fixture, along with a side dish and the brand’s famous Cheddar Bay Biscuits. “Insider tip,” the press release advised: “Avoid grabbing the extra biscuit to leave room for endless amounts of shrimp.” Red Lobster had unwittingly handed creators the perfect stage for a mukbang—the South Korean–born online genre in which hosts eat for an audience, sometimes to spectacular excess. Ambitious mukbang-ers eager to prove their gastronomic stamina descended on Red Lobster locations across the country to consume absurd quantities of shrimp. One YouTube video by Joey Kinsley, a.k.a. “Sir Yacht,” features the influencer shoveling down shrimp for 10 hours straight. The chaos spread from dining rooms to newsrooms as Red Lobster became one of America’s most-discussed restaurants—for all the wrong reasons. While customers drawn by the deal monopolized tables to gorge on order after order of shrimp,…