FISHING FOR ANSWERS

Red Lobster is joining the anti-gluttony bandwagon:

Darden Restaurants Inc. said Thursday its Red Lobster chain will cut back on all-you-can-eat promotions, which generated customer traffic but hurt profit margins.

Last year, an all-you-can-eat crab promotion went awry when diners loaded up on numerous refills that obliterated profit margins.

“We’re not going to discontinue them,” chairman and chief executive Joe R. Lee said of such promotions in a conference call.

However, the Orlando-based restaurant company will be “moving more to a once-a-year strategy” which Lee said would mirror a strategy used by Darden’s Olive Garden chain.

how it is in other parts of the country, but the commercial roadsides of the Midwest are littered with the carcasses of Red Lobsters.

Honestly, did they think that all-you-can-eat crab was a smart business decision? Have they ever been to a Chinese buffet on Friday nights? I’ve seen people whose plates had more legs than a St. Patrick’s Day parade. It’s one thing when Olive Garden will let you eat three bowls of pasta; we all know that each bowl probably costs them less than 80 cents. But crab? Crab’s expensive, because crab is harder to get than spaghetti. You have to fish for crab, whereas spaghetti grows on trees.

As a slowly-reforming person of gravity (i.e., a fat guy trying to lose weight), I wouldn’t be caught dead at an all-you-can-eat deal anyway. But crab? Unless you’re buying the worst of the catch, and charging $30 a head, anybody could tell you you’re going to lose money, because crab is (correctly) perceived as a rich person’s food. All-you-can-eat pasta is a nice fillip; all-you-can-eat crab is an invitation to be Diamond Jim Brady for a day.