Red Lobster’s CEO secretly toured restaurants across the country before being named boss

It’s common convention for food critics to never post your face on social media, lest you be recognized at a restaurant you’re tasked with reviewing and receive preferential treatment. With the same secretive style, incoming Red Lobster CEO Damola Adamolekun frequented the seafood chain’s locations months before taking the helm, evaluating the food and how to improve the company.

In May, Adamolekun began visiting Red Lobsters in the US, sampling crab legs, Maine lobster tail and his famous Cheddar Bay Biscuits, Wall Street Journal reported. But Adamolekun’s status as the restaurant’s future CEO was unknown to Red Lobster colleagues. Adamolekun, for the most part, enjoyed the food. He talked to employees and regular customers to get a better sense of whether it’s worth taking the plunge to run a seafood joint with a battered reputation.

Restaurant goers “just want quality food in a comfortable setting and to connect with the history of the brand,” he said WSJ. “This is the first step.”

This step will be more of a jump. Red Lobster filed for bankruptcy in May, closing dozens of North American restaurants and auctioning off equipment from more than 50 locations. The chain blamed its struggles on an unsustainable $20 shrimp promotion that ended up contributing to $11 million in losses, the ravages of inflation, slow traffic and spats with former owner Thai Union. Private equity firm Fortress Investment Group named him CEO of Red Lobster in August. The $49 billion investment management company will take over as the parent of Red Lobster as it emerges from bankruptcy.

The 56-year-old restaurant chain will put its faith in the 35-year-old CEO, who defined his early career as a small fish in a big pond. Raised in Nigeria, Zimbabwe and the Netherlands before moving to the US at age 9, Adamolekun was a speech and debate champion in high school and an investment nerd in college. Three years after graduating from Harvard Business School in 2017, he became CEO of pan-Asian restaurant chain PF Chang’s. He left office in 2023 and joined private equity firm Garnett Station Partners this year.

Undercover boss

Adamolekun prided himself on an unconventional approach that blurs the lines between leisure and work – or a seafood meal and a reconnaissance mission.

“My life is my work. My work is my life,” he said wealth in 2023. Adamolekun often starts his days at 4:30 a.m. with a seven- to eight-mile run and punctuates them with a cigar.

But detective restaurant visits prior to Adamolekun’s tenure as Red Lobster CEO are a budding practice for a company’s top brass, meant to instill empathy and hone intuition about on-the-spot business decisions. Not just the premise of a cable TV show, becoming an undercover boss has prepared CEOs to deal with the sometimes unseen or underappreciated aspects of the rank and file employees whose work fuels a business’s economic success.

The story continues

Former Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol began his 2018 initiation as the company’s head of a Denver facility. Although he never worked at a Chipotle restaurant, he learned how to manage a busy lunch counter at a location, chopping vegetables, preparing sides and wrapping burritos tightly, many of them torn.

“Wrapping a burrito is an art,” Niccol said wealth at the beginning of this year.

At Starbucks, Niccol will replace Laxman Narasimhan, who at the start of his tenure as CEO in March 2023 promised employees he would spend hours working behind the counter of the Seattle coffee chain, donning an apron and holding frappuccinos.

“To keep us close to our culture and our customers, as well as our challenges and opportunities, I plan to continue to work in stores for half a day each month, and I expect every member of the management team to also ensure our centers of assistance. stay connected and engaged in the realities of our stores for discussion and improvement,” he wrote in an email to employees.

Alexandre Ricard walked the bar after becoming CEO and chairman of the Paris liquor giant Pernod Ricard, founded by his grandfather. Ricard visited 40 to 50 bars to understand the post-pandemic drinking culture and the impact of inflation on the industry. More on-the-ground market research than an evening between men, Ricard’s tour gave him a clear understanding of how cocktails were consumed, including which spirits became popular with staff and patrons.

“At the same time, bartenders kept recommending a new gin,” he said Seattle Times. “That was Monkey 47, which became my first acquisition as the company’s global president and CEO.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com