Today’s links Red Lobster was killed by private equity, not Endless Shrimp: Using class warfare as cover for looting. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023 Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I’ve been. Latest books: You keep readin’ em, I’ll keep writin’ ’em. Upcoming books: Like I said, I’ll keep writin’ ’em. Colophon: All the rest. Red Lobster was killed by private equity, not Endless Shrimp (permalink) A decade ago, a hedge fund had an improbable viral comedy hit: a 294-page slide deck explaining why Olive Garden was going out of business, blaming the failure on too many breadsticks and insufficiently salted pasta-water: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/940944/000092189514002031/ex991dfan14a06297125_091114.pdf Everyone loved this story. As David Dayen wrote for Salon, it let readers “mock that silly chain restaurant they remember from their childhoods in the suburbs” and laugh at “the silly hedge fund that took the time to write the world’s worst review”: https://www.salon.com/2014/09/17/the_real_olive_garden_scandal_why_greedy_hedge_funders_suddenly_care_so_much_about_breadsticks/ But – as Dayen wrote at the time, the hedge fund that produced that slide deck, Starboard Value, was not motivated by dissatisfaction with bread-sticks. They were “activist investors” (finspeak for “rapacious assholes”) with a giant stake in Darden Restaurants, Olive Garden’s parent company. They wanted Darden to liquidate all of Olive Garden’s real-estate holdings and declare a one-off dividend that would net investors a billion dollars, while literally yanking the floor out from beneath Olive Garden, converting it from owner to tenant, subject to rent-shocks and other nasty surprises….Pluralistic: Red Lobster was killed by private equity, not Endless Shrimp (23 May 2024)