Red Lobster floundered this past year, making headlines after filing for bankruptcy and blaming it at least partly on an ill-conceived endless shrimp deal. It happens to the best of us. Naturally, the fast-casual seafood chain was in the market for a new CEO.
Damola Adamolekun, 35, was tapped for the difficult job of turning Red Lobster around. Adamolekun, formerly the CEO of Asian-fusion chain P.F. Chang's, already has some time under his belt as an executive wunderkind. He certainly didn’t get to where he is now by pretending to be chill, as he told Fortune in 2023. His career mentality is all about one thing.
“My life is my work. My work is my life,” he said. Adamolekun described his days as starting with a seven-to-eight-mile run at around 4:30 a.m and ending at around 6 p.m. with a post-work cigar after a long day of meetings.
Then 33, Adamolekun was already making history as one of the few Black CEOs to lead a major U.S. company and the first to head P.F. Chang’s. Starting at the company two years prior, he admitted to Fortune that there was a lot on his plate when he began.
“I grew up next to a P.F. Chang’s in Columbia, Maryland. I knew the company when the deck landed on my desk. It has about 85% brand awareness, yet it’s a small company. What piqued my interest was the company itself. It was a poorly run one with a lot to fix,” he said.
In turn, he “remodeled about 80% of the fleet, introducing more colorful decor, ambiance, and music.” A millennial, Adamolekun also beckoned the company into the digital age, with attention paid to digital tools for takeout, restaurants catering to pick-up orders, and a subscription model.
His fast-casual stints are bookended by the finance world, as after around three years at P.F. Chang’s, Adamolekun returned to investment company Paulson & Co. in August 2023. After previous stints at Goldman Sachs and TPG Capital, Adamolekun described a past where he was “working all the time,” though he claimed to have liked it.
“I thought it was fun. So it wasn’t like I had to go in on a Saturday,” Adamolekun said, embracing the hustle-culture mentality associated in part with young millennials. “It was like, ‘I got stuff to do, and I want to knock it out, or I want to look at something.’”
For Adamolekun, “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” doesn’t really apply. “I never really have been a person that separated work and life,” he said. “It mixes.” Though he recognized that isn’t the case for everyone, and that those who do get stressed by a lack of work-life balance should take breaks. Or in the case of his former employees, they should “build in buffers” and take days off on a Tuesday or Wednesday when the restaurants are less busy.
It might be for the best that Adamolekun is a self-professed go-getter, given he has his work cut out for him.
After it exits Chapter 11, Red Lobster is set to be owned by Fortress Investment Group and coinvestors TCW Private Credit and Blue Torch. Fortress, which nominated Adamolekun, will hear if its plan is approved during Red Lobster’s bankruptcy court date early this September.
Though Adamolekun isn’t likely to get pre-first-day jitters. As he once told Fortune, “Work doesn’t stress [me] out.”
