Key Takeaways
• Strong leadership starts with staying calm under pressure, understanding front-line operations and making targeted improvements instead of overreacting to short-term problems.
• Adamolekun said businesses succeed by protecting what customers already love while making thoughtful, incremental changes that modernize the experience without abandoning the brand’s identity.
• Creating moments of “unexpected delight” and building trust through personalized service are competitive advantages that promotional products distributors can apply to strengthen client relationships.
Red Lobster was on the brink. All of the news was negative. The restaurant was bankrupt and seemingly days away from shuttering as an entire franchise for good.
And then came Damola Adamolekun.
Before taking over as the CEO of Red Lobster, Adamolekun had worked his magic for P.F. Chang’s, stepping into the leadership role just as the restaurant world was being rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That was about as bad as it could go,” Adamolekun said in a keynote conversation with ASI CEO Ashish Mittal at ASI Show Chicago on July 23.
Before his time at P.F. Chang’s or Red Lobster, though, his life had taken plenty of twists and turns. He was born in Nigeria, and lived for a time in Zimbabwe and The Netherlands before settling in Maryland, where he grew up with his physician father and pharmacist mother, whom he described as something of a serial entrepreneur.
That sense of work ethic and opportunism rubbed off on Adamolekun and his brother, who was his “business partner” in various childhood endeavors.
Following his education, including at Harvard Business School, Adamolekun was ready to take on the industry’s toughest challenges thanks to everything that he had experienced in his life.
“When a child’s first tooth comes in, it’s the worst pain they’ve ever experienced because they’ve never felt anything else,” he said. “When you first play sports, they make you run hills and it’s the worst thing you’ve ever done. But then it gets easier, and when they ask you to do something hard, you find that you can do it.”
Adamolekun’s friends and peers see him as calm and self-assured, something he says is necessary for a leader in any capacity, especially one who has been tasked with saving a giant brand like Red Lobster.
“You can’t lead if you’re panicking,” he says. “People will look at you and they’ll panic, too.”
Relying on Service
Adamolekun’s current role is in the restaurant space, but his lessons are applicable for promo pros. They’re both in the service industry, if you think about it. He equates food service and the expectations that come with it to what a distributor does. They have to deliver on time, manage multiple touchpoints – whether line cooks or suppliers – and be personable with the customer and find solutions that make everyone happy.
Managing a company that wasn’t performing well financially, he had to look at things like pricing and budgets the same way a promotional products distributor at any level would.
In the process of revitalizing Red Lobster, Adamolekun got on the ground floor immediately, visiting locations to find common issues at individual franchises, and scaling it upward to fix issues at the corporate level.
“It’s a people business, what we do,” he said. “You can’t sit in an ivory tower and expect things to go well.”
You also can’t paint in broad strokes when analyzing your business, he says. He uses the example of certain menu items that weren’t selling by the time he took over. The company had clearly been successful for decades before him; something had changed, and it wasn’t just the food.
“Endless shrimp was successful for 20 years, and it was unsuccessful for three,” he said. “I didn’t need to get rid of the whole thing. I just needed to restore it to what it used to be.”
This “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” approach allowed Adamolekun and Red Lobster to retain its core group of loyal customers – of which there were still plenty – while also making tweaks to appeal to a modern audience. The company introduced new products and services and made tweaks along the way, like adding variable spice levels to the seafood boil. These weren’t enormous swings or paradigm-shifting decisions, they were calculated and thoughtful changes that went along with the goal of keeping what works and fixing what doesn’t.
“People love Red Lobster; that was something when I took this job that excited me,” he said. “It matters to a lot of people, and that’s the most important thing. It’s hard to build. And when you have it, it’s the most important thing to protect. When people love your business, you can fix the small stuff.”
He related this to promotional products by saying that, ultimately, the product a distributor is selling is their humanity. Once you build trust among your client base and a reputation for quality, the hard work is done. Now, it’s just routine maintenance when the occasion calls for it.
“Try not to make big mistakes,” he said. “You don’t want to make fatal mistakes. You’re going to have failures, but you want to get the important things right.”
Finding Opportunities for ‘Unexpected Delight’
Red Lobster is not a Michelin-starred restaurant, but that doesn’t mean the ownership doesn’t look for ways that its staff can make customers feel extra special and welcomed. Sure, they might not have monogrammed pashmina shawls to bring a patron when they overhear them say they’re a little chilly, but Adamolekun says each franchise looks for moments of “unexpected delight,” like hearing it’s a special occasion or celebration at a table and delivering a special moment.
In promo, these moments of unexpected delight can be things like branded gifts, thank-yous sent to top clients or partners, or especially thoughtful details in a product design.
“This is a thing they’ll remember forever,” Adamolekun said, “especially if it’s a special occasion.”
It might have seemed like Adamolekun was given the most difficult job in the world, but he doesn’t see it that way. Maybe that’s that quiet confidence that he’s known for, but when he’s asked how he almost single-handedly rescued Red Lobster and all its delicious Cheddar Bay Biscuits (which attendees received) from certain doom, he makes it all sound so simple:
Don’t change who you are or what you do, because people love that. Instead, make small changes and find what works. Sometimes that will come with minor setbacks, and all it takes is readjusting – no big deal. And make sure that everyone who engages with your product, whether you’re selling high-end goods or reasonably priced seafood, feels like the most special customer in the world.
