Red Lobster: ‘Gosh-darned good sales, Mrs. Z’
Better stop snickering at that dork of an uncle who spazzes through the Harlem Shuffle at weddings. Red Lobster came off as even more of a goober—a comb-over in a leisure suit, and possibly the whitest party on earth—when it balked at the marketing opportunity thrown its way early in the week by Beyonce. In case you missed it, Queen Bey revealed in a new song that she rewards her man for a toe-curling time in bed with dinner at Red Lobster. But she was a little more explicit in how she put it.
Red Lobster merely listened and blushed. But by week’s end, it was having its crab cake and eating it, too. Without having to reference a tune that pivots on the “F” word, the chain basked in a sales afterglow: a 33-percent year-over-year gain in revenues on the day of the Super Bowl, where Beyonce stole the halftime show.
In a move even Uncle High Pants would have termed bland, the chain repaid Mrs. Jay Z by temporarily renaming one of its signatures Chesapeake Bey Biscuits.