Crimson Lobster floundered this previous yr, making headlines after submitting for chapter and blaming it no less than partly on an ill-conceived countless shrimp deal. It occurs to the very best of us. Naturally, the fast-casual seafood chain was available in the market for a brand new CEO.
Damola Adamolekun, 35, was tapped for the troublesome job of turning Crimson Lobster round. Adamolekun, previously the CEO of Asian-fusion chain P.F. Chang’s, already has a while underneath his belt as an government wunderkind. He actually didn’t get to the place he’s now by pretending to be chill, as he advised Fortune in 2023. His profession mentality is all about one factor.
“My life is my work. My work is my life,” he stated. Adamolekun described his days as beginning with a seven-to-eight mile run at round 4:30 a.m and ending at round 6 p.m. with a post-work cigar after an extended day of conferences.
Then 33, Adamolekun was already making historical past as one of many few Black CEOs to guide a serious U.S. firm and the primary to move P.F. Chang’s. Beginning on the firm two years prior, he admitted to Fortune that there was quite a bit on his plate when he started.
“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 stated.
In flip, he “remodeled about 80% of the fleet, introducing more colorful decor, ambiance, and music.” A millennial, Adamolekun additionally beckoned the corporate into the digital age, with consideration paid to digital instruments for take out, eating places catering to pike-up orders, and a subscription mannequin .
His fast-casual stints are bookended by the finance world, as after round three years at P.F. Chang’s, Adamolekun returned to funding firm Paulson & Co. Inc in August 2023. After earlier stints at Goldman Sachs and TPG Capital, Adamolekun described a previous the place he was “working all the time,” although he claimed to have preferred it.
“I thought it was fun. So it wasn’t like I had to go in on a Saturday,” Adamolekun stated, embracing the hustle-culture mentality related partially with younger 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 uninteresting boy doesn’t actually apply. “I never really have been a person that separated work and life,” he stated. “It mixes.” Although he acknowledged that isn’t not the case for everybody, and that those that do get harassed by an absence of work-life stability ought to take breaks. Or within the case of his former staff, they need to “build in buffers” and take days off on a Tuesday or Wednesday when the eating places are much less busy.
It’s may be for the very best that Adamolekun is a self-professed go-getter, given he has his work minimize out for him.
Crimson Lobster is about to be owned by Fortress Funding Group and co-investors TCW Personal Credit score and Blue Torch after it exits Chapter 11. Fortress, which nominated Adamolekun, will hear if its plan is authorised throughout Crimson Lobster’s chapter court docket date early this September.
Although Adamolekun isn’t more likely to get pre-first-day jitters. As he as soon as advised Fortune, “work doesn’t stress [him] out.”
