For meals critics, it’s frequent conference to by no means publish your face on social media, lest you be acknowledged at a restaurant you’re tasked with reviewing and get preferential remedy. With the identical surreptitious type, incoming Purple Lobster CEO Damola Adamolekun frequented areas of the seafood chain months earlier than he took the helm, assessing its meals and the right way to enhance the corporate.
In Might, Adamolekun started visiting Purple Lobsters across the U.S., snacking on crab legs, Maine lobster tail, and its famed Cheddar Bay biscuits, the Wall Avenue Journal reported. However Adamolekun’s standing because the restaurant’s future CEO was unbeknownst to Purple Lobster fellow dinners. Adamolekun, for probably the most half, loved the meals. He spoke with workers and common clients to raised perceive if it was price taking a dive to steer a seafood joint with a washed-up status.
Restaurant-goers “just want quality food in a comfortable setting and to connect with the history of the brand,” he informed WSJ. “That’s the first step.”
That step can be extra of a leap. Purple Lobster filed for chapter in Might, shuttering dozens of North American restaurant areas and auctioning off gear from greater than 50 spots. The chain blamed its struggles on an unsustainable $20 all-you-can-eat shrimp promotion that wound up contributing to $11 million in losses, the toils of inflation, sluggish visitors, and quarrels with a former proprietor Thai Union. Powerhouse non-public fairness agency Fortress Funding Group tapped him as Purple Lobster’s CEO in August. The $49 billion funding administration firm will take over as Purple Lobster’s mum or dad because it emerges from chapter.
The 56-year-old restaurant chain will put its belief within the 35-year-old CEO, who outlined his early profession by being a small fish in an enormous pond. Rising up in Nigeria, Zimbabwe and the Netherlands earlier than transferring to the U.S. at age 9, Adamolekun was a highschool speech and debate champ and faculty funding nerd. Three years after graduating from Harvard Enterprise College in 2017, he grew to become CEO of pan-Asian restaurant chain P.F. Chang’s. He left the place in 2023 and joined non-public fairness agency Garnett Station Companions this 12 months.
Undercover boss
Adamolekun has prided himself on an unconventional method that blurs the boundaries of leisure and work—or a sit-down seafood meal and a reconnaissance mission.
“My life is my work. My work is my life,” he informed Fortune in 2023. Adamolekun usually begins his days at 4:30 a.m. with a seven-to-eight-mile run and punctuates them with a cigar.
However the sleuthing restaurant visits previous to Adamolekun’s tenure as Purple Lobster CEO is a budding observe for an organization’s high brass, meant to instill empathy and hone instinct about on-the-ground enterprise choices. Not simply the premise of a cable tv present, turning into an undercover boss has ready CEOs to face the typically unseen or underappreciated features of the rank-and-file workers whose labor fuels the financial success of a enterprise.
Former Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol started his 2018 initiation as head of the corporate at a facility in Denver. Although he by no means labored at a Chipotle restaurant, he realized to handle a location’s busy lunch rush, chop up greens, put together sides, and tightly wrap burritos, a lot of which he tore.
“Wrapping a burrito is an art,” Niccol informed Fortune earlier this 12 months.
At Starbucks, Niccol will change Laxman Narasimhan, who, at first of his CEO tenure in March 2023, vowed to workers he would spend hours working behind the counter of the Seattle espresso chain, donning an apron and slinging frappuccinos.
“To keep us close to the culture and our customers, as well as to our challenges and opportunities, I intend to continue working in stores for a half day each month, and I expect each member of the leadership team to also ensure our support centers stay connected and engaged in the realities of our stores for discussion and improvement,” he wrote in an e mail to workers.
Alexandre Ricard took a boozy bar crawl after he grew to become CEO and chairman of the Paris-based liqueur large Pernod Ricard, based by his grandfather. Ricard frequented 40 to 50 bars to grasp post-pandemic ingesting tradition and the influence of inflation of the business. Extra on-the-ground market analysis than man’s night time out, Ricard’s tour allowed him to obviously perceive how cocktails have been being consumed, together with which spirits had develop into widespread amongst workers and patrons.
“At the same time, bartenders kept recommending a new gin,” he informed the Seattle Occasions. “That was Monkey 47, which became my first acquisition as global chairman and CEO of the company.”
