Years before Damola Adamolekun was tapped to serve as Red Lobster’s CEO—and save the brand from an endless shrimp-induced bankruptcy—he was tasked with mastering a smaller version of pretty much the same job: keeping tables happy and well-fed.
The 37-year-old first began his career like the thousands of his employees: as a server. While in high school, Adamolekun worked at Clyde’s, a local chain at the time located in suburban Maryland. He said it was there that he learned how to read people quickly, smooth over tense interactions, and make a customer feel even better than when they first walked through the door. Those were early lessons in a leadership skill he now considers indispensable.
“People come to the restaurant as an escape from whatever’s going on in their lives, and your job really is just to put a smile on their face and engage with them,” Adamolekun told Fortune in an interview on the sidelines of Jobs for the Future’s Horizons conference.
“You become good at managing difficult people and situations, which is an important skill. You learn how to lift people from one mindset to another one.”
Thanks to that crash course in human behavior, Adamolekun said today he’s applying those skills to a far wider audience as he wins back guests, reassures investors, and leads Red Lobster’s 30,000 employees in what he’s called the “‘greatest comeback in the history of the restaurant industry.”
From Zimbabwe, HBS, and Goldman Sachs to C-suite
Born in Nigeria to a neurosurgeon father and pharmacist mother, Adamolekun spent his early childhood on the move, including stops in Zimbabwe as well as the Netherlands before landing in central Illinois at age 9. His family later settled in Columbia, Maryland, and it was there that he developed an early interest in business and investing as a high schooler.
“I opened a stock portfolio and started buying stocks, and now I wanted to be Warren Buffett all of a sudden,” he recalled.
Adamolekun began studying investing on his own—reading finance books and Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters, which became a blueprint for understanding Buffett’s investment philosophy and approach to business.
That interest eventually led him to Brown University, where he became a leader in the school’s investment club before beginning his career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs, where he spent two years before eventually returning to school to earn his MBA from Harvard Business School—and where he finally had the chance to meet Buffett.
What stood out most to Adamolekun was not just his investing track record, but Buffett’s willingness to document his thinking, acknowledge mistakes, and share those lessons with the next generation—principles that would later shape Adamolekun’s own leadership style.
“He has a process, and he has a way to do things,” Adamolekun said. “What I respect about him the most is the consistency of performance over 50, 60 years. That’s incredible… he’s like, ‘I’m not always right, but here’s what I see.’”
After graduating from Harvard in 2017, Adamolekun transitioned into hedge fund management, joining billionaire John Paulson at Paulson & Co., and it was there that he pitched his boss on acquiring struggling restaurant chain P.F. Chang’s. After the deal closed in 2019, he was tapped as the chain’s CEO at just 31 years old, making him one of the youngest leaders of a major restaurant brand.
A Buffett-inspired approach to rebuilding Red Lobster
Adamolekun successfully led P.F. Chang’s through pandemic-era restaurant upheaval—and returned the chain to growth. But soon, his career would be put to the test with a new challenge. In 2024, 35-year-old Adamolekun was brought in to lead Red Lobster after the company filed for bankruptcy protection, tasked with turning around yet another iconic but struggling restaurant chain.
Adamolekun has admitted Red Lobster had made a lot of mistakes, including a decision to make its endless shrimp promotion a year-round menu option in 2023. Recent court filings from Red Lobster’s previous CEO, Jonathan Tibus, said the shift ultimately put the company in the red $11 million in a single quarter.
As part of the turnaround, Adamolekun closed more than 100 locations and focused on returning to what he called Red Lobster’s core identity: delivering customers a memorable dining experience.
“People think we serve food, but what we serve is a guest experience, and a lot of that is human connection,” he said on stage at the JFF conference.
His early changes have also included simplifying the menu, investing in long-deferred restaurant maintenance, and focusing on the fundamentals of the guest experience. Moreover, he is pushing Red Lobster toward becoming one of the restaurant industry’s most technology-focused companies, including greater use of artificial intelligence to improve operations and let staff spend more time with customers.
“If a manager can spend less time in the office dealing with all of the inventory and scheduling and calendar and admin and all that stuff—they can be out on the floor with the guests,” Adamolekun said. “And they’re going, I think, to enjoy the job more.”
Adamolekun’s advice for Gen Z: “Better yourself” with AI
Adamolekun acknowledged that calls for greater AI adoption are not always easy to hear—especially for young workers entering a labor market where the technology is already reshaping career paths.
“It’d be dishonest or naive to think there couldn’t be issues with AI and the rate that it’s being adopted,” he said. “There can be issues with AI. That can be true. It can also be true that it can be a really useful tool for businesses and a really useful tool for people.”
Rather than resisting AI, Adamolekun believes workers should learn to use it.
“In the short term, it’s here, and the best thing you can probably do is figure out how to use it to your advantage,” Adamolekun said. “You need to use it to better yourself and be native and fluent with it because it’s important for the work that’s going to be done.”
He compares AI to “a high-powered assistant or chief of staff”—a tool that can make workers more productive, so long as they continue applying their own judgment rather than outsourcing their thinking. For Gen Z in particular, he said the key is to “attack it with bravery.”
“Stay with it. Be persistent. Find opportunities,” Adamolekun said. “Leverage AI to your advantage.”
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