The lobster chronicles

Last month, Wausau received a shout from the official Red Lobster Facebook account — not to announce a much-requested addition to the city, but because of a stunt outside of the company’s headquarters involving a plane, a banner and first-name basis with their CEO.

“Damola, Wausau WI loves Red Lobster! Please? XO,” read the banner, black letters bold against a clear blue sky. It was attached to a plane that, when not advertising for businesses, tends to fly marriage proposals.

The message was the latest — and possibly the last — in a long series of schemes cooked up by Paul Grinsel and Ryan Gallagher, hosts of weekly “biz-fotainment” podcast the Wausau Business Show (WBS.) Grinsel and Gallagher crafted the message on the air, working with the plane’s pilot over the phone to maximize its impact within their chosen medium’s constraints.

“If this doesn’t do it, we give up,” said Ginsel on the podcast before the stunt — ’it’ being bringing a Red Lobster to Wausau. 

It’s a running joke, apparently. In polls by the city in both 2012 and 2018 asking residents which national restaurant chain they would like to come to Wausau, respondents overwhelmingly voted for Red Lobster.

There have even been a clawful of false alarms over the last decade about the arrival of the crimson crustacean within Wausau, including a 2021 April Fools prank by a local auto repair shop involving a “Future home of Red Lobster” sign in Weston.

“It’s a long-standing joke,” explained a Wausonian on the r/wisconsin Reddit. “Any time a building that resembles a restaurant starts construction, everyone is like, ‘Red Lobster!’ I have no clue how it started, but it has been that way for years.”

Grinsel and Gallagher began their own campaign last April, shortly before Red Lobster filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May. 

In a bid to “help Wausau save Red Lobster” amidst the company’s shrimp-induced financial woes, the pair organized a “Lobster Bus” trip, shuttling locals to Green Bay on a Lamers bus to eat at the nearest Red Lobster. The trip was about 90 miles each way, with proceeds from its $125 tickets going toward the Community Foundation of North-Central Wisconsin in a move that led the hosts to label their show “highly philanthropic” in a tongue-in-cheek press release.

They’ve rallied some of Wausau’s biggest names for the cause: Wausau West High Schooler Nolan Travis, who performed on Broadway last year following a Jimmy Award nomination for his role in the school’s production of Man of La Mancha, lent his voice to a “Red Lobster musical” cooked up by the pair; Mayor Doug Diny contributed a read through of the Red Lobster menu that, in its final edited form, is almost moving.

They’ve even attempted to get non-Wausonians in on the scheme. After celebrity Red Lobster-head and philanthropist Flavor Flav’s own viral stunt to save the chain, in which he posted a photo of himself next to a table full of everything on the chain’s menu, Grinsel shouted him out.

“Thank you for being on our team, Flava!” Grinsel said. “We love you nearly as much as those cheddar biscuits!”

And then, of course, there’s their most recent stunt: the airplane, an attempt to nab the attention of Red Lobster CEO Damola Adamolekun.

“It worked,” said Gallagher in the WBS episode following the stunt.

“We did it,” said Grinsel.

“Damola himself acknowledged the banner,” said Gallagher.

They expressed that they’re “currently working on getting an interview [with Adamolekun] set up” and that “it’s looking promising.”

Red Lobster, however, still has no plans to open a location in Wausau.

“If there’s one city that’s gonna save you, Red Lobster, it’s Wausau, Wisconsin,” Gallager said.

A brief summary of the “Red Lobster Saga” can be found on the WBS site at https://wausaubusiness.com/red-lobster-saga, but it’s only the tip of Wausau’s over-a-decade-old Red Lobster iceberg. Gallagher and Grinsel, with their marketing know-how and drive to cause mischief, have simply made the biggest splash in the ocean of national consciousness. 

Whether it amounts to anything more than a series of wildly entertaining marketing stunts disguised as pranks — or is it the other way around? — is up to the tides.