Red Lobster Anchors Success with Pure Storage

Red Lobster, America's largest seafood restaurant company, initiated a digital modernization program after realizing its aging technology lacked the resilience needed for continuous operations. An internal analysis estimated that a typical multi-day outage could cost $13 million in lost seafood inventory and trigger significant operational chaos. To secure its substantial perishable inventory, Red Lobster implemented a Pure Storage enterprise data platform to consolidate fragmented legacy systems. This high-performance infrastructure now serves as the reliable backbone for all mission-critical systems, eliminating major interruptions and enabling faster data access for business optimization.

Red Lobster stands as America's largest seafood restaurant company, a beloved dining institution that has endured for decades by providing affordable access to high-quality, traceable seafood. Operating more than 545 locations across the United States, Canada, and international markets, the company manages a billion-dollar annual seafood supply chain that touches millions of customers daily.

For CIO Shawn Harrs, this scale brings both opportunity and immense responsibility. "Red Lobster has had a long history as a great American brand, and has endured over the decades that we have been in business because we provide affordable access to a high-quality product," says Harrs. "As a restaurant operating in every state in the United States, in Canada, internationally, we have a large supply chain. We operate multiple locations and meal periods, and we manage a lot of inventory."

With this growing and successful operation, Harrs recognized a threat that kept him awake at night. The company's technology infrastructure, while functional, lacked the resilience needed to support always-on operations across multiple time zones. With restaurants that must open reliably every day, process payments continuously, and manage millions of dollars in perishable inventory, even a brief technology failure could trigger catastrophic consequences.

The moment of truth came when Harrs built an actuarial model for his CFO, calculating the true cost of potential downtime. "We spend a billion dollars in shellfish product a year," explains Harrs. A multi-day outage wouldn't just mean lost sales—it would mean paying for unsellable products due to purchase commitments, losing employees who depend on daily tips, and facing the impossible task of explaining to restaurant managers why their locations couldn't serve customers.

When Harrs presented his analysis to the board, the numbers were staggering. A typical outage lasting three to seven days would cost approximately $13 million in lost seafood inventory alone, not counting the operational chaos of rehiring staff, the margin erosion from unfulfilled vendor commitments, and the brand damage from widespread closures.

"One of the biggest challenges in our technology modernization program is the number of different systems we have. Different technologies, aging technology, legacy systems, different programming languages," says Harrs. "So bringing them all together into building a cohesive experience, moving some of these legacy technologies to the cloud, that has been a challenge, but one that we have really been able to embrace and have great success with." This has been possible using what he describes as Pure Storage’s "Goldilocks solution," perfectly sized and flexible for Red Lobster's growing needs.

Red Lobster's comprehensive Pure Storage implementation centers on the Evergreen//One™ subscription model, providing financial flexibility and operational agility that aligns storage costs with actual usage while preserving capital. FlashArray//X™ serves as the backbone for Red Lobster's mission-critical databases, point-of-sale systems, inventory management, and employee scheduling applications across all locations.

Now, Red Lobster's long-term data transformation ensures a consistent experience and seamless data mobility across on-premises and cloud environments. This supports their hybrid-cloud strategy while offering data protection, visibility, and cost efficiency. The integration enables Red Lobster to create a virtualized pool of storage that serves as a unified data plane while maintaining the highest levels of performance and reliability. By leveraging Pure Storage Cloud, Red Lobster is also able to establish a foundation for future cloud-native applications and planned Azure migrations.

The Pure1® management platform delivers integrated analytics and AI-powered insights that help Harrs' team monitor performance, identify potential bottlenecks, and optimize storage usage across both on-premises and cloud environments. This unified visibility is crucial for managing Red Lobster's complex, geographically distributed infrastructure.

"Pure Storage solutions have played a critical part in the success of the technology modernization program at Red Lobster. Because it's providing us with business continuity capabilities that ensure that our restaurants can open every day, that our employees can come to work every day, perform their roles, and provide a great experience for our guests," says Harrs.

FlashArray//X™ has also transformed how Red Lobster approaches business optimization. "Having fast and reliable access to data is of significant importance. Our business is really driven by cost of goods sold and prime costs, and so being able to make decisions around optimizing how our business runs and the margins that we can achieve is really enabled by fast data access," explains Harrs.

Beyond business continuity, the Pure Storage enterprise data platform has become the foundation for Red Lobster's digital transformation initiatives. The company has streamlined digital ordering and takeout services, integrating seamlessly with third-party delivery partners through cloud-based solutions.

Today, Red Lobster operates with confidence knowing their technology can support continued growth and innovation. The company has achieved zero major interruptions since implementation, ensuring consistent guest and employee experiences while protecting millions of dollars in inventory and vendor commitments. 

"The partnership and investments that we've made with Pure Storage provide not only a business resiliency solution for us today, but additional capabilities for the future," concludes Harrs. "Pure Storage, to me, is really a people-first company," says Harrs. "It's the partnership that they bring. It's the relationships that they build with me and my team and the investments that they're making in my team that makes all the difference." With a future-ready infrastructure that can adapt and scale with changing business needs, Red Lobster is positioned to continue serving America's appetite for great seafood experiences for decades to come.