Retail Roundup: Red Lobster to replace Joe's Crab Shack
A Red Lobster restaurant is planned for a building at Tanger Outlets in Deer Park once occupied by a Joe's Crab Shack. Credit: Newsday/Thomas A. Ferrara
Tanger Outlets Deer Park lost its seafood restaurant nearly two years ago but another one is lined up to take its place this summer.
A Red Lobster will be serving up the chain’s famous cheddar bay biscuits in a freestanding building that Joe’s Crab Shack vacated in August 2017, said Nancy Larson, general manager for the shopping center.
The new eatery will occupy a 7,000-square-foot building at 1700 The Arches Circle.
“The anticipated opening for the 245-seat restaurant will be late summer,” said Samantha Bruno, spokeswoman for Orlando, Florida-based Red Lobster Seafood Co.
The largest seafood restaurant chain in the country, Red Lobster has more than 700 locations in the United States and Canada, including six on Long Island.
Joe’s Crab Shack, however, no longer has a presence on Long Island.
Houston-based Ignite Restaurant Group abruptly closed at least 40 of its Joe’s Crab Shack locations, including those in Westbury and Deer Park, in 2017 after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Two other Long Island locations — Riverhead and Oceanside — closed in 2016.
Houston-based Landry’s Inc., a large restaurant and casino company, won its bankruptcy auction bid to buy Ignite for $57 million in 2017.
There are now 54 Joe’s Crab Shack locations, compared to more than 135 in September 2014.
Retail Roundup is a column about major retail news on Long Island — store openings, closings, expansions, acquisitions, etc. — that is published online and in the Monday paper. To read more of these columns, click here. If you have news to share, please send an email to Newsday reporter Tory N. Parrish at tory.parrish@newsday.com.
Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.
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