I look at private equity as sort of like a bacterial infection. The infection may be the thing that kills its host by sucking of all of its energy, but the reason the host was infected in the first place was because of some other problem that led to a weakened immune system.<p>Private equity firms prey on companies that are already struggling. Yes, they take a struggling company and hasten its demise. But healthy companies don't end up getting bought by private equity in the first place.<p>In this case, I think dining culture has just changed in a way that's incompatible with Red Lobster's brand. It used to be considered higher-class fare, but drifted down market like almost every large restaurant chain does (see also: Friday's, Applebee's, etc.). For a while, it survived on the unusual combination of being a nice-seeming sit-down seafood restaurant, but not actually that expensive or close to the sea.<p>But, of course, the way they were able to do that was by cutting every possible corner (for example, calling langostino "lobster"). Diners today care more about their health and where their food is coming from. The post-WWII culture of "we can trust big companies because they're successful business" has been replaced by "we can't trust big companies because they must have grown by doing shady shit".<p>Frankly, a cheap restaurant in the midwest that lets you eat unlimited lobster no longer seems a delightful treat and a hell of a lot more like a suspicious food poisoning trap.