Damola Adamolekun rose to popularity after becoming Red Lobster’s youngest CEO in August 2024, helping the restaurant chain recover from Chapter 11 bankruptcy and creating a cult following in the process.
But Red Lobster isn’t his first CEO role. Adamolekun was appointed managing director of PF Chang’s in April 2020, shortly after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Although he followed an older, more experienced executive — eight-time CEO John Antioco — Adamolekun says he never let that stop him from doing his job.
“In everything you do, you have to recognize your strengths and your weaknesses,” the 36-year-old told the “How Leaders Lead with David Novak” podcast in a Dec. 11 episode. “I have a lot of strengths but, in this situation, experience is clearly a weakness, right? There are people who have been doing it for 20 years and I haven’t.”
“You can’t be a perfect candidate for anything,” Adamolekun continued. “There’s always going to be an area where you’re weaker. So, for me, it’s about recognizing that, accentuating your strengths and shoring up your weaknesses.”
In his case, Adamolekun had years of experience in the restaurant industry from a financial perspective. He was a partner at investment firm Paulson & Co., leading the acquisition of PF Chang’s in 2019 in a $700 million deal, a private equity associate at TPG Capital and an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs before taking the helm of restaurants. He also served as Antioco’s chief strategy officer for a year, building PF Chang’s self-delivery business before the pandemic hit.
He also had people skills, he said. He did not hesitate to “put on the helmet” and work on the ground to help reopen stores. What Adamolekun didn’t know, he relied on and trusted his colleagues and employees to fill in the gaps.
“I had experience around me,” he said. “As long as you are willing to listen to this, it can become your own experience, right?” As long as you are willing to engage with these people. …If I hadn’t [information] myself, it was around me.
“My job was to align the team, strategize, motivate people, get things done, empower the right people, promote the right people,” Adamolekun continued. “And as long as I was able to do that, we built a great team and were able to move the company forward.”
Hiring the right talent and letting them take ownership of their jobs is a crucial responsibility for business leaders, according to billionaire Mark Cuban, who was once a micromanaging boss. Be too bossy and you risk hurting employee morale, he told the “Bio Eats World” podcast in 2023. “I wish someone had told me to be nicer, because I was always go, go, go…Ready, shoot, aim.” Let’s go. Let’s go faster, faster.”
“Sometimes I had to [business] partner Todd [Wagner] telling me: ‘Look, you scare some people, [and] they generally go [quit] and you can’t get angry,” Cuban added.
In 2021, a year after Adamolekun became CEO, PF Chang’s revenue increased from $601 million to $922 million, according to research and consulting firm Technomic’s Top 500 Restaurant Chains report. Red Lobster is on track for a similar rebound as it emerged from bankruptcy and is betting on menu innovation and an increased emphasis on hospitality to attract consumers, he said in a July interview with Good Morning America.
The company also cut 10% of its professional workforce and 200 restaurant employees as it aims for stable profitability, a spokesperson recently told Bloomberg.
To face big challenges at work head-on, Adamolekun has one piece of advice: don’t let pressure stop you from doing work you’re proud of.
“If you’re too worried about the pressure, it stops you from thinking clearly because you become stressed,” he told the David Novak Podcast. “You don’t want pressure to force you to make bad decisions because you’re panicking about what’s at stake. You need to make decisions calmly, no matter what the stakes are.”
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