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Damola Adamolekun has spent the past two years hauling Red Lobster out of bankruptcy. Now, he says, his plan for the 58-year-old seafood chain is to out-AI everyone.<\/p>\n
Speaking on The Black Money Tree Podcast (1), the 37-year-old CEO laid out a plan to weave AI through nearly every fabric of the seafood company, which has 500+ restaurants in operation today.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m trying to be the most AI-forward restaurant company that exists,\u201d Adamolekun said. \u201cAI is important. I know a lot of people are scared of it or don\u2019t want to deal with it, but you have to. It\u2019s changing the game in a tremendous way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Born in Nigeria in 1989 to a neurologist and a pharmacist, Damola Adamolekun was raised in Zimbabwe and the Netherlands before his family moved to Springfield, Illinois, when he was nine years old. He landed an internship at Goldman Sachs when he was just 19 (2), while still a student-athlete at Brown University, then moved into private equity at TPG and a partnership at hedge fund Paulson & Co. His first big job in operations came in 2020, when he became CEO of P.F. Chang\u2019s at age 31. He steered the Asian-fusion chain through the pandemic and helped push it past $1 billion in annual revenue (3).<\/p>\n
When private equity firm Fortress Investment Group bought Red Lobster out of bankruptcy in 2024, it handed Adamolekun the keys, and he became the youngest CEO in the chain\u2019s history.<\/p>\n