No. Red Lobster's US restaurants are company-operated under Fortress-backed RL Investor Holdings. Captain D's and Angry Crab Shack are the franchised options.
Quick answer No. Red Lobster does not franchise in the United States. The chain exited Chapter 11 in September 2024 under RL Investor Holdings LLC, backed by Fortress Investment Group, and operates roughly 544 restaurants across the US and Canada itself. The franchised seafood options are Captain D's at $662,000 to $1,862,100 and Angry Crab Shack at $421,800 to $1,203,800.
No. Red Lobster does not sell franchises in the United States. The chain filed for Chapter 11 protection in 2024, closed a large block of locations during the case, and emerged that September under new ownership: RL Investor Holdings LLC, an entity backed by Fortress Investment Group. Roughly 544 restaurants across the US and Canada came through the process, more than 500 of them still operating, and the company runs them. There is no Franchise Disclosure Document for the brand, which means no Item 5 fee schedule, no Item 7 investment table, and no Item 19 earnings data for a prospective buyer to read.
Some international Red Lobster locations have historically operated under franchise or licensing arrangements outside North America. That is a different market with different agreements, and none of it puts a US restaurant on the table.
The new ownership group installed Damola Adamolekun as chief executive and committed more than $60 million to revitalizing the brand. That is the posture of an operator repricing a menu, renegotiating leases, and deciding which dining rooms deserve capital.
Franchising works in the opposite direction. It sells a settled operating system to independent buyers and charges a royalty simple enough to audit every week. A chain still deciding which of its restaurants survive has no settled system to sell, and each unit it does convert to a franchise trades a full P&L for a 4% or 5% royalty stream, which is a bad trade during a recovery when the goal is to capture the upside you just paid for. Red Lobster has not published a franchise-specific rationale, so read that as inference drawn from the company’s behavior rather than a stated corporate position.
The pattern holds across full-service casual dining. Olive Garden sits inside Darden and stays company-run, and Texas Roadhouse has contractual rights to buy back most of its remaining domestic franchise restaurants. Table service with a large menu concentrates the risk in labor scheduling and food cost, both of which corporate operators prefer to control directly.
Seafood franchising is a thin category, and the two brands with current filed documents sit at opposite ends of the format range.
| Captain D’s | Angry Crab Shack | |
|---|---|---|
| FDD vintage | 2026 | 2026 |
| Initial franchise fee | $35,000 | $50,000 first restaurant |
| Estimated initial investment | $662,000 to $1,862,100 | $421,800 to $1,203,800 |
| Royalty | 4.50% of gross sales | 5% of net sales |
| Advertising | 1.00% fund, up to 2.00%, plus co-op | up to 2%, currently 1% |
| Franchised restaurants | 229 | 19 |
| Company restaurants | 289 | 5 |
| Item 19 median | $1,042,475 across 210 franchised units | $2,591,766 across 23 units |
Neither number includes real estate. Captain D’s excludes land acquisition and site preparation from its Item 7 outright, and Angry Crab Shack tells you to add the cost of the property if you buy rather than lease a 5,500 to 7,000 square foot space.
Captain D’s, LLC has operated and franchised since August 2000 and ended its 2025 fiscal year with 289 company-owned and 229 franchised restaurants across 23 states and two foreign countries. The investment range moves with the building: $1,453,000 to $1,862,100 for the 44-seat freestanding prototype, $1,325,000 to $1,638,800 for the 32-seat version, and $662,000 to $1,040,500 for an inline location. The recurring stack is a 4.50% royalty plus a 1.00% advertising fee that can rise to 2.00%, plus a co-op contribution of up to 1.50%. A 2.00% local marketing requirement also sits in Item 6, suspended since the pandemic and revivable at the franchisor’s discretion.
Item 19 is where the document earns its keep. Across 210 franchised restaurants open the full fiscal year ended December 28, 2025, average gross sales were $1,082,533 and the median was $1,042,475.
| Franchised comparable restaurants, FY2025 | Top third | Middle third | Bottom third |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average gross sales | $1,524,798 | $1,024,694 | $698,105 |
| Median gross sales | $1,489,085 | $1,042,475 | $724,891 |
| Highest in band | $2,782,545 | $1,177,111 | $845,752 |
| Lowest in band | $1,179,140 | $848,474 | $172,390 |
| Restaurants | 70 | 70 | 70 |
A restaurant doing $172,390 in a full year is in that table alongside one doing $2,782,545, and the gap between the top and bottom thirds is more than double. Item 20 adds the trend a sales table cannot: franchised outlets went from 237 at the start of 2025 to 229 at the end, with 13 restaurants ceasing operations for reasons other than termination or non-renewal, while the company-owned count slid from 293 to 289. The fee schedule is built to counter that. A commitment of three to five restaurants drops the franchise fee to $25,000, and a 16 to 20 restaurant commitment drops it to $17,500, with a 2.25% royalty for the first year on restaurants that open within 60 days of schedule.
Read the expense side carefully before you model anything. The cost percentages published in that Item 19, including food and packaging near 30% and labor from 23.49% to 34.87% by band, describe company-owned restaurants only, and company restaurants pay no royalty. Pull the Captain D’s data sheet for the Items 5, 7, and 19 breakdown as filed, which is a different exercise from reading a recruiting page.
Angry Crab Shack is the closer analogue to what a Red Lobster searcher usually pictures: a full-service seafood boil concept with a bar program, at $421,800 to $1,203,800 and a $50,000 fee for a first location. The fee falls to $45,000 for later restaurants, $40,000 under a development agreement, and $40,000 from the first restaurant for veterans, current firefighters, and former police officers. The royalty is 5% of net sales, weekly by ACH.
Its Item 19 does something most franchisors avoid: it lists all 23 restaurants individually with three years of net sales each. The 2025 median was $2,591,766 and the average was $2,841,202, with only 9 of 23 units clearing the average. The label matters more than usual here, because 5 of those 23 restaurants are company-owned and they occupy the top of the table, from $4,330,367 to $5,656,784. Franchisee results run much wider: Tempe at $3,029,994, Acworth at $965,259 in its first partial stretch, and Henderson sliding from $2,388,225 in 2023 to $1,418,737 in 2025. A three-year decline in a named unit is the kind of detail an aggregate median hides.
The system is small. It ended 2025 with 19 franchised restaurants and 5 company-owned, having added one franchised unit that year.
The third seafood franchisor with a filed document is the one that argues against the category. Long John Silver’s franchised base fell from 417 restaurants at the start of 2022 to 297 at the end of 2023 and 257 at the end of 2024, while company-owned units held roughly flat at 228. Its FDD makes no financial performance representation at all, which means a buyer evaluating a shrinking system has no disclosed sales figure to test against franchisee phone calls.
That is the honest shape of seafood franchising. One brand with a deep Item 19 and a long bottom tail, one small brand with unit-level transparency, and one contracting system that tells you nothing.
Nothing in the company’s current behavior suggests a franchise program is coming, and a turnaround backed by an investment firm has every reason to keep the restaurants it kept. The nearest emotional substitute is not for sale either: Cracker Barrel has never franchised in its history.
If the real goal was a restaurant rather than that specific sign, start from the documents. Our best food franchises under $250K roundup covers the lighter-build end of the category, well below what any of the three seafood brands above will cost you to open.
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About this analysis The franchise data in this article is drawn from VetMyFranchise's structured analysis of 2,300+ Franchise Disclosure Documents filed with U.S. state regulators. See our data & methodology.
No. Red Lobster does not offer franchises in the United States, and there is no Franchise Disclosure Document registered for a buyer to review. The restaurants are operated by the company, now owned by RL Investor Holdings LLC with backing from Fortress Investment Group. Any site quoting a Red Lobster franchise fee or investment range is quoting a figure with no filed document behind it.
RL Investor Holdings LLC, an entity backed by Fortress Investment Group, took ownership when the chain exited Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September 2024. Damola Adamolekun runs the company as chief executive, and the new owner committed more than $60 million to revitalizing the business. Roughly 544 locations across the US and Canada survived the restructuring.
Captain D's and Angry Crab Shack both file current FDDs and sell franchises. Captain D's estimates $662,000 to $1,862,100 for a restaurant depending on which of its four prototypes you build, at a $35,000 franchise fee. Angry Crab Shack estimates $421,800 to $1,203,800 at a $50,000 fee for a first location. Long John Silver's also franchises, but its system has been shrinking and it publishes no earnings data.
The 2026 FDD puts a 44-seat freestanding prototype at $1,453,000 to $1,862,100 and an inline location at $662,000 to $1,040,500, none of which includes real estate. The franchise fee is $35,000 per restaurant, half payable at the development agreement and half at the franchise agreement. Commitments of three or more restaurants cut the fee, reaching $17,500 per unit at a 16 to 20 restaurant commitment.
Median gross sales were $1,042,475 across 210 franchised comparable restaurants in the fiscal year ended December 28, 2025, against a $1,082,533 average. That is revenue, not profit. The document splits franchisees into thirds: the top third averaged $1,524,798, the bottom third averaged $698,105, and the lowest single restaurant recorded $172,390. All of the expense data in that Item 19 comes from company-owned restaurants, which pay no royalty.
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