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Tallahassee Red Lobster Is Country's Longest Standing

N. Evans

Until Monday, not many people knew that the oldest Red Lobster Restaurant in America is located in Tallahassee.  

The 43-year-old building has undergone an extensive remodeling and expansion, and Josh Andrews, the eatery’s current general manager, says this is actually the property’s second facelift.  But that makeover, he says, was many years ago.

“With it being the oldest restaurant in the company, standing here for 43 years, we got probably the most intensive remodel of any restaurant.  So we have nice, beautiful stone walls as you walk in and we’ve got a lot of nice add-ons.  We’ve replaced every piece of wood, every piece of carpet, every booth, every square inch of the front of the house.”

Other Red Lobsters dating from the same period have long since fallen to the wrecker’s ball because rebuilding was more practical and less expensive than remodeling.  How has the Tallahassee Red Lobster managed to escape demolition?  Manager Josh Andrews says the store has really been constrained by its own success.  The Darden restaurant chain that owns it would have lost significant customer business if it had bulldozed the place and rebuilt from scratch.  And he says the restaurant has been expanded to reduce those typical long wait times on weekends and holidays.

Credit N. Evans
Senior Cook, Horace Williams (center) is the longest-serving employee at the facility.

“Yeah, we do good.  We’re a busy store and with the remodel we actually added 40 physical seats – not tables – so we can accommodate much more guests now so it helps increase a lower wait time for our guests coming to dine.  We actually added a banquet room up front and we can fit about 80 people up there for anybody looking for a banquet facility to get some great food and great service.  So we’re much more functional now for sure,” he said.

One thing about the restaurant that hasn’t changed, though, are a few of the people who have worked there almost from the start.  The veteran of the group is Senior Cook Horace Williams.  He likes the new look of the restaurant and says the place looked a lot different when he started working there forty-two years ago.
“No, it didn’t have any windows at all. Red Lobster had no windows to it.  It was just like a closed-in all the way, but they still had big lights in the corners, but so far as you looking outside, we didn’t have that.  When it first opened up, I mean when I first started here, they didn’t have windows at all.”

Why has Williams labored in the same restaurant kitchen for more than four decades?  He says the answer is simple.  He just loves to cook.

“It’s just like on my birthday, I get in the yard and grill out on my grill and people say, ‘Why you doing this? It’s your birthday!’  And I don’t mind.  I jump right on out there and do it.  It doesn’t matter.  I just like it.”  

Williams says he’ll probably work two or three more years at the local Red Lobster before taking a well-deserved retirement.  Even then he expects to keep on cooking and also plans to do more fishing.  Monday’s grand reopening of Tallahassee’s Red Lobster drew many dignitaries, including City Commissioner Andrew Gillum.

“Personally it means a lot to me because I love coming to eat here; especially those fantastic biscuits.  But you know it means a lot to the city of Tallahassee for an international brand like Red Lobster to have its oldest continuously existing restaurant right here in the city of Tallahassee," Gillum said.

That’s something that might look good on a billboard, brochure or web site touting the city’s unique attractions.
 

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Tom Flanigan has been with WFSU News since 2006, focusing on covering local personalities, issues, and organizations. He began his broadcast career more than 30 years before that and covered news for several radio stations in Florida, Texas, and his home state of Maryland.

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