Red Lobster closes its only Hawaii location after 30 years

Red Lobster shut its only Hawaii restaurant on June 21, ending more than 30 years at 1765 Ala Moana Boulevard in Waikīkī. A sign on the door thanked customers for 32 years of memories, a small farewell that marked the end of a longtime dining room in one of Honolulu’s busiest tourist corridors.

The restaurant sat on the ground floor of the Ilikai Marina condos, where lease costs and visitor traffic can make or break a destination unit. Red Lobster said it closes restaurants after reviewing performance and lease terms, and it described the Waikīkī shutdown as tied to “unique operating conditions” at the site. For the staff who worked the room, the bar, and the kitchen, a permanent closure at the chain’s only Hawaii outpost leaves no local sister location to absorb transfers.

The closure also fits the broader reset Red Lobster has been pushing since its Chapter 11 filing on May 19, 2024. The chain had already closed dozens of restaurants before filing, and its own website listed 99 closed locations in May 2024. Court approval of the restructuring plan came on Sept. 5, 2024, and Red Lobster later exited bankruptcy on Sept. 16, 2024, when RL Investor Holdings LLC, backed by Fortress Investment Group and other lenders, completed its acquisition. At the time of exit, the company said it had 545 restaurants in 44 U.S. states and four Canadian provinces, down from the nearly 580 restaurants it said would remain open through the restructuring.

That shrinking footprint matters on the floor. A chain that keeps pruning locations can mean fewer internal openings for servers, bartenders, hosts, line cooks, and managers who might otherwise move to another unit instead of starting over somewhere else. It also narrows the path for training, seniority, and consistency across a system that depends on hourly labor and fast turnover. Red Lobster has continued to face pressure to rebalance after bankruptcy, and in February 2026 its CEO, Damola Adamolekun, said more closures could still happen.

The Waikīkī site had already shown strain before the permanent shutdown. In June 2024, the Hawaii Department of Health red-tagged the restaurant after a sewage backup affected an area near the kitchen entrance and dining room. With that history behind it and no local successor in place, the closure leaves Red Lobster with one less foothold in a market where tourism, rent, and staffing pressure can turn a familiar dining room into a casualty of the balance sheet.