This Seafood Restaurant Chain Everyone Used To Love Is Now Down To 15 Locations

From the late 1980s to about 2010, large-scale, themed restaurants reigned supreme in the American dining scene. Places such as Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, and Rainforest Cafe were perpetually packed with groups of friends and families who wanted equal parts casual food and sensory entertainment. People who craved this kind of experience but who also had a hankering for seafood would head to Joe's Crab Shack, a lively, family-friendly seafood joint that once boasted nearly 150 locations which has now dwindled down to just 15. (Planet Hollywood isn't doing any better with just two surviving restaurants.)

On a visit to Joe's Crab Shack, you could spot tables of diners wearing oversized bibs handling sharp, crab-cracking tools. Buckets of beer and seafood boils were normal sights, as were servers breaking out in dance moves between tables. It was all good fun, until it wasn't. The company underwent a couple of ownership changes and has struggled with rising seafood costs. It has also seen its share of controversial incidents. For example, one location accidentally served alcohol to a child. The chain also got caught lying about the use of trans fats in its dishes. Joe's Crab Shack was hit hard by a cultural shift that had customers choosing fast casual spots and smaller, local businesses instead of dining at sit-down chain restaurants. And don't forget how much the COVID-19 pandemic damaged the service industry. The remaining 15 Joe's Crab Shack locations are in California, Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.

Joe's Crab Shack opened in 1991 and just three years later, the company was sold to Landry's Restaurants. Under Landry's, the number of Joe's locations skyrocketed to 143 by 2006. Landry's then sold most of the Crab Shack locations to JCS Holdings LLC (also known as Ignite Restaurant Group), under which it would go through bankruptcy and dwindle down to 72 restaurants. Numbers continued to drop over the years. In the midst of the ups and downs, Joe's (along with many other restaurants) battled with inflation, rising labor costs, and ultimately people simply going out to eat less.

Joe's is again under the ownership of Landry's, which doesn't appear to be putting significant money into revamping the struggling seafood chain. So, if you're a fan, run don't walk to your nearest Joe's Crab Shack which are now few and far between; making it one of several seafood joints that may soon be gone forever. Atmosphere-wise, the remaining Joe's Crab Shack restaurants are similar to what they were in their prime years, full of sea-inspired kitsch and cheesy wearable merchandise you can take home.