Lincoln Kennedy, who played 11 seasons with the Atlanta Falcons and Oakland Raiders, owns two Angry Crab Shack restaurants, in Phoenix and just outside of Las Vegas. He and his partners are evaluating sites for a third location, possibly in Texas
or New Mexico.
During a star-studded football career that included NFL All-Pro and All-American honors leading to hall of fame inductions, Lincoln Kennedy was never was one to brag about his accomplishments.
Instead, the former standout athlete focused on doing his job, which was protecting the quarterback and creating openings for running backs as an offensive lineman. The 6-foot-7, 335-pound Kennedy left the chest thumping and preening in front of the TV cameras to his playmaking teammates.
It’s pretty much the same way now for the multi-unit franchisee who owns two Angry Crab Shack restaurants, one in Phoenix and the other just outside of Las Vegas. At the start of the year, he was scouting locations for his third restaurant, looking at El Paso, Texas, and Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Proud of what he accomplished in sports, Kennedy talked about the similar preparation and teamwork needed to run successful restaurants. The father of three children, he also spoke of the responsibility of providing for his family and how Angry Crab Shack gave him the opportunity to transition from star athlete to successful business owner.
“When I went into the franchise business with Angry Crab, my main goal was to try to establish some sort of residual income for my family,” Kennedy said. “I have my hands in a lot of different things now, but Angry Crab and running restaurants is what I’m mainly focused on.”
Kennedy, who played 11 NFL seasons for the Atlanta Falcons and Oakland Raiders and then three years for the Tampa Bay Storm of the Arena Football League, is surprisingly humble considering all he’s accomplished. The San Diego native was the ninth overall pick in the 1993 NFL draft after helping lead the University of Washington to a perfect season in 1992 and a national championship.
One of the more durable and dominating offensive lineman of his era, he helped guide the Raiders to the AFC title in 2003, earning a bid to Super Bowl XXXVII. Kennedy, who prefers not to relive the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ convincing win over his Raiders in the NFL title game, was inducted into the University of Washington Husky Hall of Fame in 2004 and the National Football Foundation Hall of Fame in 2015.
He now does color commentary for the Las Vegas Raiders radio broadcasts.
It was Kennedy’s work as chapter president of the Retired NFL Players Association that led to his introduction to Angry Crab Shack founder Ron Lou, another former offensive lineman and the first player of direct Chinese descent selected in the NFL draft, in 1973.
“I became a fan of Angry Crab from the start and saw the potential. When Ron told us about wanting to expand his restaurant business, and got a few of us together to partner with to make that happen, I jumped in,” Kennedy said.
Angry Crab has 22 locations in six states, with 16 of them in Arizona. It also has one location in the United Kingdom with planned openings for another three locations there this year.
Kennedy, who started off with the brand on the corporate side, helping bring in investors, became one of its first franchisees in 2013 when he took over a shuttered Applebee’s in Phoenix and turned it into Angry Crab Shack. He said his Phoenix restaurant seats about 250 customers and his Vegas area location can accommodate nearly 300 diners inside and on its patio.
The multi-unit operator said his Phoenix location is among the top performers in the Angry Crab system with devoted customers often forming lines to order from a menu that features crab, crawfish, clams, mussels, shrimp and lobster boiled in bags with Asian-Cajun spices and herbs.
Kennedy said his focus now is on how to drive more customers to his Henderson, Nevada, location, which sits about four miles from the Las Vegas Strip.
“Running restaurants is a tough, tough business and it’s really not for everyone,” he said. “But the thing I like about it is the team concept of it. Yeah, having a good management is really important, but it all really starts with your employees, the ones on the front lines that make the customer’s experience special. They need to feel good about their work and about the organization in order for them to do their best work.”