Red Lobster is making huge change to one of its most important menu items

Red Lobster is making a change to its most popular protein: shrimp.

The restaurant chain is increasing the size of its shrimp by at least 47% in most of its dishes. Some entrees will now feature shrimp that's almost twice its current size.

Red Lobster is also changing how it prepares and cooks the shellfish to make it taste better.

For example, the chain is now preparing the shrimp scampi in-house and adding more sauce to the dish, because customers said they wanted additional sauce for dipping their cheddar bay biscuits.

Red Lobster is making the changes after customers told the company in internal surveys that the shrimp was sub-par.

"They told us they wanted the shrimp to get bigger and also wanted the taste to get better," Red Lobster President Salli Setta told Business Insider. "We're giving our guests what they want."

These are big changes for Red Lobster, which prepares 80 million servings of shrimp annually and gets about 45% of its sales from dishes that contain the shellfish.

The company has been working on making the shrimp bigger for about a year. Most restaurants will be serving the new shrimp by December.

Red Lobster has been retooling its menu since the company was taken private more than a year ago.

The changes so far have resonated well with customers, according to Setta. The company has had four straight quarters of positive same-store sales.