Not even a year ago, the activist hedge-fund investors at Starboard Value were making headlines with their 300-page report criticizing Olive Garden management for being wasteful with the free breadsticks, overly generous with the salad dressing, and not selling enough booze. Since then, Starboard has ousted board members at Olive Garden parent company Darden Restaurants and replaced them with their own nominees who have ushered in menu changes like turning those breadsticks into sandwiches. In an attempt to ground the new board members’ decisions in the real world, they all got to spend an evening on the foodservice front line. [More]
Darden Restaurant
Olive Garden Overhaul: Darden Loses Board Seats To Breadstick Police Investors
By 10.10.14
There might be fewer breadsticks in the basket next time you visit Olive Garden. Okay, fine we don’t really know if that’s true, but we do know that Darden Restaurant Inc., the parent company of the Italian restaurant, lost all of its board seats to investors turned breadstick police Starboard Value LP today. [More]
