Attention, fans of carbohydrates! It’s time to warm up your online purchasing fingers. The Neverending Pasta Pass goes back on sale at Olive Garden today, but there’s a new twist this year: 50 passes will be available that entitle the bearer to neverending pasta for eight weeks, and a weeklong trip to Italy. Update: And they’re gone: 22,000 passes and the 50 Passports that come with the free trip sold out in one second. [More]
olive garden
Olive Garden Is Betting On Healthier Fare To Bring Back Customers
By 3.29.17
When you think of Olive Garden, you likely imagine heaps upon heaps of pasta(often covered in a cream sauce) and a neverending march of cheese-dusted breadsticks — essentially, the opposite of health food. But the chain is betting one of its newly revamped lower-calorie pasta dishes will help turn around slumping sales. [More]
You Can Now Check In Online For A Table At Olive Garden
By 10.25.16 — Updated: 10.31.16
Many restaurants already allow patrons to call ahead for seating as a way to avoid long waits when they walk through the door. While Olive Garden has never adhered to this option, the restaurant is now taking that idea and making it its own: allowing guests to check in on the web to save tables. [More]
Olive Garden Unlimited Pasta Passes Hit eBay With Prices Up To $4,500 Because Of Course
By 9.16.16
Despite the fact that Olive Garden put 21,000 Never Ending Pasta Passes up for sale yesterday, 19,000 more than it offered last year, those passes sold out immediately. Demand remains, it seems, as there are already listings for the passes on eBay with asking prices up to $4,500. [More]
Olive Garden Already Sold All 21,000 Unlimited Pasta Passes
By 9.15.16
You read that headline right. Even though Olive Garden is often desperate for customers, and despite the company’s boardroom brawls over breadsticks, people still have to get their hands on that unlimited Pasta Pass. [More]
Olive Garden Will Sell 21,000 Unlimited Pasta Passes This Year
By 9.12.16
Last year, Olive Garden put 1,000 regular and 1,000 “family” Neverending Pasta Passes up for sale, which sold out literally in one second. This year, the company is expanding the program, selling 21,000 passes. The key to this promotion isn’t the pass-holders: it’s the people they bring with them. [More]
Would You Pay $400 For A New Year’s Eve Dinner At Olive Garden In Times Square?
By 12.28.15
UPDATE: That $400 price tag will include breadsticks, despite earlier reports. [More]
Olive Garden Pasta Passes Sell Out In Under A Second — Were You Able To Score One?
By 9.17.15
There are only 2,000 people who were able to score one of Olive Garden’s Pasta Passes today, and it sounds like they must have the ability to click must faster than everyone else who tried — and failed — to get one: Olive Garden says all 2,000 passes sold out in under a second. [More]
Olive Garden Is Bringing Back The Pasta Pass, Adds Family Option
By 9.16.15
If you missed your chance to buy one of the 1,000 never-ending Pasta Passes from Olive Garden last year, mark your calendars… for tomorrow: the fast-casual chain says it’s bringing back the cards that entitle bearers to shove as much pasta down their gullets as they can for seven weeks. This time, friends and family can be included in the endless feast as well. [More]
Another Wasteful Expense At Olive Garden: Excessive Carpet Shampooing
By 6.23.15
The table-waiting, breadstick-hoarding board of directors over at Darden, parent company of Olive Garden, has some more extremely practical advice for its restaurants on the ground: they need to shampoo their carpets less. This is an example of an actual cost-saving measure proposed by the company’s CEO. [More]
Olive Garden’s Board Of Directors Waited Tables To Experience Life As An Employee
By 6.1.15
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]
Would You Eat A Chicken Parmesan Breadstick Sandwich From Olive Garden?
By 5.11.15
Olive Garden has never been shy when it comes to experimenting with new menu items. Remember when the company introduced burgers and tapas? Apparently the scientists in the OG kitchen haven’t hung up their goggles just yet, with the restaurant now set to test breadstick sandwiches.
Olive Garden Adding Tablets For Ordering And Paying At All U.S. Restaurants
By 4.14.15
Because we’re all constantly staring at one screen or another, Olive Garden is giving customers the chance to skip talking to a real person when ordering and paying by adding new tablets added to all its restaurants’ tables. [More]
Olive Garden Revamps Menu, Invites Food Snobs To Come Whine About It
By 1.29.15
Olive Garden has never pretended to be a center of fancy cuisine or healthy eating. Its selling point isthe quantities of food available, including and especially breadsticks coated with garlic salt. Olive Garden is currently trying to rebrand itself, introducing a new logo and adding new ideas to the menu, like burgers and tapas. Is that enough to impress food snobs? Of course not. It’s Olive Garden. [More]
One Man Used Olive Garden Pasta Pass To Feed 125 Other People
By 12.1.14
While most folks who managed to score an Olive Garden Pasta Pass — which gave the holder access to as much pasta from the sorta-Italian-ish restaurant chain as they could eat during a seven week span earlier this fall — used it to either test the limits of their digestive system, make a profit by selling it, or dangle it in front of our faces, one man in Utah used his Pasta Pass to help those in need of a decent meal. [More]
Pasta Pass ‘Winner’ Eats 115 Olive Garden Meals In 7 Weeks
By 11.11.14
If something was never intended to be a contest, can you really declare someone the winner? We can’t help but wonder that in the case of a bold North Carolina man who obtained an Olive Garden Never-Ending Pasta Pass, then proceeded to use it to the full extent that the promotion allowed. This means that he ate at Olive Garden a total of 115 times in seven weeks. [More]
Olive Garden Neverending Pasta Pass Holder Has Eaten 95 Pasta Meals
By 11.4.14
There were only 1,000 Neverending Pasta Passes issued in a massive Olive Garden publicity stunt, and minister in North Carolina has one of them. He’s determined to make the most of it, and as of yesterday had eaten 95 meals so far at his local Olive Garden. He calculates that he has eaten $1,510 so far during the six weeks to date. [More]
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]
