If you didn’t manage to get your paws on a Never Ending Pasta Pass to taunt us with, but still crave carbs, don’t fret. Instead, you can pay $10 and get a never-ending pasta bowl that ends after one day. You can choose between five pastas and six sauces, and add meaty toppings that start at three bucks each. Take-out is not an option. This is the 19th year of the NEPB, raising the terrifying question of what the chain plans to do next year to celebrate the 20th year of the promotion. [Olive Garden] (via Brand Eating) [More]
olive garden
Power Mad Pasta Pass Owner Attempts To Make Us His Vassals
By 9.19.14
It was a day like any other day. In fact, it was, and is today. The sky was bright, the sun was high in the sky and nothing was wr– oh HOLD UP. One of our readers got a neverending Pasta Pass from Olive Garden and thinks that we should be in thrall to him? Uh uh. This is a Consumeristocracy, pal. [More]
“Italian Generosity” Means Olive Garden Will Give You As Many Breadsticks As It Wants – Thank You Very Much
By 9.15.14
The first thing to come to mind when I think of Olive Garden isn’t pasta, it’s breadsticks. Baskets of free, buttery bread – I mean they are practically the cornerstone of the restaurant. So when an investor to the company proposed the idea that maybe the O.G. shouldn’t so willingly, or liberally hand out the carb-filled sticks, we were a little shocked. But fear not, the restaurant wants customers to know that they can still have as many free sticks as they want, because, you know, “Italian generosity” is a thing. [More]
Investor Asks Olive Garden Servers To Be Stingier With Free Breadsticks
By 9.12.14
For all of its menu updates and attempted image changes over the decades, Olive Garden has never stopped reminding consumers of the free breadsticks they’ll get when they come in for a bite. But one hedge fund says that the O.G. is hurting itself, and its investors, by not paying enough attention to all the bread they put in those baskets. [More]
Inevitable Black Market For Olive Garden’s Elusive “Never Ending Pasta Pass” Emerges
By 9.10.14
If you’re not one of the 1,000 people who managed to get your hands on a $100 “Never Ending Pasta Pass” from Olive Garden that does, in fact, only last for a seven-week promotional period, don’t worry. You can either live your life the same way as before, or you can drop deep into the underbelly of Internet commerce and pay a jacked-up price for one. [More]
Olive Garden Offering $100 “Never Ending Pasta Pass” For 7 Weeks Of Food
By 9.8.14
Nothing lasts forever, not even a $100 Never Ending Pasta Pass from Olive Garden. But that price will buy you all the pasta, salad, bread and soda you can stuff in your gullet for seven weeks from the chain eatery with its new gimmick. [More]
While Other Restaurant Chains Cut Down On Sodium, KFC Meals Have Been Getting Saltier
By 7.2.14
With an increased concern about the role high sodium levels play in high blood pressure, kidney disease and other health issues, a number of restaurant chains have been attempting to cut back on the salt in recent years. A new review of meals from 17 of the nation’s most popular fast food and family eateries shows that most chains are slowly reducing the amounts of sodium in their food (though it’s still very high), while a small number of others have actually gone the other direction. [More]
The Most Calorie-Filled, Super-Salted Menu Items At Your Favorite “Italian” Chain Restaurants
By 5.1.14
Most of us are fully aware when we step into an American-style, sort-of-Italian restaurant like Olive Garden, Carraba’s, Maggiano’s, or Macaroni Grill that we’re going to leave in worse shape than we entered. But while the calorie counts vary greatly from menu item to menu item, almost everything you’ll get at one of these chain eateries is full of sodium. [More]
Olive Garden Suggested A Deceptively High Tip On My Receipt…Or Did It?
By 4.2.14
Raphael recently went out to eat at Olive Garden, the food and service were, he says, “fine.” He was less delighted when he looked at the receipt, though. It provided useful suggested tips for 15%, 18%, and 20%. Only these suggestions weren’t actually 15-20% of his before-tax dinner tab, which is what you’re supposed to base tips on. Or are things different on Planet Darden? [More]
Olive Garden Touting Its New Logo As The Symbol For Its “Brand Renaissance”
By 3.3.14
Olive Garden has been busy trying to convince people it’s not the same fast casual dining experience it’s always been — first with tapas, then a burger and some new menus, and now Darden is pinning its hopes and dreams on a revamped logo as part of its “brand renaissance” efforts. [More]
Olive Garden Will Provide Free Babysitting If You’ll Eat Dinner There (One-Night Only)
By 1.29.14
Either Olive Garden is feeling helpful or just really, really wants customers to walk in its doors and sit down and eat. In any case, the casual dining chain is serving up free babysitting for any parents who eat dinner one of its participating locations around the country for free on Feb. 7. [More]
Close To 20,000 Workers Join Lawsuit Claiming Darden Restaurants Underpaid Employees
By 1.9.14
There’s a storm a’brewin’ and it’s made of almost 20,000 former and current Darden Restaurants employees who have joined a federal lawsuit against the company. The suit alleges that Darden underpaid workers at 2,000 restaurants in all 50 states. [More]
Darden Is Preparing To Dump Red Lobster & Stop Trying To Expand Olive Garden
By 12.19.13
Before any Red Lobster fans go into some kind of crustacean-related panic, the chain isn’t going away forever. But that being said, it sounds like its parent company Darden Restaurants is trying awfully hard to distance itself from the seafood chain. [More]
Olive Garden Will Start Serving Burgers And Fries Because Why Not
By 12.3.13
Would you buy a plate of ravioli from McDonald’s? How about the complete reverse of that: a burger from Olive Garden? The freshest idea from the chain eatery is a “Burger Italiano” intended to compete with quick-serve rivals like Chili’s. Will it work? Um, probably not.
Are These The Final Days Of Automatic 18% Tips At Restaurants?
By 9.5.13
Many restaurants have a policy of automatically adding a 15-20% tip for large groups of diners, but that practice may be going the way of the dinosaur as a new revision to IRS income tax rules will make such auto-gratuities less attractive to servers and management. [More]
Olive Garden Waiter Boosts Tips By Impersonating Time-Traveling Alien
By 8.16.13
We’re all tired of customer service platitudes and the same spiels that every restaurant server gives. When someone finds a way to make the experience fresh and funny, it gets customers’ attention, for better or worse. One Olive Garden waiter writes that he decided to mix things up by pretending to be a favorite TV character: the title character from the BBC’s Doctor Who. [More]
Salads Sold At Red Lobster & Olive Garden Linked To Cyclospora Outbreaks In Two States
By 8.5.13
Taking some of the guess-work out of figuring out why your stomach may currently be turned inside out, the Food and Drug Administration has confirmed that salads linked to a cyclospora outbreak that’s sickened at least 400 people have been tied to four restaurants in Iowa and Nebraska, including Olive Garden and Red Lobster. [More]
Customer Who Posted Olive Garden Receipt Says He Understands The Skeptics
By 3.27.13
Earlier today, we told you about a receipt posted by an Olive Garden diner whose meal was comped, and about all the doubters that came out of the woodwork to claim it was a fake. We weren’t sure — we certainly wouldn’t put it past a clever marketing department — so we asked the man who originally published the much-debated pic. [More]
