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]
pasta
Ad Watchdog: Toddlers Are Not Legitimate Pasta Experts
By 6.8.17
Who do you respect as a culinary expert? A recent commercial for Campbell’s Prego brand pasta sauce used split-screen images of 12-month-old children as representatives of children who took part in a taste test, jokingly presenting them as “lifelong pasta experts.” Were these toddlers supposed to represent taste test participants, or something else? [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]
American Airlines Flight Attendant Tells Passenger To “Shut Up” In Spat Over Service
By 6.9.16
We’ve seen passengers and airline workers exchange heated words before, often over things like seating assignments or attire. But a fight between an American Airlines flight attendant and a passenger on a recent flight all boiled down to one thing: pasta. [More]
Everyone Rush To Giant Before This Amazing Pasta Sale Is Over
By 5.2.16
Pre-packaged pasta sides are a cheap and easy addition to your meal, and they’re even more affordable if you wait for a good sale. When we say a “good” sale, though, that doesn’t mean a sale like this one at the supermarket Giant. [More]
Mars Plastering Special Labels On Pasta Sauces That Are High In Salt, Fat, Or Sugar
By 4.15.16
The next time you reach for your favorite sauce in the grocery aisle, you could be greeted with a warning that you maybe shouldn’t over-indulge in the stuff. Mars Food, the maker of brands like Dolmio and Uncle Ben’s, is putting new labels on some of its pasta sauces suggesting they be an occasional treat due to high content of sugar, salt, or fat. [More]
Customer Says Box Of Pasta Contained Free Mummified Frog
By 12.16.15
Poor frogs. We keep accidentally scooping them up and serving them in our food. The latest case of a free frog found where it wasn’t supposed to be is a very strange one: a woman in Minnesota says that she found a petrified frog in her box of pasta. [More]
Olive Garden Brings Back Never-Ending Pasta Bowl
By 9.23.14
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]
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]
Former Providence Mayor’s Marinara Sauce Earned Only $3 For Charity
By 8.18.14
Vincent Albert “Buddy” Cianci, Jr. has served as the mayor of Providence, Rhode Island twice, each stint in office ending in a prison term. Now he has announced plans to run again, which made reporters curious about one of his projects to do good for humanity: his “Mayor’s Own” pasta sauce, which costs about $6 per jar and brags about “Benefiting Providence School Children” on the front. Does it? Benefit school children, that is? It might if it made any money. [More]
Barilla Opens Manhattan Restaurant In Case You Don’t Feel Like Boiling Your Own Water
By 3.11.14
Option one: Open a box of Barilla pasta at home, dump it into boiling water, serve and eat. Option two: Go to the Barilla restaurant in New York City and have someone else boil the water and dump the pasta in, then bring it to you. Yes, the Italian pasta maker has opened its first restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. [More]
You’re Probably Not A Miserable Failure At The “Composer Or Pasta?” Game
By 12.19.13
Playing the game of choosing whether a name belongs to a composer or a kind of pasta is a profoundly humbling experience. If you’re anything like the Consumerist team, you’ll probably go through throes of certain failure, only to be met with a more respectable score at the end than you imagined possible. And you’ll also learn there are more types of spaghetti than you ever dreamed. [ClassicFM.com] [More]
Barilla Hopes Its New Diversity Board Will Make Everyone Forget Exec’s Anti-Gay Comments
By 11.5.13
Italian pasta producer Barilla is still busy smoothing things over after its president made waves in September by saying the company would never feature families with gay people in its ads. It’s whipped a brand new “diversity and inclusion board” so it can figure out how to not tick its customers off with anti-gay comments. [More]
Bertolli Takes Advantage Of Barilla’s PR Problems, Says Their Pasta Is For Everyone
By 9.27.13
In his controversial interview on an Italian radio program earlier this week, president of pasta company Barilla said that the company would never use the image of a family headed by gay or lesbian parents in one of its ads. Why? “[W]e like the traditional family,” Barilla said. He invited customers to buy a different pasta brand if they disagree. “Challenge accepted,” said Bertolli, a worldwide brand owned by Unilever. Except in Italian. [More]
Barilla President Says Ads Will Never Feature Gay Families, Gay People Switch Pasta Brands
By 9.26.13 — Updated: 9.27.13
Barilla is the world’s largest manufacturer of delicious boxed pasta. Their marketing features a cuddly family eating delicious pasta, associating pasta with “home.” Not all homes, though. In a radio interview, company president Guido Barilla said that the brand would never put out an ad featuring a family headed by a homosexual couple. Gay rights supporters have concluded that Barilla doesn’t want their business, and called for a boycott. [More]
Barilla Redesigns Pasta Package To Let Consumers Know That Pasta Package Is About To Be Redesigned
By 3.24.11
The redesign of a familiar package is apparently a frightening and confusing time for consumers. That’s why Barilla was kind enough to redesign its whole-grain pasta package in order to let us know that the package is about to be redesigned. [More]
