Olive garden how many restaurants

Starboard Value, an investor in the Italian chain, sent Olive Garden executives a slide presentation citing everything it hated about the restaurant [ PDF ]. One of those points targeted the million breadsticks Olive Garden serves annually. Starboard Value claimed the breadsticks only lasted seven minutes before becoming stale, leading to a lot of waste—and then compared the restaurant's beloved appetizer to hotdog buns. Intense pushback ensured Olive Garden's offer of unlimited breadsticks remained the same, but Darden found other ways of cutting costs.

Like, for instance, only cleaning its carpets once per month. A Olive Garden campaign promoted the restaurant as the place you'd want to take your Italian or Italian food-loving family for authentic meals. But some of those menu items aren't all that Italian after all. In , the restaurant admitted some of its menu items took a cue from Italian chefs, but wouldn't be found in traditional cookbooks or Italian restaurants.

Surprisingly, a Public Policy poll found that 39 percent of Americans think Olive Garden is as authentic as Italian food comes. Still, chicken alfredo ranks as Olive Garden's most-ordered dish , so despite being Americanized, the chain must be doing something right. Although its meals may not be what you'd expect from an authentic Italian dining experience, Olive Garden has created some Tuscan-inspired dishes.

In an effort to attract more foodies, Olive Garden briefly introduced a pear and gorgonzola ravioli and a baked pasta romana.

While both dishes were a flop with customers they weren't "cravable" enough , anything with breadsticks almost always gets a free pass. Olive Garden's breadstick sandwiches , which sport chicken parmigiana or meatballs between two breadsticks, were an unexpected win for the chain. In this case, Olive Garden investors might be right—the breadsticks are sort of like a hotdog bun.

One of Olive Garden's perks is the variety of menu items. But if you aren't finding exactly what you want—say, a discontinued menu item—there's a chance you can hack your order.

Olive Garden started as a unit of General Mills, Inc. Unlike many restaurant chains that start as independently owned stores and grow organically, Olive Garden was started with the intent of becoming a large chain. By , after only seven short years, there were Olive Garden restaurants, making it the fastest-growing company in the General Mills restaurant division.

Olive Garden eventually became the largest chain of Italian-themed, full-service restaurants in the United States. General Mills spun off its restaurant holdings as Darden Restaurants, named for Red Lobster founder Bill Darden, as a stand-alone company in Premium statistics.

Read more. This statistic shows the number of Olive Garden restaurants in the United States from to In the fiscal year , there were Olive Garden restaurants in the U. Olive Garden is one of the casual dining restaurant chains owned and operated by Darden Restaurants, a multi-brand restaurant operator. You need a Single Account for unlimited access. Full access to 1m statistics Incl. Single Account.

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