Calling the breadsticks "unlimited" was definitely a brilliant marketing move. Most restaurants I go to will offer to bring more bread if all the bread on the table is eaten, so they effectively offer unlimited bread as well, but nobody thinks of it that way because it's not something they advertise.
@@tigernotwoods914 i notice fbi/irs/cia/msm all give double standards to political families deeply involved with kill iraq/libya in particular=cheney-pelosi stay rich when muller charge manafort for things nothing to do with russia hack but let podesta go for same reason =blackmail dc to support blame russia to cover up fact 2 party system failed since mccain-hillary all did united fruit company scandal 2.0 recall fbi never look at physical evidence just crowdstrike/hillary words, cia break glass 2017 inauguration with media claim russia stolen election 1oo george bush 14y ago said add ukraine to nato foreshadow nuland f eu coup 2014 support = 1. th-cam.com/video/nTQ3D1a-j20/w-d-xo.html 2001 pentagon memo kill occupy iraq to syria th-cam.com/video/_mrJRHwbVG8/w-d-xo.html current ukraine gov is proxy since obama drew red line just like did in syria earlier arming rebels telling russia not to interfere while zelensky ethnic cleanse donbass region 7y= 2. th-cam.com/video/ta9dWRcDUPA/w-d-xo.html 3. th-cam.com/video/IBeRB7rWk_8/w-d-xo.html
A long time ago, a friend of mine was at a big family dinner at Olive Garden.. probably 20 people in the party. Among the family members was an elderly gentleman who commented to the manager (who stopped by the tables to see how things were going) that his chair was the most comfortable chair he'd sat in for a long, long time. So, the manager told him to take it home with him! And they did!
Unlimited soup, salad, breadsticks and chairs. It's nice to know that manager chaired so much for his customers. Maybe the manager later became chairman of the board. Sorry if these dad jokes don't sit well with everyone. [ok, I'm done]
Grapes equal wine, which is a major part of revenue for them AND as any Italian will tell you, speaks to Italian heritage both of the region and expectations at dinner.
Hey Company Man, I doubt you remember me, but we've interacted in the comments a few times over the years. When I started watching your channel in 2020, I was working at Amazon, just a standard warehouse worker. Now I'm the general manager a local location of a big pizza chain, and I don't think I could have done it without the insight I gained from your channel, and I want to say thank you for what you do
Tbh I don't care if Olive Garden as a restaurant survives, but I'll be pretty disappointed if my local grocery stores stop carrying Olive Garden brand Italian dressing
I’m a manager at Olive Garden and this was an interesting video to watch as well as read the comments. I love my company and I’m glad we’re big enough to get our very own video 😁😁
You must be the only one (the only manager at OG location). Every time we’ve been to one through the past few years, no matter the city or the state we’re in, it’s chaos, rude service and the restaurants are dirty and smell like mold. We decided we’re not going back. Edited to add I didn’t mean to be or sound rude to you (not sure if that’s how I came across but just in case), I meant our experience has been horrible and I’m glad there’s an actual manager at one of their locations, I’m sure because of that reason the experience at your restaurant is a positive one.
Those Ziosk machines are the bane of your servers life. People are much more willing to stiff their server if they don’t have to engage with them to pay their bill. Also, your tip out percentage based of sales is BS. People don’t tip like they used to, tip outs should be based on tips received not sales.
I refuse to use them AND self checkout. I don't work there and there's no discount for using them. They are also used as an excuse to not have enough staff. Had one lady at circle k tell me they help her when she is there alone. No, sweetheart, it gives management an excuse to not staff you any help.
So I work at Brio which is owned by Bravo, a direct competitor to Darden restaurants. I’ve also worked for Darden in the past, the reason Olive Garden does so amazing is because people actually really like the food. For older generations it’s a childhood staple, most small towns at the very least had an Olive Garden within driving distance. The food is good and you always know what to expect AND the unlimited breadsticks and salad is a great deal on top of being delicious. It’s so much cheaper to eat at Olive Garden than a Brio or some other Americanized Italian restaurants and depending on what you order, much better food. It’s almost comfort food at this point for most people. I’ve been waiting tables for 10 years now and Olive Garden has always been good money and reliable business.
I'm just gonna have to assume they train and make the food better in smaller towns if you think the quality is so high. My experience with them in California has been mediocre at best. We do have a lot more options here so olive garden is never even a first or last choice. It's where you go with your grandparents for family dinners when all the more interesting restaurants are fully booked on a weekend.
The bread sticks, Italian dressing, and the menu is very well done. They don't just rely on pasta like you'd think. Their chicken/eggplant parm is one of my fav.
I do not have the Lifetime Pass, but I was one of the lucky people who got a Neverending Pasta Pass a few years ago. I bought it while I was at work because the promotion was dropping during that time and it was nice because my work Internet was super fast at the time which is why I think I was able to get a pass. It was truly one of the best things I’ve ever won. The terms were I could get a pasta, sauce and topping of my choice. I would usually go with grilled chicken or shrimp on a fettuccine Alfredo. Sometimes I would change it up with the meatballs and penne on the type of marinara sauce. I don’t remember for sure, but I think soup salad and breadsticks were included with every meal if you wanted. I would order a full entrée eat it order a second entrée and then take that one home. The staff were super nice and thought it was cool and I had a pasta pass. I would usually sit at the bar by myself and watch episodes on my phone while I eat my food and one of the bartenders cut up a Styrofoam cup to make me a stand for my cell phone. Some thing I realized is that I love pasta a lot. I could eat it every day...and I did 😄
Such a heartwarming story :) I remember I used to LOVE pasta. my nan would make some for me when I was young and it would comfort me during the hard times. I wish I could eat it now if it wasnt for my stomach cancer. now I cant eat pasta at all. or any real food :( so enjoy your pasta as best you can. enjoy it double for me ;-;
I consider Olive Garden “comfort” food. Definitely a step up from Stouffer’s and Spaghetti-Os, but not much like an independent/family owned Italian restaurant. I love the breadsticks, but the salad is my go-to. The desserts are good, too.
I would bet Pizza Hut would market itself as New York before Italian. American pizza is very different from the flat bread it's based on and I think most people realize that. Is Pizza Hut bad? Greasy maybe but it's had success from Chicago to Moscow. Olive Garden isn't too different but it certainly cheat with that fake-italian feel
I actually work at Olive Garden and they put alot of effort in training new severs, they want everyone to feel like they’re family and at least at my store they make us try to feel valuable to the company as a whole. The unlimited aspect is kinda gimmicky though, even with breadsticks, soup and salad being unlimited were told bring breadsticks out based on how many peoples at the table, so if you’re a party of 3 you’ll get 4 breadsticks for your first basket, then 3 breadsticks the next go around, so it takes longer for you to get them and get full faster. Also from what I gather from guests is that they have fair priced lunch specials and you get a lot for the price which keeps people coming back
Always pissed me off that they bring the hot entrees so fast I barely started on the salad. My strategy is to order the entree later on. This is not exclusive to Olive Garden, I guess it's american fast food/efficiency influences.
When they do that^ the server ain’t getting a tip. I don’t care what your corporate boss says, when someone is paying what Olive Garden charges for their reheated trash, they best not be rushed out the door. And most of that is lazy severs putting stuff in too quick at one time.
as a server at Olive Garden, it’s amazing how our marketing standards are. my GM is very strict on doing everything correct, even making us put the guest firsts. i am looking to move up eventually to Service Professional, and in my experience it amazes me on how well they treat us as team members and how they prioritize a lot.
The main reason they’re successful is the fact that they’re the only Italian fast causal (that isn’t a pizza place) that operates across the entire country, and not just a few big cities (like Buca di Beppo, which has 69 total locations across 23 states + DC)
One time I went to Olive Garden with a group, and our order took so long to come out by the time it did I got filled up on breadsticks, definitely a humorous memory to reflect on.
I always thought it was well known that Olive Garden was fake, Italian knock off food and not the “fine cuisine” they try to marketing themselves as. At least, that’s how I always perceived them. Great video, as always!
I'm always skeptical of any restaurant that attempts to market itself as reflecting the cuisine of an entire nation, ethnicity, or region, particularly one as vast and diverse as Italy.
I’ve worked at OG since 2014, before I started working there I’ve only eaten there twice in my life. Its been 8 years and I swear, the breadsticks are why I stay. At my location we have a regular with the “lifetime pasta pass” and im in awe every time I wait on him 😂
I work at Olive Garden, it’s just great. Such a family vibe. Affordable for young people to go on dates as well. Older people who have been going for years still go. Not a pretentious vibe but respected and understanding vibe.
Olive Garden is also a lifesaver for new parents or parents of w/ babies because…I want something nice but where I can take my baby and not get too fancy…I dunno..it’s fancy enough…but the service is always excellent
Just a tip off, it's not in the news yet, but Never Ending Pasta Bowl is gonna make a surprise return on October 3rd 2022 after being gone 2 years. The button is already on our point of sale terminals.
I haven't been for a long time, but I sure hope they still give out the mint chocolates at the end of the meal. As a kid, that was what I always looked forward to most because other restaurants don't do anything like that except for maybe fortune cookies.
My family has worked at Olive Garden for two decades, and I myself for about 2 years now, and I feel like one of the most important things that held Olive Garden together was the concept of Hospitaliano - everyone should be treated like family as soon as they walk through the threshold of the restaurant. Be kind and quick with your guests, and always serve with a smile. The service really depended on not only that mindset, but also on the management of the location. People who are being treated well by management and are allowed to actually enjoy what they're doing will ultimately translate that with the guests, so Hospitaliano applied not only to them but between the employees. Our Olive Garden still remains the 3rd best location I the country, so I may be spoiled, but really and truly the OG lost something when they stopped focusing on family and hospitality and instead on making as much money as possible. Not to say it wasn't always a cash grab, that was the literal conception of the chain, but at its core the love and appreciation between employees and guests are what makes each location great.
When I worked there, my boss treated me kindly and with dignity. They were great by allowing us to eat a free bowl of soup every day we worked, which really helped me when the pandemic hit. In addition, he was fair in compensation, I started as a breadstick and salad maker. Over the course of three years, I bussed tables, learned all line and prep positions, and served guests. My hourly difference from day 1 to the end of 2021 (3 1/2 years) was 5 dollars. I was treated fairly and my paycheck demonstrated it.
I had the one year long pasta pass in 2018. You were only able to use the pass for dine in so I would go over lunches every so often. There isn't enough variety on the menu to not get tired of eating the same pasta, soup, and salad. I went about once a week for the first 3 months and then slowly cut back on how often I went. By month 10 of it, I maybe went once a month. I got my money's worth for it but I wouldn't do it again
Oh man, I had a standard one in 2018. Good for 11 weeks and I averaged 3 times a week. Usually I'd eat a buttload of salad and then pad out the rest of the week with the leftovers and 2nd serving. It was a great time!
Come on, they got tons of ways to change their pasta! Cheese no cheese add-on such as sausage or meatballs or extra vegetables. There is so much available, I could never get tired of it
Olive Garden is on the lunchtime rotation, but the service is often so slow that it's at the bottom of the list. I thought it was just the location we were going to and found that the slow service seems to be part of their brand. The breadsticks are for sure the most dangerous part of going!
I’ve been told the slow service was part of the whole “family atmosphere” thing, but that’s annoying. I’m not trying to rush through a meal there, but I’m also not trying to dawdle.
it always throws me off when people tell me they go to olive garden and the like for lunch. when i was growing up the only time id ever get to go to olive garden was my birthday... or graduation... lol..
I've never been to an actual Olive Garden because where I grew up we had a near perfect local clone of it called The Olive Tree. Pretty much the same concept right down to the unlimited salad and breadsticks. Never really thought about it until several years later when the same owners tried to make a burger place nearby modeled after In-N-Out and got sued into oblivion for ripping off the style and name.
Olive Garden was the first restaurant I visited in the US. I remember always seeing the ads for it on the TV growing up. Then when I moved to the US I asked my mom if we could go to Olive Garden. Dreams come true LOL
The chicken and shrimp carbonara is my absolute favorite! OG holds a special place in my heart as my wife and I had our first date there. We’ve also taken our kids there many times over the years and have a lot of great memories at OG (which I tease my kids by calling it Original Gangster😂). It may not be authentic but I don’t care, I like it and I always know that wherever I travel to I can get a solid meal there that I will enjoy. Sure some locations are better than others (our hometown OG had a bad spell for awhile) but overall it’s fairly consistent.
I worked there for 3+ years. Company man hit the nail on the head with his last point. We sold an atmosphere. The ingredients are cheap, the product is fast - if the cook has nothing going on, you can safely expect the food to be at your table in 1 minute for simple items (fettuccine Alfredo, spaghetti and meatballs). This is no joke. 10 seconds for the server to ring in and send the fet alf, 3 seconds to portion the fettuccine, 10 seconds to reheat in boiler, 3 seconds to dry the pasta (really just a quick shake), 3 seconds to sauce /plate it, 2 seconds to sprinkle parsley, and 10 seconds for the server to deliver it. this gives us a grand total time of 41 seconds! Apart from the more timely items: well done 6oz sirloins, salmons, and chicken and shrimp carbonaras, one could nearly call Olive Garden a dine in fast-food restaurant. This does not mean that their food is bad, it is just streamlined. The cooks assemble a dish with perceived authenticity to an American audience. What the guests pay for is the atmosphere. Everything I made was quite cheap. This is nothing new for chain restaurants like this. We sell an atmosphere and people like it.
Atmosphere is a lot in restaurants it really is its like the placebo effect for food. This is a very important comment. We make snap decisions all the time e on things that are not logical. Humans are not logical on every thing they like. Alot Comes to feeling and moods
Olive Garden has a special place in my heart because when I’d go shopping with my grandma at a bigger mall about 45 mins away from our small town we would always go there. I felt like it was so fancy as a little kid. Then when I moved away to a city we’d always go when my grandparents would visit. There were a million local places we could have gone, but it’s like that place had a special nostalgia for us. That salad’s been the same for over 20 years lol That being said, I don’t think I’ve ever been there without my grandparents and really have no desire to. It’s pretty expensive now, for what you get, and id rather just go to a local place.
@@1685Violin oh absolutely some of the best Italian food I've had have been from local family owned Italian restaurants. But God damn it their bread sticks and salad keep pulling me back to Olive Garden. Forgive me for I have sinned lol
I gotta admit, the first time I went to the Olive Garden I didn't really enjoy it. I thought the food was more pricey than it should be and I think all in all I just didn't order something that was one of their better dishes. However, the last couple times I've been there it was a completely different story. They have some great food but it took a little experimenting to find what I enjoyed most.
You've made me realize that I have never eaten in at Olive Garden! Always carry out or catering! Although I normally love more small family owned Italian joints--those breadsticks are to die for and I 100% want to visit one now.
In the 90s into the 00s Olive Garden from my memory was treated by many as fine dining. I have clear memories of going there and seeing people dressed in suits and cocktail dresses. It is reassuring that many people in the comments have this memory as well of people dressing up to go to the olive garden.
I remember one time back in the 00s getting a table at an Olive Garden and waiting for my family to arrive. I was in shorts and a t-shirt. I looked around at how most other people were dressed and felt uncomfortably under-dressed. (Nowadays I don't care.)
@@jliller I remember up till like 2006 you had to call and make a reservation to even get a table in my area. Then one day I remember my friend calling and them just laughing at him over the phone telling him to just walk in no reservation. Sure there is still the waiting list, but I think there was an overcorrection on opinion of Olive Garden; once people found out that it is casual dining. I think a lot of the recoil came from that era being the start of the foodie trend.
There's one key word that explains olive garden. SALT. It has some if the highest salt average per meal of any restaurants menu, and whether you know it or not but we as humans like salt.
@@felixdelabarara494 who salts bread? Everyone who’s had bread and butter before. Most butter has salt in it. And if you one of those people who either never has had it, or only has unsalted butter, good for you.
I’m not concerned about salt, I’m more concerned about sugar. Bread usually has sugar in it, hence why the breadsticks are so soft and moist. Sugar in bread has the power to hold on to water molecules.
Their breadsticks really are the best! And I love their zuppa toscano: it's a spicy cream broth sausage and potato soup. I haven't had Olive Garden in soooo long...
I find Olive Garden to be in that sweet spot, just special enough to be worth going out for dinner even with the usual wait for a table. Good breadsticks. 😍 They’re a rare treat here in Canada with only a handful of locations.
I thought I hated Italian food, cuz I’d only ever had Olive Garden. Then I went to Italy and absolutely loved the food. Every meal was divine. Olive Garden is like the TexMex of Italian food.
Odd as it may sound, one advantage is that many items do not come with tomato sauce. Traditional Italian restaurants often heavily rely on it, to the point that they're sometimes called "red sauce joints," but not all people like it.
I think a big issue with olive gardens dip in sales in the mid 00’s, we’re due to the recession of 2008. As you could see there sales started to falter in the 3rd quarter of 09, and resurged in 2014 which was when the economy started to improve. In turn people were more likely to eat out
Have not noticed this in your other videos, but with that little flashing @04:19 effect on the success list, a lot shone through! Real subtle, but totally meshed the audio & visual with the colors, timing, and all. Well done!
Regarding your warning about the breadsticks - whenever I go there I just fill up on the breadsticks and soup and then just take home the entire meal. I basically get two meals for one price.
The never ending pasta bowl is so brilliant. The bowls are so big that hardly anyone gets more than two of them but you feel like you're somehow getting a great deal that you wouldn't get otherwise.
Olive Garden is probably one of my family‘s very favorite places to go and eat on a very regular basis! The atmosphere, the food, the staff, and everything else it’s about just goes to make it a excellent place to eat! You can’t say much more than, they get it right
Oh wow i started dining in just before the pandemic began in early 2020 and been hooked ever since. The town I live in don't have an olive garden but whenever I move back to Jacksonville, FL I will be dining in again.
I went to Olive Garden once when visiting family in Utah. I wasn’t much older than 21, and ordered a cocktail, for which I was naturally carded. They actually took my ID and came back with it when the drink arrived-that was a bit bizarre and I wondered if Olive Garden/that location was just being extra safe to validate IDs, especially out of state ones, because of some particular state laws in Utah. Never had that happen in any other state. Maybe they were copying it for counterfeit IDs for Mormon college students lol… EDIT: I just remembered that my ID was still in the vertical format because I hadn’t gotten a new one in the regular horizontal format yet. They’d probably never encountered that.
I’ve never had a bad experience at this fine establishment. Sometimes the wait time is too long. Personally one of my favorite restaurants. I always get gift cards to Olive Garden for my birthday and Christmas. Great video 👍🏻
Oh boy, I worked at Olive Garden in 2018, at the busiest location in Arizona. I gotta say, it was a pretty rough job. From the consumer perspective, I see why it is so popular, it's cheap, familiar, and pretty tasty. However, they treated their staff pretty terribly in my opinion, I was overworked often got injured on the job. However, I had a colleague who won one of the free trips to Tuscany, and she loved it. I need to say though, the food quality is pretty low. The sauces come out of frozen bags, bread sticks are pre-made, and sanitation was lacking.... After I worked there, I never wanted to set foot in an Olive Garden again, I prefer instead to go to smaller local chains, which is where I ended up working for the next two years. Love your videos Company Man. I seldomly comment on TH-cam, but I couldn't pass this one up.
When the first Olive Garden opened up in my college town in the 80s, they served hand made pasta. There was a station near the front of the restaurant where waiting diners could watch and the wait times were very long. It was really great pasta, too! By the early 90s they had stopped doing that. When asked about it, the manager said, "people didn't really care" about the fresh pasta. Yeah, it's okay today, but the overall food quality is not as good as it used to be. The salad and breadsticks are pretty much identical though. : )
I went to Olive Garden for the first time in a few years recently. I was completely astounded at how poor quality it was in comparison to how it used to be. Even the breadsticks arent as delicious as they used to be. Pretty sad, I could probably make better raviolis at home from the freezer
Last time I went to Olive Garden was in 2016. It was shabby and the service was awful. The waiter obviously had no experience. The food was mediocre. The breadsticks were cold and the salad wasn’t very good. It was a far cry from what it was in the past.
Olive Garden is absolutely awful now. Biggest nosedive in quality of any restaurant in history. They might as well start attaching drive thrus to their locations it’s actually that bad
I tried to go to Olive Garden like 20 years ago with a group of coworkers. But the wait was redonkulous, like 90 minutes. So we ate elsewhere and I've never gone back.
@@TheBrandonn I've never heard of that chain that I remember. We probably went to an independently owned teriyaki restaurant. This is the Seattle area, after all. Seattle has more teriyaki restaurants than it has Starbucks.
Olive Garden's fettuccine alfredo is my Achilles heel, I swear on it. That pasta has to be my favorite dish ever, even though it's really nothing crazy. I've always seen the place as a "reward food" kinda place, like some big event happens and me and some company will go out to Olive Garden as a nice sit down spot to eat, and I always go for that damn fettuccine. Just always been tasty comfort food, and complemented with the breadsticks for an affordable price is just really a pretty good deal to me.
Olive Garden was the place my grandparents wanted to go to because the food was mild and inoffensive. In the early 2000s our local location was dirty and shabby and the food wasnt too far off. Havent been back in 15+ years but that wasn't too uncommon of an experience no matter the location we went to.
I freaking love olive garden because if I'm driving somewhere out of state I know I can feed myself for fairly cheap in/around basically every major city in the US. Is the food ground breaking? Goodness no. But it's not bad, and some dishes are pretty solid.
I used to drive for Uber and one of my regular passengers was a chef at Olive Garden. He said the amount of butter that they put in their sauces and most of their food is mind-boggling. It's over 50% butter. Including the tomato sauces. You're really just eating melted clarified butter.
I went with my family to Olive Garden for special occasions. The food was delicious. It is expensive but what a great treat for special occasions. The pandemic changed many things.
It's one of my kids' favorite places, and I like it as well. I've been to Italy so many times I stopped counting, and sure, there are major differences in the food, but still, it's quite good. The salad dressing is awesome (and the bread sticks). But just as important is that the service is excellent. There has only been one time when I was served an extremely well-done steak when I ordered medium-rare, but they replaced it promptly with apologies. My wife also appreciates that they have gluten-free pasta as an option. Anyway, good video.
Olive Garden has really good marketing and they know how to maintain their customer service! Restaurants like Olive Garden is also focused on quality food service!
Olive Garden is an American cartoon version of Southern Italian cuisine, and I love it for that. I have been to Italy a few times for extended stays, as well as a total of 32 countries, and sometimes we all just want the Epcot version of a food. I have had my fair share of dinners with men who harass the poor waiter to find out the country of origin of some ingredient, or even dare to enter the kitchen without permission. I am so glad to have my man who can enjoy a Manhattan restaurant and an Olive Garden.
I love Olive Garden. They used to have pizza on their menus and it was my favorite. I went there for my 8th grade graduation in 1994. My favorite memory of my youth. Well, one of them.
For the first time in years, we had Little Caesar's today. The LC bread sticks were so good they make Olive Garden's bread sticks taste like cardboard.
You forgot to mention the bathrooms. Very few restaurants offer full shower capabilities. After a sweaty meatball meal, taking a cool shower is nice before getting into your car.
One thing that makes Olive Garden stands out for me was the interior and ambience. It looks and feel luxurious to the point that my US friends all had the same opinion that they knew their family was rich during childhood when they could have dinner at Olive Garden regularly. Seriously lol, they thought Olive Garden was one of those expensive restaurants like Salt Bae or Gordon Ramsay restaurants
Olive Garden is great, amazing breadsticks and food. It will always be in my memory because the first day Illinois opened up outdoor dining again during the pandemic, we went there and ate in the middle of the parking lot 15+ feet from other people. It was actually quite fun and obviously got us out of our house.
I'm thinking that the reason for the slogan change has to do with the rise in carryout dining. "When you're here, you're family" is a better phrase (in my opinion), but if you're just grabbing takeout or getting it delivered... are you still family?
I enjoy the "garden" and enjoyed this installation to the channel. Very bright on general Mills to start in the Sun shine state where there are very few Italian restaurants.
For me it’s the price. I can get lasagna that tastes about as good as theirs in a $6 Stouffer’s meal. They charge Italian prices but their food doesn’t stand up to the quality I’ve had from other places in the US. I imagine if I’d been to Italy the comparison would be even worse. Point is, authentic or not, the quality has dropped over the years awfully
@@differentlydifferent olive garden is easily similar to frozen food now. If he had made this comment 10-12 years ago or so i wouldve had trouble believing it, but they cheaped out majorly on their ingredients and suck now
I agree with you. A lot of times it tastes like something you can get out of a box for $15 cheaper. And don't get me started about the overpriced desserts.
I’ve always seen Olive Garden as pretty low quality - like an Italian themed Applebees. Surprised to hear they’re still “successful” despite that image
I don't eat at Olive Garden because (all around) Italian food is so over priced in the US. Now, on someone else' dime, I love a good Olive Garden trip. But when it comes to Italian, I always do one of 2 local places, or just make it myself.
Olive Garden is one of those places that I neither love or hate. I don't remember the last time I ate at an Olive Garden, but I've never had a bad experience in one either. It's a decent place for what it offers and they certainly give you enough food for what you pay for. I agree about the breadsticks though, that stuff is dangerously good. It's even better when you dip it in either the marinara or alfredo sauce. 😆
My gf works there, I haven’t gotten the impression they microwaved much things there? They don’t freshly make their noodles obviously but a lot of the stuff their is prepared on the spot according to her.
@@ericwisniewski2636 I cooked the noodles a day ahead and we reheat them when ordered. The proteins are grilled fresh, but apps are deep fried or microwaved. Baked items get microwaved instead when we were busy. Sauces get microwaved. Reorders get microwaved.
We used to like Olive Garden but the last time we had it over a year ago we were unimpressed. Everything tasted bland and the servings were tiny. It also cost the same as an authentic Italian restaurant that we have down the street so we haven’t seen a need to go back.
I have been to Olive Garden, the first time was a school field trip, and its the most tasty foods I have ever ate, I loved a lot about this restaurant and the Breadsticks are on a whole new level. I love Olive Garden's food.
#1 Reason: Low food cost due to wheat. I can't believe you missed the number one reason. WHEAT. It's cheap and filling. The same reason pizza restaurants are so successful. Successful restaurants live and die on food costs. Americans, and now most westernized regions, are hooked on sugar. People love to eat and they live to eat carbs. Nothing pumps out the serotonin like a belly full of pasta and bread. Cheap food costs + easy prep = low labor costs = fat profit margins
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Calling the breadsticks "unlimited" was definitely a brilliant marketing move. Most restaurants I go to will offer to bring more bread if all the bread on the table is eaten, so they effectively offer unlimited bread as well, but nobody thinks of it that way because it's not something they advertise.
Yup. Even the fancy pants places. They’ll have the olive oil and balsamic on the table and bring more bread if you ask for it.
@@tigernotwoods914 i notice fbi/irs/cia/msm all give double standards to political families deeply involved with kill iraq/libya in particular=cheney-pelosi stay rich
when muller charge manafort for things nothing to do with russia hack but let podesta go for same reason =blackmail dc to support blame russia to cover up fact 2 party system failed since mccain-hillary all did united fruit company scandal 2.0
recall fbi never look at physical evidence just crowdstrike/hillary words, cia break glass 2017 inauguration with media claim russia stolen election 1oo
george bush 14y ago said add ukraine to nato foreshadow nuland f eu coup 2014 support =
1. th-cam.com/video/nTQ3D1a-j20/w-d-xo.html
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current ukraine gov is proxy since obama drew red line just like did in syria earlier arming rebels telling russia not to interfere while zelensky ethnic cleanse donbass region 7y=
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Bread better then then the breadsticks?
@@12day1 you've never had good bread
east side marios does the same thing... unfortunately the rest of their food is average at best.
A long time ago, a friend of mine was at a big family dinner at Olive Garden.. probably 20 people in the party. Among the family members was an elderly gentleman who commented to the manager (who stopped by the tables to see how things were going) that his chair was the most comfortable chair he'd sat in for a long, long time. So, the manager told him to take it home with him! And they did!
🥹😭
Unlimited soup, salad, breadsticks and chairs. It's nice to know that manager chaired so much for his customers. Maybe the manager later became chairman of the board. Sorry if these dad jokes don't sit well with everyone. [ok, I'm done]
@@CharlesHepburn2 Boo! 🤪
@@CharlesHepburn2 nice! 😂
That manager saw that he had unknowingly sharted in the chair.
As a child, I truly thought Olive Garden was a fine dining 5-star restaurant. I even went there for prom. Now I see it as microwaved pasta.
But you still go, don't you?
@@davideanes3425 nah
@@Housewarmin You ain't got ta lie...
I'd really like to take an Italian to Olive Garden just to see the absolute disgust and offense on their face when the food gets served.
Nah, Red Lobster was fine dining
I always thought it was weird that it's called Olive Garden, but the older signs clearly have a bundle of grapes instead of olives
It confuses me because in my head, it should be called "olive grove".
@@placeholder1248 it's literally grapes bro..
Grapes equal wine, which is a major part of revenue for them AND as any Italian will tell you, speaks to Italian heritage both of the region and expectations at dinner.
“Authentic” Italian food tastes like noodles with a can of tomatoes dumped on it
Hey Company Man, I doubt you remember me, but we've interacted in the comments a few times over the years. When I started watching your channel in 2020, I was working at Amazon, just a standard warehouse worker. Now I'm the general manager a local location of a big pizza chain, and I don't think I could have done it without the insight I gained from your channel, and I want to say thank you for what you do
Which pizza chain?
Nice
Guys please dont fall for the Telegram scam here, the username literally is not even company mans!
Gratz bro, don't get disappointed!! Fight for the regional managwr position and make over 120,000 $ a year!!!
I love seeing this!!! I came across Company Man last year, and it is interesting, informative, and he’s very thorough in his videos and research.
Olive Garden salads is actually what made me try more vegetables as a kid. I really liked their Italian dressing.
Their dressing is life and love. :p
Tbh I don't care if Olive Garden as a restaurant survives, but I'll be pretty disappointed if my local grocery stores stop carrying Olive Garden brand Italian dressing
You mean lettuce and onions?
I’m a manager at Olive Garden and this was an interesting video to watch as well as read the comments. I love my company and I’m glad we’re big enough to get our very own video 😁😁
My sister works at Olive Garden, she thinks y’all should pay your employees more
You must be the only one (the only manager at OG location). Every time we’ve been to one through the past few years, no matter the city or the state we’re in, it’s chaos, rude service and the restaurants are dirty and smell like mold. We decided we’re not going back. Edited to add I didn’t mean to be or sound rude to you (not sure if that’s how I came across but just in case), I meant our experience has been horrible and I’m glad there’s an actual manager at one of their locations, I’m sure because of that reason the experience at your restaurant is a positive one.
Those Ziosk machines are the bane of your servers life. People are much more willing to stiff their server if they don’t have to engage with them to pay their bill. Also, your tip out percentage based of sales is BS. People don’t tip like they used to, tip outs should be based on tips received not sales.
The servers suck so the kiosks at least save the awkward “I’m doing your job for you” type situation.
I refuse to use them AND self checkout. I don't work there and there's no discount for using them. They are also used as an excuse to not have enough staff. Had one lady at circle k tell me they help her when she is there alone. No, sweetheart, it gives management an excuse to not staff you any help.
So I work at Brio which is owned by Bravo, a direct competitor to Darden restaurants. I’ve also worked for Darden in the past, the reason Olive Garden does so amazing is because people actually really like the food. For older generations it’s a childhood staple, most small towns at the very least had an Olive Garden within driving distance. The food is good and you always know what to expect AND the unlimited breadsticks and salad is a great deal on top of being delicious. It’s so much cheaper to eat at Olive Garden than a Brio or some other Americanized Italian restaurants and depending on what you order, much better food. It’s almost comfort food at this point for most people. I’ve been waiting tables for 10 years now and Olive Garden has always been good money and reliable business.
I work wt longhorns part of Darden lol
The food is good? Uhhhh
Honestly big agree!
@@DeltaAssaultGaming The chicken scampi, is creamy and delicious every time I have it!
I'm just gonna have to assume they train and make the food better in smaller towns if you think the quality is so high. My experience with them in California has been mediocre at best. We do have a lot more options here so olive garden is never even a first or last choice. It's where you go with your grandparents for family dinners when all the more interesting restaurants are fully booked on a weekend.
The bread sticks, Italian dressing, and the menu is very well done. They don't just rely on pasta like you'd think. Their chicken/eggplant parm is one of my fav.
yeah the breadsticks and salad are delicious everything else is just meh
@@sclarin2 I love there lasagna.
@@sclarin2 those bread sticks are aweful far far to much salt
@@JohnWayneCheeseburger strong words for someone who can't spell
Every time I had that it was chewy and gross. Maybe I’m just not lucky 😂
I do not have the Lifetime Pass, but I was one of the lucky people who got a Neverending Pasta Pass a few years ago.
I bought it while I was at work because the promotion was dropping during that time and it was nice because my work Internet was super fast at the time which is why I think I was able to get a pass. It was truly one of the best things I’ve ever won. The terms were I could get a pasta, sauce and topping of my choice. I would usually go with grilled chicken or shrimp on a fettuccine Alfredo. Sometimes I would change it up with the meatballs and penne on the type of marinara sauce. I don’t remember for sure, but I think soup salad and breadsticks were included with every meal if you wanted. I would order a full entrée eat it order a second entrée and then take that one home. The staff were super nice and thought it was cool and I had a pasta pass. I would usually sit at the bar by myself and watch episodes on my phone while I eat my food and one of the bartenders cut up a Styrofoam cup to make me a stand for my cell phone. Some thing I realized is that I love pasta a lot. I could eat it every day...and I did 😄
this is such a wholesome story
That’s awesome!
Such a heartwarming story :)
I remember I used to LOVE pasta. my nan would make some for me when I was young and it would comfort me during the hard times. I wish I could eat it now if it wasnt for my stomach cancer.
now I cant eat pasta at all. or any real food :(
so enjoy your pasta as best you can. enjoy it double for me ;-;
@@RogerERodriguez1k 🤗 Stay strong my friend.
What good employees
I consider Olive Garden “comfort” food. Definitely a step up from Stouffer’s and Spaghetti-Os, but not much like an independent/family owned Italian restaurant. I love the breadsticks, but the salad is my go-to. The desserts are good, too.
Fine me an independent Italian restaurant that gives you endless soup, salad and breadsticks! NO bread, no family!
Heard an Italian granny say, “Olive Garden: its like Pizza Hut with forks.”
Lmfao, Olive Garden is "authentic Italian food" for people who think that Trump isn't a lifelong media celebrity and part of the globalist elites
I would bet Pizza Hut would market itself as New York before Italian. American pizza is very different from the flat bread it's based on and I think most people realize that. Is Pizza Hut bad? Greasy maybe but it's had success from Chicago to Moscow. Olive Garden isn't too different but it certainly cheat with that fake-italian feel
@@Petrico94 Pizza Hut started in Wichita Kansas.
Lol
Well she’s insane.
I actually work at Olive Garden and they put alot of effort in training new severs, they want everyone to feel like they’re family and at least at my store they make us try to feel valuable to the company as a whole. The unlimited aspect is kinda gimmicky though, even with breadsticks, soup and salad being unlimited were told bring breadsticks out based on how many peoples at the table, so if you’re a party of 3 you’ll get 4 breadsticks for your first basket, then 3 breadsticks the next go around, so it takes longer for you to get them and get full faster. Also from what I gather from guests is that they have fair priced lunch specials and you get a lot for the price which keeps people coming back
Always pissed me off that they bring the hot entrees so fast I barely started on the salad. My strategy is to order the entree later on.
This is not exclusive to Olive Garden, I guess it's american fast food/efficiency influences.
When they do that^ the server ain’t getting a tip. I don’t care what your corporate boss says, when someone is paying what Olive Garden charges for their reheated trash, they best not be rushed out the door. And most of that is lazy severs putting stuff in too quick at one time.
as a server at Olive Garden, it’s amazing how our marketing standards are. my GM is very strict on doing everything correct, even making us put the guest firsts. i am looking to move up eventually to Service Professional, and in my experience it amazes me on how well they treat us as team members and how they prioritize a lot.
yay thats so exciting keep up the good work 👍
With your free marketing for them, they should put you on the payroll!
The main reason they’re successful is the fact that they’re the only Italian fast causal (that isn’t a pizza place) that operates across the entire country, and not just a few big cities (like Buca di Beppo, which has 69 total locations across 23 states + DC)
Carraba's?
It's Casual Dining. Fast Casual is Five Guys
I dare say five guys is higher quality than the garbage reheated in an Olive Garden “kitchen”
Fazzoli's? Although, they are not as plentiful as they used to be.
Only one problem with your statement...
They're not fast casual... They have table service and are a full functioning restaurant!
One time I went to Olive Garden with a group, and our order took so long to come out by the time it did I got filled up on breadsticks, definitely a humorous memory to reflect on.
I see you absolutely everywhere, it’s insane how much content we both happen to watch.
They don't serve hummus at Olive Garden.
hummus
They don't serve hummus that I know of.
Filling up on breadsticks and taking home an entire dinner for later is a legitimate strategy.
I always thought it was well known that Olive Garden was fake, Italian knock off food and not the “fine cuisine” they try to marketing themselves as. At least, that’s how I always perceived them. Great video, as always!
Yeah. Olive Garden is about as believable as "authentic" Italian as Papa John's.
Lmfao, Olive Garden is "authentic Italian food" for people who think that Trump isn't a lifelong media celebrity and part of the globalist elites
It definitely is, but it's quite tasty Italian knockoff food. Olive Garden is kinda its own type of food.
It's Americanized versions, much like many other chains do.
I'm always skeptical of any restaurant that attempts to market itself as reflecting the cuisine of an entire nation, ethnicity, or region, particularly one as vast and diverse as Italy.
I’ve worked at OG since 2014, before I started working there I’ve only eaten there twice in my life. Its been 8 years and I swear, the breadsticks are why I stay. At my location we have a regular with the “lifetime pasta pass” and im in awe every time I wait on him 😂
I work at Olive Garden, it’s just great. Such a family vibe. Affordable for young people to go on dates as well. Older people who have been going for years still go. Not a pretentious vibe but respected and understanding vibe.
Olive Garden is also a lifesaver for new parents or parents of w/ babies because…I want something nice but where I can take my baby and not get too fancy…I dunno..it’s fancy enough…but the service is always excellent
See that's nice. I've worked in so many places where it's just such a fake and forced happy from everyone who works there
Just a tip off, it's not in the news yet, but Never Ending Pasta Bowl is gonna make a surprise return on October 3rd 2022 after being gone 2 years. The button is already on our point of sale terminals.
Thanks for the tip!
How do you receive such information? This is serious business here
@@augustcannon Obviously, he works there
Dear god I’m finding about this now….. a fellow server who dies to a full table of soup salad and breadsticks
It was a true story, thank you
I haven't been for a long time, but I sure hope they still give out the mint chocolates at the end of the meal. As a kid, that was what I always looked forward to most because other restaurants don't do anything like that except for maybe fortune cookies.
We do you just have to ask for them at the front I love giving them out to the kids
They do. Those things are addictive.
As someone who just had Olive Garden last night, they still give out those mints
The really fancy restaurants used to bring reception sticks with the check.
I thought that was a hotel thing.
My moms worked there for 20 years. They’ve treated her really good for the past few years. The Tuscan soup is my favorite
My family has worked at Olive Garden for two decades, and I myself for about 2 years now, and I feel like one of the most important things that held Olive Garden together was the concept of Hospitaliano - everyone should be treated like family as soon as they walk through the threshold of the restaurant. Be kind and quick with your guests, and always serve with a smile. The service really depended on not only that mindset, but also on the management of the location. People who are being treated well by management and are allowed to actually enjoy what they're doing will ultimately translate that with the guests, so Hospitaliano applied not only to them but between the employees. Our Olive Garden still remains the 3rd best location I the country, so I may be spoiled, but really and truly the OG lost something when they stopped focusing on family and hospitality and instead on making as much money as possible. Not to say it wasn't always a cash grab, that was the literal conception of the chain, but at its core the love and appreciation between employees and guests are what makes each location great.
Ive always loved this restraunt. Others may knock it but for me its great
When I worked there, my boss treated me kindly and with dignity. They were great by allowing us to eat a free bowl of soup every day we worked, which really helped me when the pandemic hit. In addition, he was fair in compensation, I started as a breadstick and salad maker. Over the course of three years, I bussed tables, learned all line and prep positions, and served guests. My hourly difference from day 1 to the end of 2021 (3 1/2 years) was 5 dollars. I was treated fairly and my paycheck demonstrated it.
My grandson was raped there by a waiter with a huge bottle of wine.
Is it still like this today?
I had the one year long pasta pass in 2018. You were only able to use the pass for dine in so I would go over lunches every so often. There isn't enough variety on the menu to not get tired of eating the same pasta, soup, and salad. I went about once a week for the first 3 months and then slowly cut back on how often I went. By month 10 of it, I maybe went once a month. I got my money's worth for it but I wouldn't do it again
Oh man, I had a standard one in 2018. Good for 11 weeks and I averaged 3 times a week. Usually I'd eat a buttload of salad and then pad out the rest of the week with the leftovers and 2nd serving. It was a great time!
Come on, they got tons of ways to change their pasta! Cheese no cheese add-on such as sausage or meatballs or extra vegetables. There is so much available, I could never get tired of it
Olive Garden is on the lunchtime rotation, but the service is often so slow that it's at the bottom of the list. I thought it was just the location we were going to and found that the slow service seems to be part of their brand. The breadsticks are for sure the most dangerous part of going!
how did u comment 18 hours ago when this just dropped
Wtf 18 hours ago?
Dude you are going on lunchtime, one of the busiest times of the day. OF course it is going to be slower.
I’ve been told the slow service was part of the whole “family atmosphere” thing, but that’s annoying. I’m not trying to rush through a meal there, but I’m also not trying to dawdle.
it always throws me off when people tell me they go to olive garden and the like for lunch. when i was growing up the only time id ever get to go to olive garden was my birthday... or graduation... lol..
I've never been to an actual Olive Garden because where I grew up we had a near perfect local clone of it called The Olive Tree. Pretty much the same concept right down to the unlimited salad and breadsticks. Never really thought about it until several years later when the same owners tried to make a burger place nearby modeled after In-N-Out and got sued into oblivion for ripping off the style and name.
The Olive Tree? Lmao, that’s hilarious. It’s like McDowell’s instead of McDonald’s in the movie ‘Coming to America,’ lol.
@@EyeonthePrize247 lol McDowell's is the first thing I thought of.
@@jaymzx0
Ahahaha, good man!
Olive Tree?? We had one in my city of Wichita. Everyone was always confused between the two.
Do you remember the name of the in-and-out rip off place? Im imagining something like “up-and-down” burger 😹
Olive Garden was the first restaurant I visited in the US. I remember always seeing the ads for it on the TV growing up. Then when I moved to the US I asked my mom if we could go to Olive Garden. Dreams come true LOL
I absolutely LOVE Olive Garden. It’s so delicious and I love the atmosphere it’s really relaxing.
The chicken and shrimp carbonara is my absolute favorite! OG holds a special place in my heart as my wife and I had our first date there. We’ve also taken our kids there many times over the years and have a lot of great memories at OG (which I tease my kids by calling it Original Gangster😂). It may not be authentic but I don’t care, I like it and I always know that wherever I travel to I can get a solid meal there that I will enjoy. Sure some locations are better than others (our hometown OG had a bad spell for awhile) but overall it’s fairly consistent.
I worked there for 3+ years. Company man hit the nail on the head with his last point. We sold an atmosphere. The ingredients are cheap, the product is fast - if the cook has nothing going on, you can safely expect the food to be at your table in 1 minute for simple items (fettuccine Alfredo, spaghetti and meatballs). This is no joke. 10 seconds for the server to ring in and send the fet alf, 3 seconds to portion the fettuccine, 10 seconds to reheat in boiler, 3 seconds to dry the pasta (really just a quick shake), 3 seconds to sauce /plate it, 2 seconds to sprinkle parsley, and 10 seconds for the server to deliver it. this gives us a grand total time of 41 seconds! Apart from the more timely items: well done 6oz sirloins, salmons, and chicken and shrimp carbonaras, one could nearly call Olive Garden a dine in fast-food restaurant. This does not mean that their food is bad, it is just streamlined. The cooks assemble a dish with perceived authenticity to an American audience. What the guests pay for is the atmosphere. Everything I made was quite cheap. This is nothing new for chain restaurants like this. We sell an atmosphere and people like it.
Thank you Olive Garden PR
@@MSportsEngineering cut the crap. OG treated me well and they deserve to be credited for it.
Sure they did Jason. _suuuuure_
And do you see these “Olive Garden” people in the room with us now? What are they saying?
Atmosphere is a lot in restaurants it really is its like the placebo effect for food. This is a very important comment. We make snap decisions all the time e on things that are not logical. Humans are not logical on every thing they like. Alot Comes to feeling and moods
Olive Garden has a special place in my heart because when I’d go shopping with my grandma at a bigger mall about 45 mins away from our small town we would always go there. I felt like it was so fancy as a little kid.
Then when I moved away to a city we’d always go when my grandparents would visit. There were a million local places we could have gone, but it’s like that place had a special nostalgia for us. That salad’s been the same for over 20 years lol
That being said, I don’t think I’ve ever been there without my grandparents and really have no desire to. It’s pretty expensive now, for what you get, and id rather just go to a local place.
There’s plenty of totally valid criticisms of Olive Garden but flaws and all I love that freaking restaurant lmao
You need to learn how to cook
Would rather go to a local family owned Italian-American restaurant.
@@1685Violin oh absolutely some of the best Italian food I've had have been from local family owned Italian restaurants. But God damn it their bread sticks and salad keep pulling me back to Olive Garden. Forgive me for I have sinned lol
I gotta admit, the first time I went to the Olive Garden I didn't really enjoy it. I thought the food was more pricey than it should be and I think all in all I just didn't order something that was one of their better dishes. However, the last couple times I've been there it was a completely different story. They have some great food but it took a little experimenting to find what I enjoyed most.
That's wild you got to see Olive Gardens evolution. They have really improved.
Gotta consider too their prices for EVERY meal INCLUDE endless soup OR salad, so the price of endless soup or salad is baked in a little bit.
Plus there is a lot of salad in that bowl and it has a lot of different things it, it's not just lettuce and tomatoes like some restaurants have
You've made me realize that I have never eaten in at Olive Garden! Always carry out or catering! Although I normally love more small family owned Italian joints--those breadsticks are to die for and I 100% want to visit one now.
Be sure to get the Alfredo dipping sauce for the breadsticks. My goodness, absolutely delicious!
@@StopcensoringFreespeech Thanks for replying to this. I have since visited and you are absolutely right.
In the 90s into the 00s Olive Garden from my memory was treated by many as fine dining. I have clear memories of going there and seeing people dressed in suits and cocktail dresses. It is reassuring that many people in the comments have this memory as well of people dressing up to go to the olive garden.
I remember one time back in the 00s getting a table at an Olive Garden and waiting for my family to arrive. I was in shorts and a t-shirt. I looked around at how most other people were dressed and felt uncomfortably under-dressed. (Nowadays I don't care.)
@@jliller I remember up till like 2006 you had to call and make a reservation to even get a table in my area. Then one day I remember my friend calling and them just laughing at him over the phone telling him to just walk in no reservation. Sure there is still the waiting list, but I think there was an overcorrection on opinion of Olive Garden; once people found out that it is casual dining. I think a lot of the recoil came from that era being the start of the foodie trend.
There's one key word that explains olive garden. SALT.
It has some if the highest salt average per meal of any restaurants menu, and whether you know it or not but we as humans like salt.
And yet they dont salt their pasta mamma mia
Dressing, breadsticks, and sauce is where 90% of the salt is coming from. We literally shower bread in salt, like wtaf, who salts bread?
@@felixdelabarara494 who salts bread?
Everyone who’s had bread and butter before.
Most butter has salt in it.
And if you one of those people who either never has had it, or only has unsalted butter, good for you.
I’m not concerned about salt, I’m more concerned about sugar. Bread usually has sugar in it, hence why the breadsticks are so soft and moist. Sugar in bread has the power to hold on to water molecules.
Every tasty meal under the sun has one thing in common: high salt content.
He always somehow gets me in the mood to eat whatever the video’s talking about
We're just watching a really long ad.
I almost never order the pasta there. I'm all about the unlimited soup. The Zuppa Toscana is excellent.
No, tour of Italy is the best with heavy cheese
Pasta Fagioli!!
Their breadsticks really are the best! And I love their zuppa toscano: it's a spicy cream broth sausage and potato soup. I haven't had Olive Garden in soooo long...
Love your videos man! Your content never lets me down
I find Olive Garden to be in that sweet spot, just special enough to be worth going out for dinner even with the usual wait for a table. Good breadsticks. 😍
They’re a rare treat here in Canada with only a handful of locations.
Their salad is my favorite part of dining there. Fantastically simplistic yet amazingly delicious!
My favorite restaurant of all time. I can't believe my mother has never been, I have to take her this year, while I still have her around.
My favorite are pizza hut breadsticks. Something about that seasoning on top!
I hear that. I believe they call it "fairy dust"?
I thought I hated Italian food, cuz I’d only ever had Olive Garden. Then I went to Italy and absolutely loved the food. Every meal was divine. Olive Garden is like the TexMex of Italian food.
Tex Mex is a different cuisine than Mexican, so your comparison doesn't make any sense.
It's the chipotle or panda Express of Italian food, even Italian American food
God this channel is so fucking good at scratching the itch in my brain that craves knowledge on the companies in our modern land
The turnaround is impressive, they and Red Lobster looked like they were gonna fall by the wayside a while back
Odd as it may sound, one advantage is that many items do not come with tomato sauce. Traditional Italian restaurants often heavily rely on it, to the point that they're sometimes called "red sauce joints," but not all people like it.
“One sauce, any pasta.” So boring.
This is true. Their alfredo is better than their red sauce.
@@rooney0423 Alfredo sauce = heart attack on a plate.
@@genxx2724 only if you eat it all the time. Moderation is key.
I think a big issue with olive gardens dip in sales in the mid 00’s, we’re due to the recession of 2008. As you could see there sales started to falter in the 3rd quarter of 09, and resurged in 2014 which was when the economy started to improve. In turn people were more likely to eat out
Have not noticed this in your other videos, but with that little flashing @04:19 effect on the success list, a lot shone through! Real subtle, but totally meshed the audio & visual with the colors, timing, and all. Well done!
Regarding your warning about the breadsticks - whenever I go there I just fill up on the breadsticks and soup and then just take home the entire meal. I basically get two meals for one price.
The never ending pasta bowl is so brilliant. The bowls are so big that hardly anyone gets more than two of them but you feel like you're somehow getting a great deal that you wouldn't get otherwise.
YA AND IT DONT COST THEM NOTHIN TO MAKE IT NIETHER
TRUMP 2024
When is their never ending pasta bowl promotion on next?
The breadsticks be holding up the whole business.
Olive Garden is probably one of my family‘s very favorite places to go and eat on a very regular basis! The atmosphere, the food, the staff, and everything else it’s about just goes to make it a excellent place to eat! You can’t say much more than, they get it right
Im Canadian and going to olive garden in buffalo was a huge thing for our family and 10 y/o me!
That last point is right, yep. Calling Olive Garden Italian is like calling the McLobster authentic Maine seafood.
Yea. This is true for literally most commercial food ever
That's why Red Lobster couldn't survive in my area, too many "real" seafood restaurants around to eat at instead.
@@andrewwolfe9353 I take it you're a New Englander? Or a Floridian?
@@TimmyTickle bingo you got it, New England
Oh great, now I have to go to Olive Garden for dinner.
I’m conjuring up ways that I can make something with bread and or pasta-or both-from the stuff that’s in my cupboard!
2020 was the first time I ate Olive Garden (to-go order) and 2021 was the first time I set foot in one!
I’m in love now.
Oh wow i started dining in just before the pandemic began in early 2020 and been hooked ever since. The town I live in don't have an olive garden but whenever I move back to Jacksonville, FL I will be dining in again.
i work at an olive garden and it’s so funny to talk about because i genuinely love working there and getting a darden discount is so nice
I went to Olive Garden once when visiting family in Utah. I wasn’t much older than 21, and ordered a cocktail, for which I was naturally carded. They actually took my ID and came back with it when the drink arrived-that was a bit bizarre and I wondered if Olive Garden/that location was just being extra safe to validate IDs, especially out of state ones, because of some particular state laws in Utah. Never had that happen in any other state.
Maybe they were copying it for counterfeit IDs for Mormon college students lol…
EDIT: I just remembered that my ID was still in the vertical format because I hadn’t gotten a new one in the regular horizontal format yet. They’d probably never encountered that.
One word and one word only:
BREADSTICKS
I’ve never had a bad experience at this fine establishment. Sometimes the wait time is too long. Personally one of my favorite restaurants. I always get gift cards to Olive Garden for my birthday and Christmas. Great video 👍🏻
My first job was at Olive Garden and I was there for three years. Enjoyed working there and still love going out to eat at OG a few times a year.
Oh boy, I worked at Olive Garden in 2018, at the busiest location in Arizona. I gotta say, it was a pretty rough job. From the consumer perspective, I see why it is so popular, it's cheap, familiar, and pretty tasty. However, they treated their staff pretty terribly in my opinion, I was overworked often got injured on the job. However, I had a colleague who won one of the free trips to Tuscany, and she loved it. I need to say though, the food quality is pretty low. The sauces come out of frozen bags, bread sticks are pre-made, and sanitation was lacking.... After I worked there, I never wanted to set foot in an Olive Garden again, I prefer instead to go to smaller local chains, which is where I ended up working for the next two years.
Love your videos Company Man. I seldomly comment on TH-cam, but I couldn't pass this one up.
I always thought they were declining. 3 olive gardens near me closed within the last 2 years.
Nah I just talked to the director of northwest Olive gardens and profits have been crazy even through covid.
yeah, not sure where he got the numbers and stuff for this video. Olive garden is doing pretty bad right now.
@@brycepowell6639 probably faked, they've been closing many many many locations.
@@producerevan88 Trust me their numbers are good lol. Their profit margins are so high.
@@producerevan88 Thats a load of crap, they are absolutely killing it right now in many areas.
When the first Olive Garden opened up in my college town in the 80s, they served hand made pasta. There was a station near the front of the restaurant where waiting diners could watch and the wait times were very long. It was really great pasta, too! By the early 90s they had stopped doing that. When asked about it, the manager said, "people didn't really care" about the fresh pasta. Yeah, it's okay today, but the overall food quality is not as good as it used to be. The salad and breadsticks are pretty much identical though. : )
My wife’s family was born and raised in Sicily and moved to the US. They’ve owned restaurants in Chicago and they love Olive Garden.
I went to Olive Garden for the first time in a few years recently. I was completely astounded at how poor quality it was in comparison to how it used to be. Even the breadsticks arent as delicious as they used to be. Pretty sad, I could probably make better raviolis at home from the freezer
They are frozen
You do realize you went to Olive Garden?
Agreed
Last time I went to Olive Garden was in 2016. It was shabby and the service was awful. The waiter obviously had no experience. The food was mediocre. The breadsticks were cold and the salad wasn’t very good. It was a far cry from what it was in the past.
Olive Garden is absolutely awful now. Biggest nosedive in quality of any restaurant in history. They might as well start attaching drive thrus to their locations it’s actually that bad
I tried to go to Olive Garden like 20 years ago with a group of coworkers. But the wait was redonkulous, like 90 minutes. So we ate elsewhere and I've never gone back.
Did you end up going to bennigans?
@@TheBrandonn I've never heard of that chain that I remember.
We probably went to an independently owned teriyaki restaurant. This is the Seattle area, after all. Seattle has more teriyaki restaurants than it has Starbucks.
Olive Garden's fettuccine alfredo is my Achilles heel, I swear on it. That pasta has to be my favorite dish ever, even though it's really nothing crazy. I've always seen the place as a "reward food" kinda place, like some big event happens and me and some company will go out to Olive Garden as a nice sit down spot to eat, and I always go for that damn fettuccine. Just always been tasty comfort food, and complemented with the breadsticks for an affordable price is just really a pretty good deal to me.
Olive Garden was the place my grandparents wanted to go to because the food was mild and inoffensive. In the early 2000s our local location was dirty and shabby and the food wasnt too far off. Havent been back in 15+ years but that wasn't too uncommon of an experience no matter the location we went to.
I freaking love olive garden because if I'm driving somewhere out of state I know I can feed myself for fairly cheap in/around basically every major city in the US. Is the food ground breaking? Goodness no. But it's not bad, and some dishes are pretty solid.
Chic fil a is cheap too.
I used to drive for Uber and one of my regular passengers was a chef at Olive Garden. He said the amount of butter that they put in their sauces and most of their food is mind-boggling. It's over 50% butter. Including the tomato sauces. You're really just eating melted clarified butter.
They don't have a chef... And they are an Italian restaurant not French, so they don't use butter!
@v4v819 what do you think Alfredo consists of? Butter!
I went with my family to Olive Garden for special occasions. The food was delicious. It is expensive but what a great treat for special occasions. The pandemic changed many things.
It's one of my kids' favorite places, and I like it as well. I've been to Italy so many times I stopped counting, and sure, there are major differences in the food, but still, it's quite good. The salad dressing is awesome (and the bread sticks). But just as important is that the service is excellent. There has only been one time when I was served an extremely well-done steak when I ordered medium-rare, but they replaced it promptly with apologies. My wife also appreciates that they have gluten-free pasta as an option. Anyway, good video.
The Denny's of Italian food!
Olive Garden has really good marketing and they know how to maintain their customer service! Restaurants like Olive Garden is also focused on quality food service!
Olive Garden is an American cartoon version of Southern Italian cuisine, and I love it for that. I have been to Italy a few times for extended stays, as well as a total of 32 countries, and sometimes we all just want the Epcot version of a food. I have had my fair share of dinners with men who harass the poor waiter to find out the country of origin of some ingredient, or even dare to enter the kitchen without permission. I am so glad to have my man who can enjoy a Manhattan restaurant and an Olive Garden.
I love Olive Garden. They used to have pizza on their menus and it was my favorite. I went there for my 8th grade graduation in 1994. My favorite memory of my youth. Well, one of them.
For the first time in years, we had Little Caesar's today. The LC bread sticks were so good they make Olive Garden's bread sticks taste like cardboard.
LC breadsticks are the best. We never order pizza there lol.
LC Crazy Bread is great. Tough call for me between them and OG breadsticks.
You forgot to mention the bathrooms. Very few restaurants offer full shower capabilities. After a sweaty meatball meal, taking a cool shower is nice before getting into your car.
They have showers???
@@Shadow__133 Technically every place does if you're creative enough
@@RGun90 Definitely and most technically not.
shower = 🚿
@@Shadow__133 no, do you see his user name?
One thing that makes Olive Garden stands out for me was the interior and ambience. It looks and feel luxurious to the point that my US friends all had the same opinion that they knew their family was rich during childhood when they could have dinner at Olive Garden regularly. Seriously lol, they thought Olive Garden was one of those expensive restaurants like Salt Bae or Gordon Ramsay restaurants
Olive Garden is great, amazing breadsticks and food. It will always be in my memory because the first day Illinois opened up outdoor dining again during the pandemic, we went there and ate in the middle of the parking lot 15+ feet from other people. It was actually quite fun and obviously got us out of our house.
I'm thinking that the reason for the slogan change has to do with the rise in carryout dining. "When you're here, you're family" is a better phrase (in my opinion), but if you're just grabbing takeout or getting it delivered... are you still family?
Good. I hate it when families try to absorb me. I'm a loner &I like it thank you very much.
This is why I love this channel. I always learn something new. I had no idea General Mills was behind both Red Lobster and Olive Garden!
I enjoy the "garden" and enjoyed this installation to the channel. Very bright on general Mills to start in the Sun shine state where there are very few Italian restaurants.
For me it’s the price. I can get lasagna that tastes about as good as theirs in a $6 Stouffer’s meal. They charge Italian prices but their food doesn’t stand up to the quality I’ve had from other places in the US. I imagine if I’d been to Italy the comparison would be even worse. Point is, authentic or not, the quality has dropped over the years awfully
You no good and well Stouffer's is nowhere near as good as Olive garden. Olive Garden is nothing special but this comment is nothing but a lie
Stoffers is over sauced garbage
You don't have to go to italy just a city in North America with a decent Italian population
@@differentlydifferent olive garden is easily similar to frozen food now. If he had made this comment 10-12 years ago or so i wouldve had trouble believing it, but they cheaped out majorly on their ingredients and suck now
I agree with you. A lot of times it tastes like something you can get out of a box for $15 cheaper. And don't get me started about the overpriced desserts.
I’ve always seen Olive Garden as pretty low quality - like an Italian themed Applebees. Surprised to hear they’re still “successful” despite that image
Yes, they are certainly no Ruth's Chris.
I don't eat at Olive Garden because (all around) Italian food is so over priced in the US.
Now, on someone else' dime, I love a good Olive Garden trip. But when it comes to Italian, I always do one of 2 local places, or just make it myself.
I love that Darden choose the breadsticks over the cheddar biscuits
When I'm at Olive Garden and the waiter takes too long, I think to myself, "how long does it take to open a bag of salad?" 😉
Olive Garden: For the family that only goes out to eat once a year, and thinks it’s a fancy restaurant
Whatever works for those families, and Olive Garden.
Olive Garden is one of those places that I neither love or hate. I don't remember the last time I ate at an Olive Garden, but I've never had a bad experience in one either. It's a decent place for what it offers and they certainly give you enough food for what you pay for. I agree about the breadsticks though, that stuff is dangerously good. It's even better when you dip it in either the marinara or alfredo sauce. 😆
My dad is one of the few people with a lifetime pasta pass. Lucky bastard.
Worked out OG about 8 years ago. Many things are microwaved and the food in general tastes bland. The few times I've gone back, it's been bad.
My gf works there, I haven’t gotten the impression they microwaved much things there? They don’t freshly make their noodles obviously but a lot of the stuff their is prepared on the spot according to her.
@@ericwisniewski2636 I cooked the noodles a day ahead and we reheat them when ordered. The proteins are grilled fresh, but apps are deep fried or microwaved. Baked items get microwaved instead when we were busy. Sauces get microwaved. Reorders get microwaved.
We used to like Olive Garden but the last time we had it over a year ago we were unimpressed. Everything tasted bland and the servings were tiny. It also cost the same as an authentic Italian restaurant that we have down the street so we haven’t seen a need to go back.
I have been to Olive Garden, the first time was a school field trip, and its the most tasty foods I have ever ate, I loved a lot about this restaurant and the Breadsticks are on a whole new level. I love Olive Garden's food.
#1 Reason: Low food cost due to wheat.
I can't believe you missed the number one reason. WHEAT.
It's cheap and filling. The same reason pizza restaurants are so successful.
Successful restaurants live and die on food costs. Americans, and now most westernized regions, are hooked on sugar.
People love to eat and they live to eat carbs. Nothing pumps out the serotonin like a belly full of pasta and bread.
Cheap food costs + easy prep = low labor costs = fat profit margins
I don’t need to watch the video to know it’s the bread sticks that makes them successful
I love the Olive Garden. I was full before the main course arrived.