Never Ending Pasta Bowl resumes on Monday
NY POST – Retirees have lost their appetite for Olive Garden since the pandemic — and it’s not clear when they’ll come back, according to the chains top brass.
No amount of unlimited pasta refills seems to be enough to entice the 65-and-older crowd as they continue to pinch pennies amid high inflation and duck the coronavirus, according to Rick Cardenas, chief executive of Darden Restaurants, which owns Olive Garden.
“I do believe that they were a little bit more spooked on the COVID side,” Cardenas told analysts on a Thursday conference call.
“We’d love to see them come back more frequently.”
Indeed, seniors are heading to the budget-friendly pasta chain less often than they had before the pandemic, added chief financial officer Raj Vennam on a conference call on Thursday with Wall Street analysts.
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He pointed to a “slight decline” in their numbers from the previous quarter.
Olive Garden’s restaurants are hoping to lure customers in the coming weeks as it reintroduces its wildly popular Never Ending Pasta Bowl promotion on Sept. 25 through Nov. 19 at a price of $13.99.
Last year, Olive Garden staged the promotion at the first time since the pandemic at the same price — up from $10.99 in 2019. Adding unlimited meat toppings now costs an extra $4.99 …
Olive Garden is an American casual dining restaurant chain specializing in Italian–American cuisine.
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It is a subsidiary of Darden Restaurants, Inc., which is headquartered in Orange County, Florida. As of 2022, Olive Garden restaurants accounted for $4.5 billion of the $9.63 billion revenue of its parent, Darden. Wikipedia