A change may be on the way for Olive Garden, as one of the chain's most well-known promotions may not ever return to the menu.
According to Restaurant Business Online, the news was delivered by the new CEO of Darden Restaurants, the parent company of Olive Garden, during the chain's quarterly results call on Friday.
During the call where the pasta bombshell was dropped, it was also mentioned that despite several factors working against the restaurant chain, store sales rose compared to the same time period from two years ago.
With Olive Garden struggling from the pandemic and labor shortages, CEO Rick Cardenas spoke on Friday, explaining that the promotion may not have actually helped sales like they once thought.
"We know [Never-Ending Pasta Bowl] was a negative impact over the years," Cardenas explained during the call, according to RBI. "But the profitability wasn't as high as the guests that we're doing today. And so we decided to reduce the dependency on Never-Ending Pasta Bowl this year because we didn't need to drive volume into our restaurants."
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Cardenas went on to add that they do not currently know if they will bring Never-Ending Pasta back, being that they already have unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks every day.
Focus has shifted from promotions and marketing to productivity and operations, with restaurants operating with only 95% of their pre-COVID staff, RBI reported.
Cardenas shared that new improvements mean that for restaurants to achieve the same pre-COVID results, they won't need to get back to 100% staffing.
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