![]() ![]() (There is a lot of it, though.) Fried lasagna - a riff on fried ravioli, I guess? - is off-puttingly chewy and comes in a floury smudge of Alfredo sauce. Then there is the food, which ranges from the decent if bland to the openly terrible. Olive Garden wants you to feel a little pampered by the experience.īut it nevertheless feels tired, the kitsch never quite convincing. In our case, the service was unfailingly attentive. The place telegraphs a certain old-world charm, with black-and-white photographs bolted to the wall, Sinatra on the speakers, and the lights dimmed to a glow. None of this is to dismiss Olive Garden’s own problems, of course. But in this economy, transmitting a feeling of security through a plate of salty, reasonably priced carbohydrates seems a task far beyond any restaurant chain, no matter how well run. Come, eat your $14 dinner, drink your nine-ounce pour of wine, enjoy unlimited breadsticks, feel safe. ![]() What OG and other sit-down chains offer is in essence escapist kitsch. “Wanna see what ‘2300 mg of sodium per serving’ chicken and shrimp carbonara with overcooked noodles tastes like?” Well, yes, and it tastes like salt.īut the visit left me convinced that Olive Garden’s problems run far deeper than its kitchen or its boardroom. “Wanna see what waiters high on weed look like?” said one Yelp review of the branch in question. Last night, a group of friends and I piled into a car to head to the closest branch to Washington, in a suburban strip mall in Virginia. It was a public humiliation for a company that has struggled mightily of late, its sales sliding and its food mocked.Īlas, the mockery feels merited. The fund, Starboard Value, dinged its food quality, corporate strategy, and top executives - arguing that the firm could bring in more customers and make more money if it only tried a little harder. Last week, an activist hedge fund that owns shares in Darden, OG’s parent company, put out a scathing, 300-slide presentation arguing that the strip-mall purveyor of soft pasta and complimentary breadsticks is dreadfully mismanaged. Read on to learn more about the 20 best chain restaurants in the US.Photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Imagesįor Olive Garden, 2014 has been almost as tough as its lasagna fritta. The 20 highest-rated spots raked in a combined $28 billion in revenue last year and include popular joints like The Cheesecake Factory and Cracker Barrel, as well as lesser-known chains such as Bahama Breeze Island Grille and Maggiano's Little Italy. (For more on how we came up with this ranking, check out our list of the best fast-food chains in America, which uses a similar methodology.) Our calculations accounted for sales growth, average sales at each location, consumer-sentiment ratings, and the average cost of a meal, among other metrics. Using proprietary data collected by Restaurant Business and its sister research firm Technomic, we looked at 45 of the largest US chains and rated them on three criteria that we considered the most telling for all-around excellence: financial performance, customer satisfaction, and overall value. ![]() It often indicates a user profile.īusiness Insider teamed up with Restaurant Business, a food-service industry expert and media outlet, to compile a definitive ranking of the best chain restaurants in America. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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