Hold the Breadsticks, Serve More Booze! Advice for Olive Garden

Some greedy dummy named Starboard Value, who is an investor in the very successful company Olive Garden that is owned by the Darden group is bitching about the restaurant giving doubles on the bread sticks, overflowing salad bowls and that no salt is being put the pasta when cooking it.

First of all; who the hell named this guy? Starboard Value? His parents must have hated him!!

Starboard’s quote; “Hey Olive Garden! Cut back on the bread sticks Servers are supposed to provide one breadstick per customer, but often bring more, leading to waste. Salad bowls are often overfilled and the lettuce is overdressed, driving up costs. To get an extended warranty on its pots, Olive Garden no longer salts the water to boil its pasta. “If you were to Google ‘how to cook pasta,’ the first step of Pasta 101 is to salt the water.” And its final tip? Alcohol sales could be boosted, considering how well Italian food and wine go together.”

The board of directors should strap this dude in a chair, tie him up and stuff a rag in his mouth.

He is a prime example of a greedy business man that has built a very successful business because of the generous portions, decent prices and good service; then all of a sudden he starts cutting out what made it prosperous in the first place.

Olive Garden is one of the best Italian “chain” restaurants around. Their lobbies are constantly filled with people waiting to eat. I personally have wait as long as 1 hour to be seated.

The “endless” soup is great and the entrées are very generous.

“Hey Starboard; I always have three bowls of the sausage soup. I bet that really burns your ass!”

In a successful business; never discontinue what got you there. Do what you do best.

Starboard; grab a pager that is not working, get to the end of the line, sit down and shut up. Don’t ruin a good thing.