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Today, we're carb-loading the history of Olive Garden
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Way back in the 1960s and 70s, General Mills was looking to break away from their weedy-filled past
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and to make their way into all sorts of other industries. They bought up both Rainbow Crafts along with Kenner Products
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There seemed to be only one place left for General Mills to turn, the restaurant industry
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It started with Red Lobster, a restaurant that first opened its doors in 1968
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grew to five locations in the two years that followed, and was bought up by General Mills in 1970
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General Mills found quick success with Red Lobster, and by the 1980s, they'd managed to grow it into a nationwide shrimp-slinging enterprise
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And so they devised an all-new restaurant to tap into the Italian food market, Olive Garden
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Between 1982 and the end of the 1980s, General Mills had established 145 locations across America
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Back then, Olive Garden hadn't yet wowed the world with its unlimited breadsticks or never-ending pasta
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Instead, they relied entirely on their bottomless salads to lure customers in
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In 1995, General Mills spun off its entire restaurant division in order to create a standalone publicly traded company
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They called it Darden Restaurants. But as restaurant revenue fell in the latter half of the 90s
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Darden had to get its act together quickly if the company wanted to show it could make it on its own
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So in 1998 Olive Garden got a makeover The company changed its logo to include a bunch of grapes And it changed its slogan to When you here you family All the while they updated their restaurants to look more rustic
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even going so far as to model their tables after ones found in Florentine farmhouses
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Along with these changes, Olive Garden introduced unlimited soups, and more importantly, unlimited breadsticks
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The world would never be the same. These breadsticks alone may have saved Darden from the brink
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as customers began to flock to Olive Garden en masse. In the new millennium, Olive Garden continued to find success
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even as other competitors rose up to try and take its pasta crown. It was at this time that Olive Garden's slogan changed to
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we're all family here. And then President Dave George went on late night with Jimmy Fallon
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to sign the rights of, when you're here, you're family, over to the TV talk show host
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Olive Garden then ran their first ever never-ending pasta promotion. Starting at just $9.99, customers could eat all the pasta they wanted
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which totaled for the restaurant chain a whopping 13 million bowls of pasta over the course of the promotion
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The promotion was so successful that they continued to bring it back year after year
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Today, Olive Garden has over 900 locations that span every single U.S. state
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much of both North and South America, and parts of both East Asia and the Middle East
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While the exact number of breadsticks served fluctuates year to year, the entire chain collectively serves well over half a billion breadsticks annually
