Olive Garden is bringing back its famous Never Ending Pasta Bowl — but it's not the deal it used to be
- Olive Garden is bringing back the Never Ending Pasta Bowl for a limited time this fall.
- It will cost $13.99, up from $10.99 last time with extra charges for protein.
Olive Garden is bringing its famous Never Ending Pasta Bowl promotion. The casual-dining chain first announced the news on TikTok.
The pasta deal will be more expensive this time around, at $13.99 for unlimited pasta, plus $4.99 for additional proteins, including meatballs, sausage, or chicken for a total of about $19. The last time Olive Garden introduced the deal, it cost just $10.99.
Olive Garden brings back the promotion periodically, where for a set price customers can get unlimited servings of pasta, along with breadsticks and salad. When sales are low, the chain has historically relied on the Never Ending Pasta deal to keep things going. In 2019, Olive Garden brought back the promotion as sales were dipping and ended up with a relatively small 1.5% increase in sales.
The restaurant chain is seeing declining sales among lower-income consumers, which could be an impetus to bring back Never Ending Pasta. Ricardo Cardenas, the CEO of Olive Garden's parent company Darden Restaurants, told investors in September that consumers making less than $50,000 per year were "feeling a little bit worse," and had less discretionary income to spend on dining out.
At the time, Cardenas wouldn't discuss the pasta promotion specifically, but he did say that any deals Olive Garden promoted would be based on emphasizing the brand and "be simple to execute and not be at a deep discount." When Cardenas took over in 2021, he acknowledged that Never Ending Pasta had a "negative impact" on bottom lines in the past. The pasta promotion was historically good at bringing customers into the restaurant, but less so at creating big checks and profitable margins for Olive Garden.
This time around, Olive Garden is focusing on profitable sales growth and getting a healthy return on their investment in this promotion.
Never Ending Pasta will be available from October 3 to November 20, with four pasta options and five sauces.
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