Numbers are down this quarter at Olive Garden and Red Lobster (both owned by Darden Restaurants, Inc.), despite recent jazzy revamps including small plates and lighter menu options. Sales at Olive Garden are down 4%, while Red Lobster is down 5.2%. For some strange reason, people just don't seem to be gobbling breadsticks and bargain basement shellfish like they used to! Needless to say, Darden executives R FREAKIN' OUT.

Via ABC:




Now, I've never been to Olive Garden, but a bowl of mediocre pasta that literally never ends sounds like some Trunchbull shit. Like, if hell is real, there's definitely a little red guy waiting for me with a pitchfork and a bottomless cauldron of fettuccine alfredo toscano parmigiano to punish me eternally for all of my drunken night-Doritos. I did eat at Red Lobster once, and half of my king crab legs were just empty shells, like the meat had shriveled up and disintegrated out of sheer despair. Also, the waitress couldn't tell me why the butter never stopped being liquid. ("I don't know. It comes out of a machine. It gets mixed a lot.")

So here's ONE idea I had: If you want more people to eat at your restaurant, maybe make the food a tiny bit better? Like...serve people crab legs that actually have crab in them? Because it's not like Olive Garden or Red Lobster are even that cheap. They're kind of expensive! Why not just make the food, you know, worth the price?

(Not you, cheddar bay biscuits. You guys are cool.)