Olive Garden

Olive Garden trades from 956 restaurants across the United States and cooks Italian-American food in a full-service dining room. Breadsticks, unlimited soup and salad, and a long pasta list built the reputation it still runs on. Darden Restaurants owns the chain.

The section below covers who started Olive Garden, who owns it now and how far the estate reaches.

Olive Garden History

Olive Garden opened its first restaurant in Orlando, Florida, in December 1982, as a unit of General Mills. Blaine Sweatt, Mark Given, Gino DeSantis and Dave Manuchia are named as the co-founders of the concept. General Mills already ran Red Lobster, and the new Italian brand borrowed that operating playbook wholesale. Growth came quickly from there. By 1989 the company counted 145 restaurants, the fastest-growing units anywhere in its restaurant division.

General Mills spun its restaurant holdings out as Darden Restaurants in 1995, naming the new company after Red Lobster founder Bill Darden. Olive Garden dropped the definite article from its name three years later, and a rebrand arrived alongside it carrying the slogan about family. Sales had already caught up. Per-store takings matched those of its former sister chain, and the group went on to become the largest Italian-themed full-service chain in the country.

Darden runs Olive Garden from Orange County in Florida and owns every American restaurant rather than franchising them. A new logo and a redrawn dining room landed in 2014, arriving alongside online ordering and a set of smaller lunch plates. Olive Garden became the largest casual-dining chain in the United States by systemwide sales in 2018. It held that spot for seven years. Texas Roadhouse passed it in 2025, and Olive Garden now trades from 956 American restaurants.

Olive Garden Menus & Details

Five pages carry the detail behind the dining room and the kitchen. Each one puts an item name and the figures that belong to it on the same row.

The full board, section by section, with a price and a calorie figure beside every item.

Off-menu builds, the wording to use at the table, and the item each one is charged as.

Milk, egg, fish, shellfish, soy, wheat and sulfites named against each dish, with calories beside them.

The bar deals, the days and hours they run, and what each pour and plate comes to.

The Never Ending Pasta Bowl, its run of dates, and the pastas and sauces inside it.