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When A Hedge Fund Tells A Restaurant How To Cook
Thanks to the Fed's 6 years of ZIRP, activism, i.e., loud, brash billionaires who come in and tell a company's management they need to use cheap debt to repurchase stock, engage in reckless M&A or spin off profitable units or they will become even louder and brasher has become one of the only profitable hedge fund strategies. Of course, this will cease the moments rates show even the smallest hint of rising but until then it is paradise for all activist hedge funds. In fact, the scramble for activist strategies is so big that WSJ reported earlier today that "funds under management by these activists and others grew by $9.4 billion in the first half of the year to $111 billion, gaining more in that period than in the previous two years combined, according to industry researcher HFR. Mr. Loeb and some other activists have described the current environment as the best they have seen for raising cash." Thanks Fed.
But how do you know when hedge fund activism has gone too far? Well, a good example is the 300-slide presentation (because more slides is always better than less when pitching quantity over quality) which Starboard Fund filed yesterday as "advice" to the management of Darden Restaurants, owner of Oliver Garden, on how to boost shareholder value and also steps the hedge fund would take to generate returns if it wins control of the entire board. Because while in addition to comping up with fleeting and imaginary valuations based on EBITDA projections and multiples, this is the first time that a hedge fund actually tells a restaurant company how to, drumroll, cook.
As the WSJ reported earlier, among the moves Starboard detailed in its never-ending presentation, in addition to using salt when cooking pasta, and going easy on the breadsticks, Starboard also had suggestions how to improve "food quality and alcohol sales, introduce technology to reduce waiting times at restaurants and cut millions in costs. And Starboard is sticking with its suggestion, which Darden has rejected as value-destroying, of separating the company's brands apart and putting its real estate into a third public company."
Needless to say Darden wasn't very impressed with this overture, and said it would review Starboard's plan, but added after its initial review it believed many of the changes were already being made under management's ongoing turnaround, which it says is working. "We remain open minded toward all ideas that support long-term value creation for our shareholders and improve the dining experience for our guests," Gene Lee, the company's chief operating officer, said in a statement.
So does cheap credit mean hedge funds know how to cook? Take a look at the following hilarious slide and decide:
Menu innovation is a top priority and is among our nominees' biggest strengths
The entire experience of food, service, and environment must be authentic and provide a joyful and genuine Italian dining experience.
- The food will be fresh whenever possible, with simple choices.
- Menu items will be designed to help facilitate operational excellence and consistency by the restaurant staff.
- We will embrace authenticity, especially as it pertains to the absence of preservatives, stabilizers, gums, additives, artificial colorings, and flavorings.
- We will no longer disregard sound nutrition. Nutrition will not be the driving force, but it will now be carefully considered while greatly improving the taste and appeal of every dish.
- Some parts of the menu can be flavor-forward with fresh ingredients: extra virgin olive oil. lemons, ripe tomatoes, an array of colorful vegetables, lean meats, and fresh fish.
- Portion sizes may be gradually reduced, as guests will begin to equate Olive Garden's value proposition more with quality and excellence at fair prices, than with massive quantities of barely edible fried items, excessive cheeses, and heavy cream sauces.
- Olive Garden's breadsticks are part of the brand equity, as they come to every table. The breadsticks need to be of the highest quality, with a better taste and a frimer texture, and each table must receive hot breadsticks.
- The pasta at Olive Garden must be significantly improved. It must be prepared at the proper water temperature, boiled in salted water, precisely timed to not overcook, and tossed with sauces for each dish instead of the current practice of ladling sauce on top of heaps of coagulated pasta.
- We must rethink the amount of items from the flyer. Most fried foods are not authentically Italian and it slows service.
- We will explore a few gluten-free options, as many consumers prefer gluten-free dishes (1) Based on extensive research and discussions with culinary experts and suppliers, we believe we can accomplish these goals at Olive Garden's current price points without hurting margins
Based on extensive research and discussions with culinary experts and suppliers, we believe we can accomplish these goals at Olive Garden's current price points without hurting margins
Source: Czar gluten free data.
(1) "Gluten" and "Gluten free" are now among the top searches related to Oliver Garden, per Czar Metrics
Bottom line: thanks Ben and Janet's ruinous monetary policies we present unintended consequence number X+1: hedge funds, armed with cheap debt, tell a restaurant company how to cook. The New Normal truly never ceases to amaze...
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Chef Ramsay wrote that?
To be honest, when I think of OG, I immediately think of free breadsticks and salad... the food is secondary. That's also the reason I've ever gone to an OG over, say... Carrabbas, who has awesome food.
Oh, and the seating in an OG is horrible... feels like I'm sitting in an old Morrison's Cafeteria. Get rid of those awful chairs and add more booths.
The one and only time I had dinner at OG, it was paid for by a former boss, and the ravioli tasted like the frozen stuff from the store. Very glad I never paid for that gawbage. Exactly like eating at Applebee's? Used to drink happy hour beers at one down the street from my old place. A fellow bar patron once told me his pasta plate included the plastic wrapper in which the food comes before the local heat'n'serve. How fucking funny would that be at an OG (pretty sure it has happened at least once in their history).
I would rate Applebee's food as better than OG.
While a hedge fund's advice on cooking would usually be worthless and bizarre, in this case they have a point on everything listed. OG's food quality could be improved by almost any changes, including those listed.
I'd like these geniuses to tell the world how exactly you cook pasta at the proper temperature. You have to boil it, and boiling occurs at the exact same temperature no matter how much heat you put into it. The heat just goes into faster conversion into the gaseous phase, it doesn't raise the temperature.
To cut off any smart ass replies, I know pressure can influence the boiling point. But I am damn sure that the hedge fund wasn't talking about pulling a vacuum or cooking the pasta in a pressure cooker. Maybe they mean that all Olive Garden's should be located above 4,000 ft.
you are wrong. salt elevates the boiling point of water the same way it depresses the freezing point.
you are welcome.
your gluten-free hedge fund manager pal,
long-shorty
Hedge funds would have you smoke a joint 1st so you pig out more.
I know the assholes that demand shit they know nothing about.
NY ers most likely
I call bullshit.
Motherfucker jew bankers would rather have everyone else eat shit so they can make more profit. There is a reason why history tends to repeat.
Motherfuckers!
Depending the type & size of the pasta, cooking time ranges from 7 to 14 minutes in boiling water. Salt is not really necessary, since most of it stays in the water.
With pasta, salt is traditionally added to the water so that the pasta doesn't become a glumpy, stringy mess. Salt causes the pasta to absorb the water more readily, in addtion to changing the boiling point of water.
http://www.finecooking.com/articles/cooking-pasta-properly.aspx
I'd like these geniuses to tell the world how exactly you cook pasta at the proper temperature. You have to boil it, and boiling occurs at the exact same temperature no matter how much heat you put into it.
Facepalm.
Also, seems zh'ers have missed the latest and greatest in culinary arts:
http://modernistcuisine.com/mc-recipes/
I dunno wtf olive garden is but they need this shit on the menu (if hedge funds are telling them how to run their restaurant I figure it's fair game for everyone.)
I ate there once. The pasta tasted like it was sitting in that 210degree water for about 45 minutes. I think that is what the hedge fund clowns were talking about.
I would have to agree on every recommendation except the gluten free bullshit. Fuck you! Fuck gluten free.
The sad part is that the hedge fund clowns bought into that chef boyardee nonsense; probably with the intention of turning it in to fine quisine.
Idiocracy. Even (especially) in the highest places.
Yep, I ate there once and never again. The only thing I could eat was the salad. The breadsticks and pasta sucked.
The fact that these shit shacks stay in business proves americans are lazy, stupid slobs with no taste. I am ashamed.
Cook the Banksters!!!!
Deep Fry, Oven or Microwave, makes no difference to me.
Applebee's == Chili's == Olive Garden == Red Lobster == TGIFridays == Applebee's
The menu is NOT the meal.
FUCK OLIVE GARDEN & RED LOBSTER
Encouraged by Michelle Obama's campaign to reduce childhood obesity, the company that owns the Olive Garden, Red Lobster and four other popular restaurant chains is pledging to cut the calories and sodium in its meals and overhaul its kids' fare.
Darden Restaurants Inc. was unveiling the changes Thursday, with the first lady on hand to lend support.
The company will pledge to reduce the calories and sodium in all its meals by 10 percent over five years, and by 20 percent over 10 years. For children, French fries and sugar-sweetened beverages will become the exception and not the rule.
AND THEIR FOOD SUCKS
Yeah I think I'll stick with my favorite old dive ...
And di they put on their yellow "power tie" when they said this shit!?
I agree. Really wish corporate America would just stay apolitical. It's actually better business for them in the long run. It's such a turn-off to me when they try to share their politics with customers.
Ive noticed in small hick towns Olive Garden is a lot better. I mean its almost passable about a third of the time. Probably because OG is the best restaraunt in a town like Mobil Alabama so the talent who is unfortunately stuck in these shithole towns goes there. But yea in a big city for a couple bucks more, sometimes not even, you can get much better
Well at the end of Goodfellas Ray Liotta is in witness protection in a small midwest town. He says he cannot get good spaghetti/pasta. They give you noodles and ketchup.
This is Olive Garden. They ran TV ads showing Italian-American families eating there. The ad copy was when "the relatives came over from Italy we took them to Olive Garden."
A writer penned a hilarious op-ed saying that the ads were offensive and the relatives back in Italy would be mortified.
The writer said the offensive part was not the exaggrerated hand waving, kissing and bickering at the table by the actor relatives in the ad. The offensive part was that you would actually take your relatives from Italy to Olive Garden. The writer said the relatives would never speak to you again. It was pretty hilarious.
There's a great little Italian place called La Buca in Portland, FEMA Region X, off E. Burnside. Good food, good prices, good service. I highly recommend it.
So, dey go to "Spaghetti Factory?"
"Dey go"- I see what you did there.
"The company will pledge to reduce the calories and sodium in all its meals by 10 percent over five years, and by 20 percent over 10 years."
Reducing the calories means reducing the amounts. So, it's going to come down to serving LESS pasta for the SAME price. And all in the name of "fighting obesity".
Not bad.
For the suckers.
If they really want to improve the health of US citizens eating out, just line the walls with mirrors and give discounts for "normal sized meals" rather than the "pig sized one you normally eat, sir".
Nice Avatar.
olive garden sucks, and is the macdonalds of italian<---fix that.
Long poor people. Actually, that is why a lot of guys are targeting these folks probably. Next thing you'll know, "folks can use their EBT cards to dine at OG"...
No worries, it will look like a bank inside pretty soon just like Chili's, and have table kiosks to order from.
No atmosphere and hardly any human contact or interaction.
So, Chili's now sucks ass. Wave of the future looks like.
Hate to say it, but the hedge fund is spot on with regard to Olive Garden and the changes that are both desperately needed and must happen (or it will be bankrupt and spun off like Red Lobster was), and which Darden has so far shown themselves incapable of making on their own without "advice". Contrary to the smarmy tone of this article, the truth hurts sometimes, and OG would not be in this situation if they'd have chosen the right path in the first place. For example, under Darden Olive Garden store managers have almost no decision making capability whatsoever, the stores are run "by the book" to the point of stupidity. The food served currently is terrible and an embarrassment.
Oh great,
billionaires telling the sweaties how they like Italian dishes.
One more thing you morons..
Take out all the booths and have one big round table for when you crooks are in town.
Because everyone else will be home mixing dog food and instant noodles.
Sheesh!
It's been 10 years since I've been to an OG. Went twice within a few months for different gatherings and both times they were out of what I wanted. I told the manager it's basic management to order food and keep the shit in stock and if he can't do that twice within a few months then he won't see me again. Haven't been back since. Piss poor management.
Food sucks - that is the real problem.
I hate their menu.....Not many pictures...too much to read. I like seeing photos.
Whatcu Reading Fer?
takeaction, simple fix, borrow their waiter crayons and draw a picture.
Responding the customers critisim is a key to success. OTOH Olive Garden is shit and they know it. It's just a place you take co-workers you hate and only exploit for cheap grub. Or some female with no taste and loose morals.
Can I get her number?
867-5309 Jenny is the name
The M.B.A.'s slowly moved into management.
M.B.A. and H.R. programs are most of what is wrong with American companies.
Well, a lot of the problems w/ food quality are actually a result of the shrinking middle class, and hidden costs of inflation.
Can't increase revenues? Reduce costs, by reducing quality (hidden inflation, shrinkflation, etc).
Right, and the first response of an MBA/HR acolyte will be to cut quality, portions, and wages to maintain profit - then substitute glam and bling.
This waiter had already tried to convince me I wanted a Panini sandwich; I had already said "No" twice - to which he said "Are you sure? They're so good." Then he tried to push a glass of wine on me - at lunch with my 10 year old Daughter.
Haven't been back.
MBAs have been 'gentrified' over the years.
They went from "MASTER of BUSINESS administration" to "Master of Bithneth ADMINISTRATION". Any wanker can get that degree now... it's a franchise in itself.
Alternate:
When arrogance becomes so intolerable that you just lose it and rampage
In this case, the report is basically correct though.
"The plastic will be fresh whenever possible"
Dude, I expect my plastic hot off the mold. WTF, how can they do this to me?
What the fuck is "flavor-forward"? Sounds like made up bullshit exec-u-speak to me.
Flavor-Forward, Deep Dive, User Experience, everything Starbucks tries to rename... all terms that turn my stomach immediately after hearing!
"Flavor-forward" is where I simultaneously laughed and stopped reading.
Moar hipster MBA speak like "thought leaders" and "partnering" and "win win" and "out of the box" and blah fucking blah..
Dude, you just said "Thought Leadership"! Holy shit!!! I just threw up in my mouth!!!!!!
Only Certified thoughtamagicians, with a State-issued thoughtamagic certificate, are approved to be "thought leaders."
The rest of us regular thoughtamaticians are not worthy of leading in thought, for our thoughts are inferior until the certificate of thoughtamagic is received (paid for by $$$ or soul).
Where can I get a job doing this? I'm tired of doing work that actually produces something. To sit in a room with a bunch of blue sky dipshits, bounce this crap back and forth, produce a meaningless document and then get paid money sounds like Nirvana.
Miffed;-)
hipster MBA - oxymoron
Correct, pretty sure they only get psychology, criminal justice, and art history degrees. You know, the 'useful' stuff.
Is useful the right word?
Too true. MBA = Master Bullshit Artist. Hipsters are amateurs and newbies.
Synergize all those by yerself didya?
"What the fuck is "flavor-forward"?"
Tastes 'good' ( salt, sweetners, etc. ) and costs less.
Oh, don't forget to shrink the portions and 'hedonically adjust' the proteins.
Immediate profit growth is the goal, quality and quantity nogtiable. Productivity of labor to be siphoned off in any way imaginable.
What the fuck is "flavor-forward"?
It's quite similar to phosfluorescently envisioneer goal-oriented stomach storage.
Failed MBAs become Consultants to HR bimbos, who are sometimes failed Consultants.
Part of the Mystique they create is the bullshit word-smithing they do: Designer Weasel-Words. Creates... "Buzz" for their... "Brand". /sarc
It doesn't surprise me, major corporations can profit off capital investments obtained by cheap financing courtesy of the central bank.
Unbacked credit emmission turns an economy completely upsidedown, backasswards.
The cheap finance of Alan Greasepan was the fodder for taking out any of the independent media and making it into a product that no one wants or will pay for.
Olive Garden is to EyeTalian food is what Oban game is to the presidency
What did people do before they knew what gluten was? Do people know what gluten is? Why would many consumers prefer gluten-free products? What is the prevalence of celiac disease, like half a percent? Why would anybody eat at the Olive Garden to begin with?
Gluten inhibits the absorbtion of nutrients. Choose for yourself.
It goes a bit deeper than that..
Just about 100% of the wheat we consume is now GMO.. stripped of any nutrition even if "whole-grain" any word "organic" on the labeling is bullshit, choose "non-GMO" if you can find it..
Alot of people are more sensitive to this fake GMO gluten shit, but just 2 generations ago it wasn't an issue and many people around the world lived on a wheat mostly diet..
I had a suspicion that "flavor-forward" was a Monsanto thing.
A fuckin men.
Another way to sell shit at higher prices..like remeber when 'organic' meant something.
Sheeple can be so easily conditioned.
Sheeple can be so easily processed.
FIFY
.gov organic approved food is still suppose to be nongmo.
Not the same
http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/ofp/ofp.shtml
Organic farm practices: crop rotation, natural fertilizers etc. which is awsome for the soils (.gov then allows the "organic" lable) but not 1 mention of the seed grown..
Remember the word "Heirloom" if the seeds from your crop can be grown next yr. you have a winner, anything else is modified...
See the evil in .gov and Monsanto yet?
Or hybrid. This can be good or bad, but your typical hybrids that you get from a large corporate seed supplier are not the "I had a zucchini and a yellow squash cross in my garden and I planted the seeds this year" type of thing. They take two lines that have some very specific traits that they want and make those two lines hyper-retardo-inbread as fuck, then cross them when they are ready to produce their hybrid seed. Traits that they like these days have a lot more to do with the production, shipping and storage of the foods than they do with flavor or nutrition. With corn, you can do this by detasseling all of the stalks from one line and letting them cross pollinate the other. With other veggies, such as some cultivars of carrots, they have induced male cytoplasmic sterility, which is passed on through the mother. This is not conducive to saving seeds, to say the least.
Heirloom or not, what you want is non-hybrid (unless you know what kind of hybrid and know the scoop on the male cytoplasmic sterility) open pollinated seed.
The FDA requirements are a joke.
The gluten ADDED to carbs comes from China, and it's the same place where that gluten came from which was added to dog food that killed a lot of dogs.
The food processors are required to disclose where they made the food product, not where they get the ingredients.
As a kid in the 1950's I never ran across a peanut allergic kid. It only started with the advent of Roundup and GMOs.
The focus groups and polling data all came from people in/near Starboard's PR consultants that they hired somewhere in NYC. The PR people, and the Starboard people as well, have probably never eaten at an Olive Garden before in their lives until they had a financial interest in the company.
Meanwhile, the rest of America doesn't give two shits about the quality, as long as it's heavy on salt, fat, & carbs. The rest of America is eating at Olive Garden because of the all-u-can-eat pasta because it's a) all they can afford and/or b) they can pay for it with SNAP/EBT/WIC benefit cards.
The PR firm failed to pick that obvious stuff up because they seldom get out of the NYC echo chamber, and Starwood even more so.
I ate at Olive Garden once, this is back in the 90s. All I can remember of the experience since it is never about the food but providing an experience was that I don't remember the experience but I do remember the runs I had afterwards from the food.
Any time a chain that used to be known for well made entrees reverts to "all-you-can-eat" you know they've jumped the shark.
I haven't eaten at one since before they went to the all you can eat entrees. I can't tell you how many years ago that was, but the food was OK. I didn't feel like I was getting a lot of bang for my buck even back then.
Gluten Free is what my niece and all her idiot friends think they've adopted as their diet... not because ANY of them have a problem with gluten, they just think it's cool that it makes them "different" because they have to ask the wait staff about the Gluten Free choices. Truly another idiot's fad!
@ Rex
Celiac is your body regecting GMO outright, the rest of us are just slowly being starved, while being fat slobs.
When I got off gluten, my stomach stopped becoming distended after meals, I lost weight, and my joints don't hurt. I also had fewer mood swings. Stopping drinking helped with the rest of the mood swings...
...you fucking asshole, goddamn, spastica rex, freak, fucker, asshole, pipe smokin, rrrrraraurugh!
Looks like you picked the wrong day to quit (sniffing) gluten.
Do you miss the epic flatulence?
It is a perfect one to one correlation. If I "cheat" (some cake, a roll, a slice of Pizza) I know I will pay for it later. It is very obvious, my belt will need to come off, I will need to change out of jeans if I am wearing them into an elastic waist. It is not a little thing, I look pregnant vs. having a flat stomach. Folks can dis this if they want to, I know what is true for my body.
There are millions of others, they just don't know the cause is all...
Recognizing the pre-diabetic symptoms is key....................................
"What did people do before they knew what gluten was?"
Some years ago, "cholesterol-free" was all the rage. You even had frigging honey-glazed hams, dripping with fat and sugar, labeled "cholesterol free".
The new fad is gluten. Never mind what there is in it. As long as it says" gluten-free", it's like free advertising.
Some of us have a real allergy to the stuff. Before people understood it, I lived in constant pain, it has really changed my life. Now the hippies who are "gluten free" to be cool, those are people I want to punch in the face.
You'd think it would be consumer pressures that forced a company to provide a quality product not it's investors.
All of the suggestions seem very valid to me.
There is nothing that I hate more in an Italian restaurant than overcooked pasta.
What's wrong with high quality, warm bread sticks?
I think that that hedge fun should be in the restaurant business.
I just don't see what is negative about suggesting a restaurant improve the quality of the food they serve. Maybe I'm stupid.
It's "who" is suggesting that is being protested, me thinks.
Who else is going to tell them that their food and service sucks and needs improvement, and they listen to? Surely not the customers....
I may actually try them again if they instituted all these changes.
The point of olive garden is that it's cheap, fatty, indulgent, and consistently so. If you're a person that wants real italian food, you're not going to a chain no matter what. Olive Garden is directed at a large demographic: fat ass americans that don't give a shit about quality. Change that up and they'll be done. It's not much different than the dumb shit that dude from Apple did with JCP. You have to know your customers.
Polishing turds
"Portion sizes may be gradually reduced, as guests will begin to equate Olive Garden's value proposition more with quality and excellence at fair prices, than with massive quantities of barely edible fried items, excessive cheeses, and heavy cream sauces."
The fact that most Americans have never travelled/eaten in Italy or France will make the above quote 'indigestible' for the simple reason that in Italy and France diners are accustomed to many small and varied dishes being served over the course of a two hour meal while in the US diners expect their plate to be stacked high all in one go or they think they've been robbed.
Do not come back at me with "I've been pushed out of European restaurants in 45 minutes". If you have, you deserved it.
I thought people were catching on to the gluten-free scam. That may not be the best trend to follow, guys. Even Dr. Oz is off that bandwagon:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/05/14/gluten-intolerance-fake_n_532742...
FACT: Gluten inhibits the absorbtion of nutrients. GUESS: The Huffington Post offers no nutrition at all.
GUESS: You don't keep up with science. Unless you have celiac disease, gluten does not inhibit the absorbtion of nutrients.
http://www.businessinsider.com/gluten-sensitivity-and-study-replication-...
Got any citations for your FACT?
(that would mean scientific citations, btw, not random websites of people trying to sell me something).
That study is all about self diagnosed gluten insensitivity. Declaring you have a disease you know nothing about and then treating it usually is a bad idea.
The vast majority of people consuming all the trendy gluten free products have not been diagnosed with celiac disease.
Its kind of like all the fat free products people ate, back when fat was the villain. They substituted carbs for fat, which turned out to be a bad idea. Or the unsaturated trans fats people used to eat to avoid saturated fats. Another bad idea that took decades to be corrected, and for the FDA to finally address the science.
Wheat Belly cookbook explains what's going on with the gluten in wheat.
So, no scientific citations. All I get is some shill trying to sell me a "wheat belly" weight loss book. Here is what the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center says about gluten free diets:
"We know that being gluten free does not necessarily equal weight loss. We also know that people who follow a gluten-free diet (and don’t need to) often lack needed nutrients."
http://www.cureceliacdisease.org/archives/faq/can-a-gluten-free-diet-hel...
More information for gluten-free fans:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/how-we-eat-the-gluten-free-craze-is-it-he...
p.s. trick for reading Wall Street Journal links that hit the paywall. Cut and paste the title of the article in Google and click on it:
The Gluten-Free Craze: Is It Healthy?The problem isn't with the naturally occuring gluten in the natural grain, it is with the fact that virtually all grains are now GMO-ed frankenfoods, complete with GMO-ed franken-gluten. Many people are experiencing an immuno-allergic reaction to these unnatural chemistries, what a surprise.
I'm no fan of GMO, mostly because of the chemical cocktail of insecticides and herbicides that gets dumped on our food supply with development of the "Roundup Ready" marketing scheme.
But where gluten intolerance is concerned, there is no science supporting GMOs as the culprit.
AAhhhhhrhghehehrhrhhhhhh Dr. Oz Ahhhhhooooo fgkhkjhlh
I brought him up because he is one of those that started the trend, and now even he admits its a scam.
His existence is a scam
No, people don't understand FDA and food laws.
Gluten added to carbs comes from China. The people who make the food are required to disclose where they make the food, but not where they get the ingredients from.
I won't touch food when I don't know what it's made of and as a general rule for my health condition- I technically I go as raw as I can when I eat out.
If I'm going to Ruths, I'm pretty sure if I get a baked potato, that it's really a baked potato.
If I go to a Sushi joint, you can actually watch them make your meal with real ingredients.
Gluten is not technically a scam, it doesn't affect everyone in the same way people can eat peanuts while others have allergies.
So go for the Paleo diet if it makes you believe it will improve your health. Just don't pretend there is any science to support it, any more than the gluten free science. Unless we're talking about the placebo effect, like the one people get from taking antidepressants.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-paleo-diet-half-baked-how-...
From the Business Insider link I posted below, the conclusion from gluten studies is:
"It seems to be a "nocebo" effect — the self-diagnosed gluten sensitive patients expected to feel worse on the study diets, so they did. They were also likely more attentive to their intestinal distress, since they had to monitor it for the study."
The "scam" part is all the marketing of the gluten free products to those who are not gluten intolerant as a "healthy choice".
Portion sizes may be gradually reduced, as guests will begin to equate Olive Garden's value proposition more with quality and excellence at fair prices, than with massive quantities of barely edible fried items, excessive cheeses, and heavy cream sauces.
This sounds like a recipe for disaster - isn't 'massive quantities of barely edible fried items, ecessive cheeses and heavy cream sauces' the reason people go to Olive Garden? Why mess with a winning formula - and look at the statistics - record obesity - why alienate the fastest growing market sector in the country?
Shovel it onto the table !!!
1. We investors want our dividends paid immediately after the sale while the money is still warm from the customer's hand.
2. We investors want to see smiling, taned and attractive tweens or robotic equivalents that cannot be distinguished from agile young servants ready to service the customers at every table.
3. We investors want quality but have no intention of paying labor anything for it no matter how high their productivity levels or quality of service or their congeniality and attractiveness.
4. None of Us are gonna eat at fucking Darden anyway our micromanagement is really a bunch of bullshit designed as a predicate to reorganization and mass firings based on our bean counting in the high glass towers yonder.
everyone knows olive garden is a faux italian restaurant and going there just highlights the patrons' ignorance. i wouldn't be caught dead eating at olive garden until they serve soba noodles as an italian dish.
Olive Garden is such a nice place to eat a microwave tv dinner.
This is 100% true.
I know a guy with a big wrecker. He got a call from State Patrol one night to come remove a semi tractor-trailer that had tipped over in the median of the Interstate. It was an Olive Garden trailer, it had sliced open, and individually packaged frozen pasta entrees were strewn all over. He said they looked just like shitty Banquet Frozen Dinners, the pasta and sauce all in one package ready-to-heat.
Olive Garden just heats up frozen dinners and dumps them on a plate. There are no big pots of boiling water cooking pasta or sauce back in the kitchen - the hedge fund dude is full of shit. The entrees are made in a factory somewhere, packaged and frozen, and shipped to the restaurant locations.
Long microwaves!
Mr. Valentine has set the price!
Correct! Worse, most do not know this, hedge fund guys included. The salads are also pre-prepared and shipped in.
Accountants are great at telling you how to a run a business they've never built nor run.
I would actually eat at *that* Olive Garden.
Service stinks. Rude waitresses and waiters are THE main reason you lose customers. Same with McDs. "Bedisde manners" is what some call it in the health care field. "Customer Relations"...etc.
poor service = ruin
Seriously, OG is to Italian food as McDonalds is to food. My office goes there every month to eat endless pasta bowls and endless breadsticks. A lot of them park in handicap due to their ability to dent asphalt with their hooves. Sorry, not really, but this bastard is making me crave those hot breadsticks. Sounds gay now that I've written it. Not that there's anything wrong with that....
I spit water on my compy at that. Thanks. :)
:) crushed it
Of course the "hoofers" can't fit in every seat in the "planned dining maximization area" so they will complain and need to be accomodated.
Just seat them on the patio, back up a cement mixer with a pump filled with the bread stick dough and pump it into them.
Olive Garden gift cards: The gift that keeps on regifting!
I don't get it, why don't they just open their own chain of restaurants if it's so f'ing easy, how about "Hedge Fund Pasta Company", or maybe "The Muppet Garden".
I wouldn't eat there, 50% of the product would be thinned with powdered wood as a cost savings.
Like it is not now?
would they still charge 2 and 20?
I nearly shat myself laughing on "Muppet Garden".
Kudos!
Me too. Hedgefunds know how to serve up Muppets, don't they?
BEST COMMENT OF THE WEEK!!!!!
Still Laughing!!!!
Last time I was in Olive Garden there was no spoon, I asked the waiter if I could get a spoon, and the waiter responed "May I ask why you want a spoon?".
It stopped being about the food and the customers.
"May I ask why you want a spoon?"
Les see, hmm...
"So I can use it as a lever to launch bits of this nasty food to the ceiling?"
"So I can pry apart your butt cheeks and retrieve my lost wallet that you sat upon?"
"So I can scoop out your eyes from your skull after I parboil your face?"
"So I can fashion it into a shiv and gut you?"
I waited tables at the other Darden restaurant. I had to as a survival job while getting my undergrad.
Since graduation, I NEVER ate at a chain restaurant. I hate hate hate hate HATE servers. With a passion.
Hopefully we'll see those hedge fund managers as our waiters at Olive Garden one of these days, could happen.
Hopefully we'll see those hedge fund manager's heads piked
fixed it for ya
Perhaps it's just me. I never want to eat at any chain restaurants if I do have a choice. The last time I ate at OG, perhaps, was more than twenty years ago. It's totally beyond me why Americans love chain restaurants.
Because they are crap - eating sheep?
I never go to them either, but the general impression I get from other people is that it's simply a chance to get together with friends, a place to take a date, etc. In other words, it's not about the food; the chain restaurant serves as a milieu for social engagement, and apart from that it has no real value.
A great deal of the American "service economy" would (thankfully) disappear if more people would learn how to play bridge, make pleasant conversation, read and discuss good books, and in general make more productive uses of their time.
Much of the discussion above seems to be about which corporate owned chain "restaurants" has better food than the other.
I understand that because of advertising, promotion & couponing, these are the places that many people go to eat.
It never crosses their minds that these restaurants are owned by corporations or person's with a mindset that is: "people eat, so a restaurant is a "good deal" vs. seeking out a restaurant owned and operated by people that are "cookers and purveyors of good food"
enough from me. I need to get on line for an iPhone 6 :o :o :o
Lack of salt is not something I've ever thought of at an OG.
Look, maybe they don'y eat at Olive Garden......but Hedgefunders do eat out alot, who should know better than to transfer the concepts from Ruth's Chris or Morton's to a spagetti joint?
This food analysis is a fool's errand.
Olive Garden can change around the chairs on their economic Titanic's deck all they want-whether by directed by a Wall Streeter, food professionals or ouija board suggestions-the result will be the exact same: dismal.
Olive Garden is in the center of the middle class dining niche; its success depends not on the marginal changes in service techniques but on the fate of the disposal income of the American middle class.
Poor people seldomly dine at the Olive Garden; upper middle class, rich people would not be caught dead at the place. So when the American middle class income is atrophying, decreasing so is the business at Olive Gardens.
Well, It appears Olive Garden doesn't seem to know the very basics of cooking. It's a sad day when a hedge fund knows far more about proper cooking than a restaurant.
Their recommendations are completely correct. It's an insane world these days. This is just the proof in the pudding.
Think ahead to bankruptcy court. The creditors demand back the millions kicked up to the hedge fund. The hedgies point to this slide show and say, 'We were teaching them how to cook!' Bullshit, but a little more plausible. Some judges are dumb enough to not see the looting.
Darden is bloated piece of shit that no longer can invent and operate good restaraunts. They can only acquire them and ruin them.
Realistically, most chains have to be re-imaged on a regular basis (handful of years). Red Lobster missed that mark by a county mile and is now screwed for it. Olive Garden also missed the mark. Not as bad as RL, but still ugly.
I'd love to see the Olive Garden issue suggestions for how to improve customer experience in the hedge fund business.
The hedge fund manager is right about one thing, Olive Garden sucks.