Why America Is Addicted to Olive Garden

Fast Company, July 1, 2009 — On a Tuesday morning in April, the presidents of three of the largest restaurant chains in the country slip into an unmarked white van in Orlando, Florida, and embark on an unprecedented mission — sharing their latest trade secrets.

You know their brands: $3 billion — plus Olive Garden, with its heaping bowls of pasta and all-you-can-eat breadsticks; $2 billion — plus Red Lobster, which introduced middle America to the wonders of fried shrimp; and nearly $1 billion LongHorn Steakhouse, whose variations on a theme include steak stuffed with fontina cheese and wild mushrooms.

You probably don't know they're part of the same company, Darden Restaurants. It's the country's largest full-service restaurant operation, the 29th-largest employer in the United States, and a pioneer of what's known as "casual dining," which accounts for 39% of all sit-down restaurant meals....

At the helm of this quiet giant is the 53-year-old son of a janitor from Watts, the Los Angeles neighborhood that made headlines for riots in 1965--CEO Clarence Otis. "On the continuum of intuitive restaurants versus systematized, analytic restaurants, we're very analytic," he says. "The direction of our business is based on understanding customers."