Dive Brief:
- Darden Restaurants, parent company of Olive Garden and Ruth’s Chris Steak House, is focusing on quicker dining experiences and a more engaging in-restaurant atmosphere to help it attract customers, President and CEO Rick Cardenas said on a Q1 2025 earnings call Thursday.
- Full-service restaurants are losing traffic to delivery, fast food and other speedier options, according to Cardenas. “In a world that has gotten faster, full-service restaurants haven't kept up,” Cardenas said during the call.
- Darden wants to emphasize improving in-restaurant throughput without making customers feel rushed, according to Cardenas. He doesn’t expect the company to need to significantly increase technology investments or staffing levels to implement the changes.
Dive Insight:
Fighting a sales slump, Darden is looking toward faster service to improve the in-restaurant experience.
The company will need to achieve this while balancing the needs of diners against extra order volume from the company’s new delivery partnership with Uber.
Same-restaurant sales were down 1.1% during the quarter, which ended Aug. 25, according to Raj Vennam, senior vice president and CFO at Darden. In comparison, same-restaurant sales rose 1.6% in Q4 2024, the company said in June.
Faster dining experiences could prove key to boosting same-store sales growth. While Darden’s overall customer ratings are high, satisfaction with speed is unfavorable across the entire full-service restaurant industry, according to Cardenas.
“What we're trying to do is capture that occasion where the guest has a little less time to eat than they did 10 years ago,” Cardenas said. “They don't believe they can do that at a full-service restaurant. We believe they can.”
One element will be rethinking staffing practices to minimize wait times. For instance, managers will use restaurant data to pinpoint times when customers are stuck waiting for a seat, allowing them to rewrite schedules to better handle busy periods.
The company is taking care to maintain its dine-in experience as it revamps operations to handle added delivery volume through Uber as well.
Uber drivers will pick up orders curbside to minimize disruption inside the restaurant, Cardenas said. Darden will use its proprietary capacity management tool to manage order volume and ensure takeout requests don’t impact dine-in operations.
“It was important for us to find a way to address this guest needs state without disrupting the team member or guest experience,” Cardenas said.
