Olive Garden partners with Uber for food delivery services | food

New York
CNN
 — 

Once a holdout on providing delivery for the informal diner, Olive Garden is reversing course and can use Uber to ship breadsticks and pasta.

Darden Restaurants, the chain’s guardian firm, introduced Thursday an “exclusive multi-year delivery partnership” with Uber that can start later this yr at a restricted variety of Olive Garden areas and certain develop nationally to its greater than 900 areas subsequent May if the pilot is profitable.

Olive Garden already provides delivery by its web site and app for catering orders with a $100 minimal, delivered by the restaurant’s workers. Moving ahead, the chain will outsource the delivery to Uber Eats drivers. However the restaurant nonetheless gained’t be accessible on the the Uber Eats app and food can solely be ordered on Olive Garden’s web site and app.

“Guests have been asking us for home delivery options and they continue to show they are willing to pay for the convenience,” mentioned Darden CEO Rick Cardenas in a press launch. He added Uber was a “clear choice” for a partnership as a result of it’s giving the chain visitor information and insights that doesn’t hamper its “competitive advantages and simple operating model.”

Darden has shunned services like Uber and DoorDash previously, saying that splitting the income with third-party service erodes the corporate’s profitability and the food isn’t delivered to its requirements. Even throughout the peak of the pandemic, Olive Garden didn’t use the services, though the services benefited their opponents.

Shares of Darden (DRI) jumped 9% in noon buying and selling. The partnership probably alleviated a number of the ache of a dismal quarter for Olive Garden, which reported a 2.9% drop in same-store gross sales for the quarter.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, chains have been climbing costs dramatically — partially due to rising prices and partially as a result of prospects didn’t appear to thoughts spending extra. But not too long ago, diners have began to push again so eating places began providing momentary reductions on these greater menu costs.

Olive Garden doesn’t supply many reductions, like its opponents do. Instead, its technique has been to carry off on elevating costs as a lot as it could, in addition to bringing again promotions like its fashionable endless pasta deal earlier this yr to assist the chain’s backside line.

Darden reiterated its full-year outlook and mentioned gross sales throughout its manufacturers, which additionally embrace Yard House, Ruth’s Chris and Longhorn Steakhouse, have improved in latest weeks.