Darden Restaurants’ next CEO doesn’t expect many changes
Darden Restaurants’ next CEO Rick Cardenas doesn’t expect many changes after he takes the helm in May at the business that owns Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse.
Cardenas, the Orlando-based company’s current president and chief operating officer, commented on the transition during a virtual ICR Conference. Darden CEO Gene Lee is retiring in May.
“I’ve worked with [Lee] for the last seven [years] helping set our strategy and the way we move forward so I don’t anticipate a lot of changes in that,” Cardenas said.
“We’re looking at what we’ve done over the last few years to improve our business model and how that impacts our cash flow and what we do with our return on cash, but our long-term framework is our long-term framework.”
The investment conference featuring restaurant and retail companies had taken place in Orlando prior to the pandemic, but was held online this year because of the omicron and delta variants of coronavirus, flight cancelations, labor shortages and limited testing for the virus.
Cardenas became Darden’s chief financial officer in 2016 and was then named chief operating officer and president in January of last year. He started with the business as an hourly employee in 1984 before joining its restaurant support center in 1992.
Darden has more than 1,850 restaurants including Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen, Yard House, The Capital Grille, Seasons 52, Bahama Breeze and Eddie V’s.
Cardenas on Monday again addressed the fate of Olive Garden’s Never Ending Pasta Bowl, which was last served in 2019, and other bargains.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if promotions come back at Olive Garden, probably not nearly as many as they were before, maybe a little longer duration, but at a different kind of economic model,” Cardenas said.
Promotions at Olive Garden “could be Never Ending Pasta Bowl, but it might not be the same construct it was before,” Cardenas said.
In 2019, the deal included unlimited servings of pasta starting at $10.99. A $100 pass that allowed 24,000 customers to eat unlimited pasta for nine weeks sold out in what the company described at the time as “milliseconds.”