Olive Garden investor steamed over breadsticks

NEW YORK - Olive Garden is hurting itself by piling on too many breadsticks, according to an investor that's disputing how the restaurant chain is run.

In a wide-ranging critique, the hedge fund Starboard Value says restaurants lack training and that servers bring too many breadsticks to tables at a time. That leads to waste -- and cold breadsticks, Starboard says.

The document is part of Starboard's push to take control of the board of Olive Garden's parent company, Darden Restaurants Inc. (DRI). Darden has been trying to revitalize Olive Garden, where sales fell 1.3 percent in the latest quarter.

Among Starboard's other complaints were Olive Garden's failure to salt the water used to boil its pasta and its liberal use of salad dressing.

Darden says it's already been executing an improvement plan.

"While we will carefully and thoughtfully review Starboard's plan, which has been promised by Starboard for some time, upon initial review we believe many of the brand and cost-optimization strategies are already being implemented across our company and are showing results," Darden president and Chief Operation Officer Gene Lee said in a statement.

In a news statement, Darden said it has made a number of improvements to Olive Garden over the past year. These include enhancing its culinary operations, revamping the chain's menu, changing up its approach to advertising and promotions, and refreshing the restaurant's brand, the company said. Darden also pointed to technological upgrades at Olive Garden, including online ordering, testing of tablet computers in several restaurants and the launch of new system boost take-out sales.

"The Olive Garden brand renaissance is beginning to deliver positive results and reinforces the company's confidence in the brand's ongoing development," Darden said.

A few days ago, the restaurant chain landed in hot water with potential diners when it launched a promotion to sell $100 passes for unlimited pasta, breadsticks and soda. The passes are valid for 7 weeks but only 1,000 were offered. The promotion proved so popular that the sales website crashed, leaving people fuming, and many without the coveted pasta pass.