Olive Garden Offers $100 Never-Ending Pasta Pass For Seven Weeks
Olive Garden is really running with the never-ending pasta theme.
Today the Italian chain restaurant sold 1,000 Never Ending Pasta passes for $100 each. The sale started at 3 p.m.
The pass, which works from Sept. 22 to Nov. 9, gives the pasta pass owner unlimited pasta, salad, bread and soft drinks for seven weeks.
The pass goes along with Olive Garden's Never Ending Pasta Bowl promotion, which lets restaurant goers eat as much pasta as they want for $9.99, notes USA Today.
"What we're trying to do is get some attention," said Jay Spenchian, the executive vice president of marketing. "It's sure to provoke a reaction."
Other companies, such as Friday's, Red Lobster and Outback Steakhouse, have also offered unlimited meal options.
Never Ending Pasta Bowls have proved to be successful for Olive Garden. They served 13 million bowls last year, according to Spenchian, who called it the "most popular" and "most requested" promotion.
The $100 pass is not only good for the person who buys the pass. It will also get up to seven of their guests free soft drinks made by Coca-Cola.
The pasta, however, is not for sharing.
"Of course, if someone shared, we do understand -- we're not policing the tables," Spenchian said.
Olive Garden saw a 1.3 same-store sales drop last quarter.
But it seems the pasta pass is getting people's attention.
Twitter users are expressing their opinions on the promotion, but mostly, many are upset they weren't able to get a pass.
One user thought that Olive Garden should have sold more than just 1,000 passes.
Also the fact that @olivegarden only had 1000 $100 passes seems like a big miss to me. They could make a lot more money with more passes.
— Tony Nagatani (@AnthonyNagatani) September 8, 2014
Others think the passes went on sale before it was supposed to.
@olivegarden Super bummed I couldn't get a #pastapass Site was sold out before scheduled go live it seemed :-( — Mr. Nibbles (@MrNibbles) September 8, 2014
Subscribe to Latin Post!
Sign up for our free newsletter for the Latest coverage!
* This is a contributed article and this content does not necessarily represent the views of latinpost.com