Darden was once vehemently opposed to delivery. However, it turns out the company is pretty good at it.
With delivery available nationwide for all of Q4, Olive Garden saw order volume increase week to week while retaining higher-than-average sales per transaction compared to curbside pickup orders. Keep in mind, this is through Uber Direct, meaning customers pay for delivery through Olive Garden’s first-party channel, not on Uber’s platform.
At the end of Q4, Olive Garden launched a campaign to promote delivery across multiple advertising channels, including TV. The offer was 1 million free deliveries, partially funded by Uber. Backed by a lot of incrementality, average weekly delivery sales per store nearly doubled during the final two weeks of the fourth quarter. Thanks to the growth of delivery—in addition to catering and to-go orders—off-premises sales lifted nearly 20 percent year-over-year in Q4.
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Delivery helped Olive Garden post 6.9 percent same-store sales growth in Q4, making it the best-performing brand in the Darden portfolio. The comps increase in Q4 outperformed the industry benchmark by 390 basis points. Pricing was about 2.7 percent, and traffic increased close to 3 percent.
Quarterly sales grew 8.1 percent to $1.38 billion. Olive Garden also delivered a 23.8 percent profit margin, 100 basis points higher than Q4 2024. For the year, Olive Garden’s sales were $5.21 billion, up from $5.07 billion.
The casual giant was also aided by its Buy One, Take One promotion, which returned after five years. With a starting point of $14.99, guests were able to choose one entrée and take another one home for free. During Buy One, Take One, Olive Garden same-restaurant sales gap versus the industry increased to 450 basis points.
“The Olive Garden team continued to execute at a high level, which led to an all-time high guest satisfaction score for the quarter,” Cardenas said during Darden’s Q4 earnings call. “I am extremely proud of how Dan Kiernan and his team managed the business throughout the year and the strong momentum they have generated heading into the new fiscal year.”
As for the rest of Darden’s portfolio, LongHorn Steakhouse’s same-store sales lifted 5.1 percent. The “other business” segment (Bahama Breeze, Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen, Yard House, Seasons 52, and The Capital Burger) saw comps grow 0.2 percent, and the fine dining segment (Eddie V’s, The Capital Grille, and Ruth’s Chris Steak House) felt a 3 percent dip.
More of Darden’s brands will soon get a boost from delivery. Cheddar’s recently completed a successful pilot of Uber Direct. Delivery is available in all but eight restaurants. Darden has started to back these efforts with paid media and email support (partially funded by Uber, like the Olive Garden agreement).
“As we launched it in Cheddar’s, and got pretty similar answers to Olive Garden, we were able to ramp it up faster and get it into most of the restaurants faster,” Cardenas said. “The other brands, we’ll continue to look at. We have some thoughts on what brand might go next. But we want to make sure that every brand that adds delivery has a great experience for their to-go. And so we mentioned that there were eight Cheddar’s restaurants that aren’t live. That’s because they didn’t earn the right to have delivery.”
Cardenas said delivery customers have “very minimal overlap” with other dining channels and are younger with a slightly higher income. Additionally, Darden is seeing higher guest frequency for delivery versus dine-in guests, and a higher percentage of them are new or lapsed consumers versus pickup or dine-in. Many of the delivery guests haven’t been to Olive Garden in over a year.
The CEO also emphasized that Darden won’t push Uber Direct onto any of its brands. That decision will be up to the individual presidents and their leadership teams. Darden can veto a brand getting delivery—and there are some where that would happen—but Cardenas doesn’t think those particular chains are thinking about doing it anyway.
“Without getting into which [brand is next], we do have another brand that we think we’re going to work on but it will probably not start until sometime right at the beginning of the next calendar year,” Cardenas said.
There are no plans to appear on Uber’s marketplace either.
“Right now, our priority is to continue to see how Olive Garden and Cheddar’s perform in Uber Direct,” Cardenas said. “Marketplace is something that has challenges for us. And we’ve said what those challenges are. And that’s why we developed this Uber Direct offer with Uber, which was the perfect thing for us and a really great thing for Uber. So we’ll continue to see how this goes before we determine whether we want to even be in the marketplace at all.”
Olive Garden finished fiscal 2025 with 935 company-owned restaurants. It was followed by LongHorn (591), Cheddar’s (181), Chuy’s (108), Yard House (88), Ruth’s Chris (82), The Capital Grille (71), Seasons 52 (43), Eddie V’s (29), Bahama Breeze (28), and The Capital Burger (3).
Darden also announced leadership changes. Olive Garden president Dan Kiernan will retire at the end of August. He will be replaced by Cheddar’s leader John Wilkerson. Mark Cooper, president of Seasons 52 and Bahama Breeze, will become the new head of Cheddar’s. Lorie Kessler, who led operations for Seasons 52, will step in as president.
Cooper and Kessler will report to group president John Martin, who will also retain responsibility for Yard House, the Capital Grille, and Eddie V’s. Thomas Hall was named president of Chuy’s.
