Darden Restaurants and the Mess they Created

Often I’m asked when I do a restaurant review what exactly do I look for? To be honest there are several things that immediately come to mind. The first is if it has a host or hostess, how quickly am I greeted from the time I enter the establishment? From there how long does it take to be seated and the time frame to be acknowledged at a table or the bar? Once I know who my server is does that person get the order of food and drinks correct. I find that most do not listen when you place your request for iced tea. I prefer it without lemon and un-sweet. So often it is wrong in one or both ways. Of course, the food is important. Is it the proper temperature? Does it have a nice appearance and are the side dishes the ones I ordered. Those are some of the things that are high priorities.

I’ve been watching the brouhaha that has unfolded with the Darden chain and feel that it has gotten be so laughable that I have to say something. First I stayed on the fence when they announced that they were getting rid of the busers and expect the servers to bus their own tables. Now they also take care of more tables than they can handle. I said then service would be affected which many people told me that’s crazy. Then to avoid paying Obama care Darden would be cutting their workers hours to keep them from full time employment. At the same time all of this has been unfolding Darden has a been purchasing other restaurants around the country. Many of them are only now seeing the results of their takeover.

When all of this began, I decided to cut down on going to Darden franchises, like many others who do not like what it is doing to its employees. Recently I’ve been talking to people who have continued to go to many of the Darden restaurants and they’ve been telling me that they have encountered things like cold appetizers served to their tables, servers not getting orders correct, long waits between parts of meals and in general, a lousy dinning experience. Another factor is that Darden is very high priced in what it offers and not a good value for the money anymore.

In the past month I’ve been numerous times to several Red Lobster and Olive Garden locations and received in all of them terrible service. Some of the issues are: not getting a check when I was sitting at the bar next to the register, no one wiping down the bar before letting me order, having more interest in what was playing on the TV at the bar than taking my order, not re-filling my tea or getting it wrong.

So when I read the paper and saw the news reports on the major networks that Darden is blaming Hurricane Sandy, the economy, and numerous other things for the downturn in their business, I felt I finally had to say something. My issues that I have brought up are by one person. I have to wonder what other kind of things have happened to diners who have gone to other Darden restaurants. I know that most people do not say or do anything about it because they do not want to be bothered so they just leave and do not come back.

What really emerges is that Darden is out of touch with its customers. Take for example, the mistake they made a number of years ago when they began in this market the China Coast Chinese buffet. It was well received and it was doing fine when out of no-where they decided to make it a regular Chinese eatery. Business drastically fell off. Later they went back to a buffet style place but the damage was done so all of them around the area closed. Another mistake made was with the Red Lobster chain when they got rid of the soup and salad special because they said no one was getting the special. I’m not sure what the real reason was. But all of these mistakes are now taking their toll on the places.

With all the bad press they’ve recently received they now say what they were doing was a test and that they are not going to do anything to their server’s hours. The issue is a lot more than this bad publicity they have been receiving.

What’s happened is that, in trying to be bigger and bigger Darden lost sight of what made them so successful. Clearly, bigger is not always better.