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OFF BEAT: Policies provide Olive Garden all the trouble it can stomach

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Olive Garden might be willing to sell a pass for unlimited pasta, but the restaurant chain moved quickly last week to make clear there are limits on just who uses those passes.

Faced with a secondary market for the $100 passes on eBbay and Craigslist that saw some being resold for as much as $500, the company advised buyers and sellers that the Never Ending Pasta Passes are personalized and non-transferable, according to reports.

The restaurant chain offered 1,000 of the passes on its website Sept. 8, with buyers quickly gobbling up the chance for seven weeks of unlimited pasta and other items. Reports said the chain won’t let those who’ve purchased black market pasta passes go hungry, however, providing properly personalized replacements to those who contact the company and provide proof of purchase.

Meanwhile, as if the issues with its unlimited pasta passes weren’t causing Olive Garden enough indigestion, last week a hedge fund looking to take over control of the board of the chain’s parent company, Darden Restaurants Inc., accused Olive Garden of “lapsed discipline” in its unlimited breadsticks offerings.

In a lengthy presentation detailing its plans for transforming the chain, Starboard Value said “poor execution” of the unlimited breadstick policy increases food waste and hurts the Olive Garden dining experience.

Servers bringing too many breadsticks to the table at once allows the breadsticks to go cold and stale, the hedge fund said, adding that it’s not suggesting eliminating the unlimited breadstick policy, just improving server discipline over how they’re provided, a move it said could save up to $5 million annually.

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