At Darden Restaurants−which owns several casual dining restaurant chains including: Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, Bahama Breeze, Seasons 52, Eddie V’s Prime Seafood, The Capital Grille, and Yard House−the focus is on food, service, and atmosphere, which combined, improve the perceived value of the customer experience.
Delivering a great guest experience enhances the company’s perceived value.
Darden Restaurants CEO Gene Lee was upbeat following the company’s Dec. 20 second-quarter earnings call.
“We continue to concentrate on our four competitive advantages,” Lee said. “One, leveraging our significant scale to create cost advantages; two, using our extensive data and insights to better understand our guest and effectively communicate with them; three, ensuring our brand is systematically go-through our rigorous strategic planning process; and four, cultivating our results-oriented people culture to enable growth.”
This marked Darden Restaurants’ ninth consecutive quarter of same restaurant sales growth at Olive Garden.
“Looking at the key drivers of this performance, it was really three things,” Lee said. “First, the operations team (led by Dan Kiernan) continued to improve restaurant level execution. We’re committed to improving the service experience and still have more opportunity on that front. However, we did achieve all-time high scores for both overall guest satisfaction, as well as server attentiveness during the quarter.”
For Darden Restaurants, its To Go platform continues to generate solid growth and lends insights into customer behavioral patterns.
To Go sales grew 21%, compared to the same period last year.
“The exciting thing about To Go is that our operations excellence team continues to learn more and more about how to meet our guests’ growing needs for convenience,” Lee said. “Our promotional and core menu strategies continue to work together to create value for our guest.”
Lee pointed to the 21st anniversary of the “Never Ending Pasta Bowl,” as an example of ultimate customer engagement.
“We made 21,000 pasta passes available, and all of them were claimed online in less than one second,” Lee said. “The passion demonstrated by our guest who got a pasta pass and disappointment by those who did not reinforced the strength and relevance of the Olive Garden brand.”
We had another good quarter. Total sales from continuing operations were $1.64 billion, an increase of 2.1%. Same restaurant sales grew 1.7%. Outperforming the industry benchmarks excluding Darden by 450 basis points and diluted net earnings per share were $0.64, an increase of 18.5% from last year's adjusted diluted net earnings per share.