My email to Olive Garden and I also called our LOCAL store and told them the same

I love Olive Garden, but unfortunately, I will no longer be eating at any Olive Garden resturaunts. Your poor decision to pull advertising from the Letterman show let me know just how your company operates. From now on, I will be satisfying my Italian cravings at Carrabas.

You made your decision and I have made mine, oh and all of my family and friends have made the same decision as well. I figure you have lost about 3,000 dollars a year from us. Hope your blind support for a lying politician was worth it.


https://www.olivegarden.com/company/contact_us/Default.asp?

corporate won't feel the consequences except in numbers


the local stores will see the decline and be the ones to worry

...that they caved in to a fringe group, thereby currying the favour of a few, but their act demonstrates supreme cowardice that will turn off and turn away the majority.

Olive Garden is restaurana non gratis with my family from now on.

good for you

more such calls would have an impact

corporate doesn't care


Local stores do

bwahahahaha

trying to explain that the local stores don't have control over what corporate does


bwahaha

They'll reverse their decision quickly if enough angry customers are planning to boycott.

karma, to them all.

... a chain restaurant with bland food.


Olive Garden Voted Best Italian Restaurant In Annual Milwaukee Magazine Awards

MILWAUKEE, WI—For the second straight year, Olive Garden took top honors in the "Best Italian Restaurant" category in Milwaukee Magazine's annual "Best Of Milwaukee" poll. "For authentic Italian cuisine and friendly service (they call it Hospitaliano), the Blue Mound Road Olive Garden is the one to beat," wrote the magazine, whose readers voted for the chain restaurant over such local stalwarts as Mimma's Cafe and Balistreri's. "Once again, Olive Garden is Milwaukee's finest." High marks were also given to the Mayfair Mall Chi-Chi's, voted "Best Date Spot" for the third year running.

The Onion

A lot of people in the 'burbs and rural areas are stuck with just chains.

until they reverse their ignorant decision.

... to support local businesses that are truly local.

These days it has grown increasingly more difficult to shop locally for groceries, books, and hardware with the big box stores putting the squeeze on hometown businesses.

The one place where it's still relatively easy to support local businesses is at local restaurants (and bars for that matter).

They know your town and its people, and chances are they really give a shit about you. Why? Because it's good for business!

saying I will boycott and so will 150-or-so high school students as I am using this as an example of how free speech is curtailed in our 'free' country.
Hey, local Olive Garden: better cut back on your salad order.

would be a great example

You do understand that this isn't a matter of the government curtailing anyone's speech, don't you? David Letterman is free to joke about pretty much anything he chooses. Olive Garden is free to advertize, or not, for whatever reason. And potential customers are free to patronize Olive Garden, or not, for whatever reason they see fit.

I really don't see where there is a Constitutional crisis here.

- because it would be misrepresenting the concept of "free speech."

Not to mention it would be ignorant to teach them that when someone pulls advertising (boycotts) it harms free speech, when in fact boycotts can be a form of free speech.

I'm sorry, but I really don't see how you pressuring students to participate in a boycott to prevent others from boycotting teaches the lesson you think you are teaching. (Are you trying to curtail Olive Garden's right to free speech? Or you are embracing it?)

there is an Olive Garden right across the street from Dave's studio

Tourists, I suppose. Certainly no one who actually lives in New York.

This is the only time I truly love living in the South. It's revenge for the number of McCain Palin stickers I still see everywhere!!!

Plus, I'll post this on my local liberal sites, just so we're all clear on where not to eat.

yes

What's a good liberal to do?

...can't think of its name...they should get a letter also.

or Darden Corp. And yes, the guys that own Outback and Carraba's are even worse. I used to work for them and have first hand experience. I try to avoid their restaurants at all costs. You really do find better food at the small privately owned restaurants anyway.

spaghetti and lasagna


mine is much better anyway

Thanks for supplying the contact info. Here's what I sent them. If everyone (or even half of everyone) from DU sent an e-mail, they'd get the message!
Hello,
I was amazed when I heard that you're pulling future ads from the Letterman show. Politics aside, he made a joke. He didn't advocate child rape, he didn't aim it at Sarah Palin's 14 year old, it was a joke! When the right wingers went on a rampage, you caved in and joined them in their idiotic witch hunt.
My wife and I eat at the Everett Washington Olive Garden twice a month and have done so for over a decade. Most times with another couple. That is ending now. It has nothing to do with the quality or price of your product. It's all due to your modern day "lynching" of David Letterman. I'm sorry that it came to this.
Mr & Mrs Unrepentant Fenian
Arlington Washington

so I've never eaten at Olive Garden, or Outback, etc, Don't plan to anytime soon.

I would rather make my own.

I recently got into bread baking and all I can tell you is that you can't buy this stuff at Safeway! And... once you've had Real Bread, ...you will never again buy the crap Safeway sells.

yummy

with Right. I gave up eating there long ago. I can make better fettucine alfredo than them.

And their bread sucks....it's like Wonder Bread...and their salad dressing is boring....and that's the only choice. I don't miss them at all.

Even before Failin's faux indignation. There is one in my home town and I haven't been there in years.

If you want to show someone what Italian food should not taste like, take them to Olive Garden.


:puke:

That was one time too many. Yuk! Red Lobster also serves up some foul stuff. It makes me very sad to think of all of the poor fish and crustaceans that gave their lives to be turned into that garbage. Not to mention all of the potatoes, lettuce, and other veggies that wind up in their putrid meals...

They all have the same 'cookie cutter' assembly line feeling that makes me ill at ease.

Sometimes I have to wonder if the server is a robot.