Olive Garden plants roots in Tuscany, opens culinary school

Nation's Restaurant News, Nov 1, 1999 by Milford Prewitt

CASTELLINA IN CHIANTI, ITALY -- Putting its money where its intentions are, Olive Garden is deepening its commitment to authentic Italian cuisine and service by establishing a culinary training school and a signature restaurant in this restored medieval settlement in Tuscany.

In a joint venture with one of the chain's major wine suppliers, the prominent Chianti vintner Rocca delle Macie, Olive Garden has opened a training compound for its front- and back-of-the-house staff to become immersed in all facets of Italian food, cooking traditions, wine service and hospitality.

According to Brad Blum, president of the Darden Restaurants Inc.-owned chain, the objective of the foreign venture is far-reaching. He said he hoped customers in the United States would begin to see the 464-unit Olive Garden less as urban trattorias and more as an assemblage of Tuscan-style farmhouses, steeped in family-style service and with a keen appreciation for wine.

At a New York press conference at the chain's flagship location in Times Square a few days after his return from Italy, Blum detailed his ambitions. He called the school-and-restaurant development in Tuscany "an extension of our strategy that we are really passionate about providing a great experience for every guest who visits, by providing a genuine Italian dining experience.

"We are pleased about this because we're creating the inspiration to develop new menu items in our restaurants across the U.S. and mix them with high-quality wines. We already have one culinary school in Orlando [Fla.]; but in having one in Italy, we now have the ability to have our development and culinary teams work with master chefs to learn more about the authentic ways of Italian cooking and how to pair it with wine."

Many independent restaurateurs and acclaimed chef-owners of Italian restaurants routinely make culinary pilgrimages to Italy, where they ferret out new dishes and wines. Rarely has a national, mass-market chain's concern for authenticity spawned such a commitment.

Perhaps the only example of a chain that parallels Olive Garden's bid to be genuine is the 17-unit Il Fornaio upscale Italian dinner-house, based in San Francisco, which traditionally hires only Italian-born chefs to head its kitchens.

Indeed, veteran restaurant consultant and dinner-house trend spotter Malcolm Knapp, president of New York-based Knapp-Track, said Olive Garden might be the first ethnic chain of its size to infuse its concept with more than just words.

"This is not about public relations," he said. "I don't see this as some marketing stunt. The authenticity here is in the spirit, because when you get to flavor profiles, what may be authentic in purist terms may not be as pleasing to the American palate.

"Authentic in spirit is the crucial difference," Knapp added. "This is the same reason we find that more Americans who travel expect better [back home] because they've had better. Now people who have not had that experience will have it at the Olive Garden, and so it becomes the spirit Olive Garden translates that has the real payout."

Blum said the launch of the Tuscan restaurant and training center comes at a high point in Olive Garden's history. He said the chain just passed its 20th consecutive quarter of same-store sales increases -- up 8.1 percent in the first quarter ended Aug. 29 -- and notched the highest guest satisfaction numbers it ever recorded. Moreover, employee turnover, especially among unit level general managers, is far below industry averages, Blum said.

In its fiscal year ended May 31, Darden Restaurants reported that Olive Garden grew its systemwide sales to $1.5 billion, a 7-percent increase. Average annual unit volumes hit a record $3.2 million, with operating margins up in double-digit percentages.

On a sunny hilltop surrounded by the checkered panorama of grape and olive groves stretching to the horizon, Blum recently dedicated the opening of the restaurant -- Olive Garden Riserva di Fizzano -- and culinary school. With him was a crowd of Olive Garden senior executives, a select group of the chain's servers or "wine ambassadors" from the United States and a group of invited food and business journalists.

Located in a restored 11th-century village in a building that had once been a hayloft, the project is on the 450-acre estate of Rocca Delle Macie, in the heart of Tuscany's Chianti-wine-producing region. The restaurant and culinary school share the hilltop with a rustic inn, an olive press and a chapel.

Blum said Olive Garden's partners in the venture Sergio and Daniela Zingarelli -- shared a common dream of his.

"The mark of a champion is consistent excellence in performance, and we think, with our relationship with the Zingarellis, the best is yet to come," he said. "I always had a dream where I did not want us to be known as an American company that just happens to sell Italian food. I would like us to be known as a family of Italian restaurants that just happen to be located in North America.

"Now we have one in Tuscany."