Darden_Restaurants,_Inc.

Darden Restaurants, Inc. Darden Restaurants, Inc. Introduction At 19 years old, Bill Darden opened a lunch counter called “The Green Frog” in Waycross, Georgia. The slogan preached “Service with a Hop” forecasting Mr. Darden’s future idealization on service. (Darden 2001) Darden Restaurants was first incorporated and began official trading at the New York Stock Exchange in 1995 as a spin-off of General Mills to become an independent company. Today, Darden Restaurants is the largest casual dining restaurant company in the world operating Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Bahama Breeze, and Smokey Bones Sports Bar restaurants in North America. All of Darden restaurants in North America are company owned and offer no franchise ventures. Darden has restaurants in every state excluding Alaska. Darden also operates one Olive Garden Café in the United States, and 32 Red Lobsters and five Olive Gardens in Canada. Through its associate partners, Red Lobster Japan, an unaffiliated retailer runs 34 Red Lobsters through a per franchise agreements. Currently, Darden restaurants employ over 120,000 people. (Darden 2001) Darden’s restaurant companies currently compete with full-service, casual dining restaurants such as Outback, Chili’s, and Applebee’s. Darden’s parent company competitors include Brinker’s, Landry, and Metromedia. [Multex darden, restaurants, restaurant, diversity, darden’s, red, dining, lobster, casual, service, olive, company, 2001, opened, companies, building, vision, through, quality, one, new, garden, employees, currently, core, blocks, best, while, website, values, three, success, smokey, needs, management