Lee Hawkins
speaker
34 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2019
last heard Aug 2019
Lee Hawkins’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
WSJ Your Money Briefing · The Math Behind Olive Garden's 'Never Ending Pasta Pass' · 19 Aug 2019
podcast
Darden Restaurant's next earnings report comes in September, and the balance sheet of its flagship brand, Olive Garden, is closely followed by investors.
The restaurant chain has seen great success over the past four years with its never-ending pasta pass,
which lets customers pay $100 for a card that gives them unlimited food for nine weeks.
And 50 of those people spent $500 to eat unlimited pasta for a lifetime.
How does this promotion help Olive Garden cook up success?
Let's check in with WSJ Heard on the Street editor Spencer Jacob to help us break down the numbers.
So, Spencer, I know you said $100 for unlimited food, but there are actually limits.
You have to pay extra for things like drinks.
So is that where Olive Garden makes its money?
And Wall Street is on board with this promotion?
This is a carb lover's dream.
You purchased one of these cards in the past yourself, and you also wrote a story about a man who ate every meal at an Olive Garden every day to get his money's worth.
This kind of marketing promotion has worked for Olive Garden in the past, as you say, and it seems to be pretty confident that its projections are reliable.
And this, like in past years, will be a runaway success.
What's the math behind that confidence?
Okay, but this has not worked out for every business.
I mean, in the early 80s, for instance, American Airlines offered free unlimited first class flights for an upfront fee of a quarter of a million dollars, $250,000.
And that didn't end very well.
What happened?
So that was a little different.
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