Former OG GM here. 300+ covers (guest count) for lunch is not too bad. They will probably finish with 900ish covers for the day. They have have pretty high addon sales. Anything over $5 is great. I will say that their appetizer sales is pretty high. If someone orders an app for dinner they don’t get guest count. 133 apps is like 1 in 5 guests getting an app. If every Friday was like this, they are probably a 5-6 million in annual sales restaurant. Last OG I was GM at, we were a 6mil a year restaurant and profited 18%. You do the math. OG makes some serious $$$. Multiple by 900 or so restaurant. I’m pretty sure the Time Square OG is about 15mil or more a year in sales. I started at the bottom. They were a great company to work for.
I was initially surprised that you had praise for your time with the company, but after thinking about it I think I might see why. I worked at Ruby Tuesdays back in 2006-2007 time frame. I started as a server and then became a bartender and trainer, along with doing every job in the back at some point. During that time, they wanted to break away from the other "burger and fry" chains and to seem more "refined." They remodeled their restaurants and got all the wacky shit off the walls and they started serving ketchup in ramekins to go along with their Triple Prime burgers.
They pressured us to get people out having lunch with a friend to buy a fucking bottle of wine. Same with an obvious pair of business colleagues. Every week it was a new unrealistic push. It was madness.
My point is, Olive Garden seems to have always known what it was. Unless I've missed something major over the past 15 or so years, I feel they've stuck with what they're good at, and nailed it down to a relatively streamlined science.
Working in chain restaurants isn’t a bad experience if the rest of the staff is chill. Obviously the pay could be better but that’s not the fault of the managers, or really anyone below the level of CEO.
Indirectly they definitely are. If they for instance demand cost cuts, and wages are on that table, their demand for those cost cuts lead to the wage levels.
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u/TyRoSwoe Nov 19 '22
Former OG GM here. 300+ covers (guest count) for lunch is not too bad. They will probably finish with 900ish covers for the day. They have have pretty high addon sales. Anything over $5 is great. I will say that their appetizer sales is pretty high. If someone orders an app for dinner they don’t get guest count. 133 apps is like 1 in 5 guests getting an app. If every Friday was like this, they are probably a 5-6 million in annual sales restaurant. Last OG I was GM at, we were a 6mil a year restaurant and profited 18%. You do the math. OG makes some serious $$$. Multiple by 900 or so restaurant. I’m pretty sure the Time Square OG is about 15mil or more a year in sales. I started at the bottom. They were a great company to work for.