NUMBER OF THE DAY
Olive Garden’s Times Square Tourist Drought, by the Numbers
The restaurant chain’s flagship location has seen sales fall by 94% during the pandemic
$282,500: That’s how much weekly sales have declined at everyone’s favorite unlimited-breadstick restaurant chain Olive Garden’s Times Square location. It’s a 94% drop, going from $300,000 a week before the pandemic to about $17,500 a week now, the CEO of parent company Darden said on a call with investors, as reported by CNBC. While Times Square was formerly the chain’s best-performing location, New York City’s ban on indoor dining during the pandemic turned the flagship three-story restaurant into a much less profitable takeout-only operation.
NYC indoor dining will resume tomorrow at 25% capacity, but the option to dine in may not do much to help the Times Square Olive Garden’s sales. The collapse of tourism and the closure of theatres on Broadway have turned the neighborhood into a ghost town, and the New Year’s Eve ball drop — an event for which the restaurant once sold $400 tickets — is going virtual this year. Never mind that resident New Yorkers already avoid both Times Square and its Olive Garden like the plague.
