Brianna Mims

A Brief History of Darden

Darden Restaurants has been around for over 45 years, and in that time has added eight different restaurant brands to their portfolio. They had a humble beginning, but have grown into an entity worth over 5,000 million dollars.1 Bill Darden, Sr. opened his first restaurant in 1938 in Waycross, Georgia. The diner was called The Green Frog, and their motto was Service with a hop.2 This restaurant was started during the Great Depression. An interesting thing about this restaurant is that Bill Darden did not segregate it. Blacks and whites ate together in his restaurant, something unheard of at the time. In 1968, Bill Darden opened the first Red Lobster Inn in Lakeland, FL. His vision was casual dining with an emphasis on affordable prices. Business took off. Inn was dropped from the name, and Red Lobster was sold to General Mills, who made Joe R. Lee their Chief Executive Officer of the newly created subsidiary Darden Restaurants in 1975.3 Now, Red Lobster serves over 3 million customers a week Darden Restaurants opened another popular chain in 1982, Olive Garden. This restaurant features Italian dishes. Olive Garden remains committed to its purpose of Hospitaliano! - providing 100% guest delight through a genuine Italian dining experience.4 Darden continued to do well with its two brands and finally broke away from General Mills in 1995, becoming its own company. Dardens stock opened on the New York Stock Exchange on May 31, 1995 at $10.75 a share.5 Now Dardens stock is worth about $45 dollars a share.6

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http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2012/snapshots/10394.html http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gaware/html/green_frog_restaurant.html 3 http://www.darden.com/about/photo_history.asp 4 http://www.darden.com/restaurants/olivegarden/ 5 http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/31/business/darden-shares-begin-trading.html

In 1996, Darden expanded its line of restaurants with a new creation called Bahama Breeze. The first Bahama Breeze was opened in Orlando FL, and now operates 24 restaurants nationally.7 The restaurant serves Caribbean themed dishes. The next restaurant to be created by Darden was Smokey Bones in 1999. It is a sports bar that featured barbeque in a lodge setting. This company was sold to Barbeque Integrated Inc., an affiliate of Sun Capital Partners Inc. of Boca Raton for about $80 million dollars.8 Darden was named by Fortune as one of the top 100 companies to work for in 2011. They came in 97th place, above Starbucks, Accenture, and W.W. Grainger.9 Darden is the only full service restaurant company to ever make this list. Also in this year, Darden announces they will reduce their calories and sodium footprints. Eddie Vs, a prime seafood restaurant, is also added to the list of brands. Finally in 2012, Yard House is added to Darden. They have multiple locations throughout Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia.10 Darden has gone through many changes throughout the years, but they have always remained dedicated to quality. This has only been a part of their rich history, and hopefully they will continue to make history through their business practices.

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https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:DRI http://www.bahamabreeze.com/company/ 8 http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/stories/2007/12/03/daily15.html 9 http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2011/full_list/ 10 http://www.yardhouse.com/about/