Darden Restaurants

“Uber was 4.7% of sales for Q3.”

Darden uses Uber for first-party delivery at Olive Garden, where Uber-fulfilled delivery reached 4.7% of Olive Garden sales in the quarter, supported by delivery marketing.

“First-party delivery through our partnership with Uber Direct continues to drive strong results.”

Darden's first-party delivery via Uber Direct reached 4% of Olive Garden sales (about half incremental) and is being rolled out to Cheddar's and Yard House, a positive read-through for Uber's Direct white-label delivery business.

“On July 14, we closed on the sale of those locations to Recipe Unlimited, the largest full-service operator in Canada.”

Darden sold its 8 Canadian Olive Garden locations to Recipe Unlimited and signed an area development agreement, making Recipe Unlimited its Canadian franchise partner.

“First-party delivery through our partnership with Uber Direct is helping capture younger, and more affluent guests who value convenience and crave Olive Garden.”

Darden's first-party delivery runs on Uber Direct, a positive read-through for Uber's white-label delivery logistics business.

“We also signed a definitive agreement to sell the 8 Olive Garden locations in Canada to Recipe Unlimited, the largest full-service operator in Canada, and we are on track to close that deal soon.”

Darden is divesting its 8 corporate Olive Garden locations in Canada to Recipe Unlimited and entering an area development agreement to open 30 more Olive Gardens there over 10 years, part of Darden's international franchising push.

“we developed this Uber Direct offer with Uber, which was the perfect thing for us and a really great thing for Uber.”

Darden's CEO frames the Uber Direct delivery arrangement as a mutually beneficial deal structure while the company evaluates whether to expand delivery marketplace participation to more brands.

“At the end of the quarter, Olive Garden launched a campaign to promote delivery across multiple channels, including television advertising, with a compelling and memorable offer, 1 million free deliveries, partially funded by Uber.”

Darden's Olive Garden ran a co-funded marketing campaign with Uber (1 million free deliveries) to drive Uber Direct delivery adoption, part of a broader rollout across Olive Garden and Cheddar's.

“just this week we began to pilot at Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen. The Cheddar's team is currently testing it in 10 locations with a plan to deploy it more broadly across their system.”

Darden is expanding its Uber Direct delivery partnership beyond Olive Garden into a second brand (Cheddar's), signaling growing scope of the relationship.

“Our partnership with Uber Direct strengthens Olive Garden's ability to value their guest time by bringing their favorite dishes directly to their doorstep using Olive Garden's online ordering platform and leveraging Uber's delivery network.”

Darden's Olive Garden brand completed its Uber Direct delivery rollout, framing Uber as its delivery-network partner with a growing, positive-margin order channel.

“the IT team and the Uber team did a great job integrating our proprietary point-of-sale into their systems. And actually, Uber had to make some changes to their systems to work the way we wanted it to work.”

Darden credits Uber's engineering team with adapting its systems to integrate with Darden's proprietary point-of-sale, signaling Uber Direct's willingness to customize for large enterprise restaurant partners.

“In October, Olive Garden launched its Uber Direct pilot in approximately 100 restaurants. They are not promoting it yet in order to focus on the technology integration and operational execution. The pilot has gone very well thanks to the operators in the pilot restaurants, the Olive Garden Operations Excellence Team, and the Darden IT Team. Olive Garden is on track to begin rolling it out to the rest of the system after the holidays, with potential completion by the end of the third quarter.”

Darden is piloting Uber Direct delivery integration at Olive Garden with a full-system rollout targeted by the end of fiscal Q3 2025, a read-through for Uber's delivery business landing another major casual dining chain.