Olive Garden unleashes unlimited pasta for $100
Posted: Sep 8, 2014 6:31 PM CDT | Updated: Nov 5, 2014 3:38 PM CDT
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- One thousand Olive Garden fans got a ticket to seven weeks in heaven on Monday.
Olive Garden offered that many $100, all-you-can-eat pasta deals on the restaurant chain's website at 3 p.m. ET. The passes, which run from Sept. 22 to Nov. 9, sold out quickly.
At 4:15 p.m., the chain posted to its Twitter and Facebook pages that it ran out of the deals and hinted that more might be on the way.
Any customer who bought the \"Never Ending Pasta Pass\" will have unrestricted access to pasta with toppings like chicken and shrimp fritta, and can wash it down with an infinite supply of Coca-Cola soft drinks.
The special offer is an advanced version of the Never Ending Pasta Bowl, an annual, limited-time, all-you-can-eat pasta deal for $10. Customers consumed 13 million bowls of pasta during last year's promo, according to the company.
Olive Garden, which is owned by Darden Restaurants, has more than 800 restaurants and employs 96,000 people, with annual sales of $3.6 billion.
Orlando-based Darden owns 1,500 restaurants under brand names such as Longhorn Steakhouse and Bahama Breeze, totaling 150,000 employees and $6.3 billion in annual sales.