Data Analytics on America’s Beloved Restaurant: The Olive Garden

The ‘Why’ Behind the Data

With over 800 locations scattered across the United States, chances are that you or a loved one have wined and dined at an The Olive Garden at least a time or two…or twenty. Endless breadsticks…need I say more? Because of its sweeping popularity, it’s no surprise that The Olive Garden has logged nearly 41,000 customer reviews on Yelp over the years. If there’s one thing we know about Americans, it’s that to them, food is a spiritual experience that is often shared, and always taken seriously.

For major restaurant chain companies such as Darden, consolidating these findings to extract meaningful insights provides a handle on how customers perceive their experience on a typical night out. Signals will ingest this data to uncover areas of strengths and weaknesses — what’s working and what isn’t, and lead inquiring minds into how shedding light on these insights can strengthen business strategy going forward in terms of service, advertising, and marketing angles. I ran the Yelp data using one of Signals’ data connectors and here are my findings:

Two words: Endless Breadsticks

The Category Overview analysis highlights that the single most talked about menu item from OG’s conception up until this moment are the famous, never-ending breadsticks. Olive Garden has had huge success with this table offering and from the looks of the analysis, they shouldn’t change it anytime soon. As the saying goes, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. So, Darden, from one appreciative customer to all of you back at headquarters: bless your soul!

Honing in on 2014–2016

A look at the temporal trend indicates a rising amount of posted reviews up until 2014, where there seemed to be a subsequent drop off in posts. It could just be that customers have taken a break from their computers for the last couple years, but the likelier reasoning is that there is something to account for the wax and wane of the temporal view below, specifically after 2014.

Darden might consider asking some industry specific questions to get to the bottom of the ‘why’ behind the data:

• Were there any new, potentially ill-received menu modifications?
• Any mass organizational changes or shifts?
• Changes made to favorite recipes?
• A mass amount of new hires in a relatively short period of time?
• A cut in training resources?
• Unexpected price increases?
• Nothing news worthy enough to log on to comment on?

The Negative Geo Hotspot (shown below in orange) depicts where the negative comments originated in the US between 2014–2016: the phenomenon we want to learn more about.

For additional comparison, the all-inclusive (green), positive (blue), and neutral (gray) views are included above.

Knowing where the negative encounters originated is beneficial in uncovering trends — whether they can all be pinpointed to a single, particular location, or if the occurrences are more widespread. The result of the analysis indicate that the general rust belt region had the most instances. Let’s dive deeper into the data during this time period to see the negative things people are saying:

A substantial portion of the negative feedback results within 2014–2016 mentioned customer service in the form of eye rolls and minimal attention paid from staff, long wait times for seating and receiving the bill, and unpleasant encounters when speaking with a manager. Having worked in customer service myself, I can empathize with the challenges of difficult customers, and for that reason, I hesitate to point fingers at Olive Garden’s service too quickly. Keeping this in mind, I ask the reader to do the same. However, unsettling phrases like eye roll mentioned enough times to be detected by the Buzzword analysis above are red flags.

The Sentiment Distribution shown below illuminates the fact, that even during this time of declining reviews, the overall rating registers as positive, with over twice as many positive reviews than there are negative.

Determining to what extent it is worth it to remedy the situation, through a possible mass message or even a required reminder session on service industry etiquette, for example, is entirely and solely up to Darden. Only they can know what is or isn’t feasible, relative to everything else competing for top priority attention. The analysis of Signals is intended to uncover trends from unfiltered customer data, but it remains up to the user what is done with the insightful results.

Maybe customers aren’t dissatisfied with Olive Garden per se, but are spending more time down the road at one of Darden’s other hit restaurants: LongHorn Steakhouse. Curious about how they compare? Running a competitive analysis on these two hit restaurants through Signals is quick and simple. Contact clientsupport@stratifyd.com if you’d like to take a closer look at this data set or to request a trial account with which to compare data of your own.