Olive Garden Trying Breadstick Sandwiches

(RTTNews) - Olive Garden, an Italian cuisine restaurant popular for its unlimited bread sticks, now plans to serve chicken parmigiana and meatball sandwiches using those sticks.

The restaurant will start serving the new item starting June 1. The bread-sticks used for the sandwiches will be a bit shorter and wider than the regular bread-sticks, and as with all other dishes, the sandwiches will come with unlimited bread-sticks.

The news was disclosed by activist investor Jeffrey Smith of investment firm Starboard Value. "We are going to use that great brand equity and we're about to come out with breadstick sandwiches," Smith said in an interview on the "Wall Street Week" show. "We're going with it. We'll have chicken parm on breadsticks."

Starboard Value had fought to replace the board of Olive Garden's parent company Darden Restaurants Inc. (DRI) last year after acquiring a nine percent stake. The company had released a 300-slide presentation showing improvements required to turn around the company. Starboard was successful in changing the company's board and CEO. Starboard Value was also critical about the unlimited amount of bread-sticks served by Olive Garden.

"It wasn't about getting rid of the breadsticks," Smith said on Wall Street Week. "It was about reinstating discipline."

For the third quarter, Olive Garden's total sales grew by 3.0 percent to $957 million, and improved its operating profit and profit as a percentage of sales.

DRI is currently trading at $64.48, up $0.52 or 0.81%, on the NYSE.