Olive Garden Customers In New York State Need To Check Their Receipts

Olive Garden customers in New York State definitely need to check their receipts while dining at the restaurant. Olive Garden has upset its customers with its latest move.

About Olive Garden

Olive Garden is a subsidiary of Darden Restaurants, Inc., which is headquartered in Orange County, Florida. The restaurant chain was founded almost 41 years ago on December 13, 1982.

The Olive Garden started as a unit of General Mills. By 1989, there were 145 The Olive Garden restaurants, making it the fastest-growing units in the General Mills restaurant division. The company eventually became the largest chain of Italian-themed full-service restaurants in the United States.

As of February 13, 2022, the company had more than 900 restaurants worldwide.

Olive Garden Customers Are Upset With New Surcharge

New York patrons of the restaurant should check their receipts before leaving the restaurant. The chain has added automatic gratuity to customers' checks. While previously expected for larger groups, the restaurant is doing it now for smaller groups, even solo customers. Miranda Jackson from Auburn, Alabama told the New York Post that while dining at the Olive Garden at Five Acres in Rockefeller Center the restaurant added gratuity automatically to her family's bill,

It’s presumptuous. Our service was not very good. It’s almost like it doesn’t incentivize them to have good service. Our food came out at separate times. We waited forever.

Automatic gratuity is commonplace in many big cities, but many customers choose to avoid going to restaurants with automatic tips because service often declines. I've been to a couple of restaurants with auto tipping - one had phenomenal service, the other, not so much. Restaurants risk losing customers by making the decision on tipping for them. These are the same businesses that were begging people to patronize them during the pandemic. That's why I only dine out on special occasionally, the entitlement of many restaurants has become out of control (while service continues to get worse and worse).

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