To Salt or Not to Salt, That Is the Question

ATTORNEY: H. ADAM PRUSSIN
POMERANTZ MONITOR, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2014

Starboard Value LP, a hedge fund, is trying to take over Darden Restaurants, the parent company of Olive Garden restaurants. Recently it made history, of a sort, when it sent out a 300 page proxy statement asking shareholders to vote for its 12 nominees to the Darden board. Its solicitation was a soup to nuts critique of everything it believes is wrong with Olive Garden and its recipe for fixing it all. What makes it noteworthy is its scathing attack on the restaurants themselves. Most notable: it expresses outrage that Olive Garden does not add salt to the water it uses for cooking its pasta, a practice it believes to be universal everywhere else. Starboard characterized this non-salting as an “appalling decision [that] shows just how little regard management has for delivering a quality experience to guests.” This generated a lot of buzz from casual observers who could care less about Starboard’s takeover efforts. Most people apparently agree that failing to salt the water is a serious faux pas.

Not content with pouring salt on this open wound, Starboard also criticized Olive Garden for oversupplying guests with unlimited breadsticks and salad. While not saying much about the salting issue, Darden did vigorous¬ly debate the issue of the endless breadsticks. Starboard had contended that Olive Garden was wasting millions of dollars by delivering more breadsticks to each table than customers normally eat, though it has said it doesn’t want to get rid of unlimited breadsticks. Darden’s rejoinder: its breadstick generosity “an icon of brand equity since 1982″ and claims that it “conveys Italian generosity.” 

Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis, the two leading proxy advisory firms, have both rec-ommended that their institutional clients vote in favor of all 12 Starboard nominees. The vote is next month. 

We’ve been to Olive Garden. Salt and breadsticks are the least of their problems.