Olive Garden Offering 21,000 Never Ending Pasta Passes

ORLANDO, FL — Tampa Bay area Olive Garden fans who just can’t get enough pasta may want to jot down Thursday, Sept. 15 on their calendars. That’s the day the restaurant chain intends to make 21,000 Never Ending Pasta Passes available to customers across the country.

Offered on a first-come, first-served basis, the passes enable holders to take advantage of “an all-access pass to enjoy seven weeks of Never Ending Pasta,” the restaurant chain explained in an email to media. The passes will be available for one hour only on the Olive Garden website for $100 each. The sale begins on Thursday at 2 p.m. Eastern with up to 21,000 passes available.

“Within seconds of last year’s Pasta Pass sale beginning, our most enthusiastic fans clicked ‘purchase,’ becoming part of an exclusive club and the envy of pasta lovers everywhere,” Jose Duenas, executive vice president of marketing for Olive Garden, said in a statement. “We know there are more fans than there were Pasta Passes so we’re expanding the club tenfold to give more guests an all-access pass to our most popular promotion of the year.”

Passes are good from Oct. 3 through Nov. 20. During that period of time, pass holders who visit Olive Garden will be given unlimited access to pasta, sauces, toppings, soup or salad, breadsticks and Coca-Cola soft drinks, the email said.

For guests who don’t manage to snag a pasta pass, the Never Ending Pasta Bowl deal provides unlimited pasta per visit at a starting price of $9.99 throughout the seven-week promotion.

In addition to the Pasta Passes being offered during the one-hour sale, Olive Garden plans to auction off extra passes on eBay. The company intends to donate 100 percent of the proceeds from the auction to Feeding America with a minimum donation of $21,000 guaranteed.

Olive Garden is part of Darden Restaurants, which is headquartered in Orlando. The company has more than 800 Olive Garden locations across the country, including several in the Tampa Bay area.

Photo courtesy of Olive Garden