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Darden Restaurants Inc. dated back to 1938 when a 19-year-old Bill Darden opened the Green Frog—a
25-seat luncheonette in Waycross, Georgia, that promised service with a hop. The company began expanding
in 1968, when Darden opened the first Red Lobster in Lakeland, Florida, a restaurant that grew to become
the largest full-service seafood dining company in the world, serving more than 3 million customers a week.
The Orlando, Florida-based Darden Restaurants Inc.1
was acquired by General Mills in 1970, and, in 1995,
became a separate publicly held company when General Mills distributed all its outstanding Darden stock to
General Mills’ stockholders. Darden Restaurants Inc. continued to expand throughout the years to other food
and dining experience categories, becoming the largest full-service restaurant company in the world, while
holding true to the values of its founder.
By 2013, Darden had grown to eight brands and more than 2,100 restaurants, employed more than
200,000 workers, and served over 400 million meals a year. The company had a lengthy track record of
creating and growing enduring brands, differentiating itself by understanding its diners and delivering a
restaurant experience that was much more than fresh, delicious food.2
Company leaders believed they were able to do this through operational excellence and economies
of scale and scope in the areas of brand-management, restaurant operations, supply chain, and talent
management. (See Appendix A for a company timeline. See Appendix B for a five-year financial history for
Darden Restaurants Inc.)
Darden had grown from a $4.7 billion a year company to $8.6 billion a year in the nine years Madsen
had been president, from 2004 to 2013. Earnings more than doubled, rising from $1.43 a share to $3.14 a
share, and the company’s same-restaurant sales, a key measurement of restaurant health, beat the industry
eight of those years — all except 2012. (See Appendix C for quarterly same-restaurant traffic. See Appendix
D for cumulative same-restaurant traffic. See Appendix E for the Darden brand logos.)
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