The Olive Garden's first restaurant was opened on December 13, 1982, in Orlando, Florida, by co-founders Blaine Sweatt, Mark Given, Gino DeSantis and Dave Manuchia.

The Olive Garden restaurants were uniformly popular, and the chain's per-store sales soon matched former sister company Red Lobster.

In 2009, Olive Garden was Darden's most inexpensive restaurant chain with an average check per person of $15.00 (USD) versus over $90 at its sibling Capital Grille.

[7] Sandra Pedicini of the Orlando Sentinel said that "Darden reinvented the Olive Garden in the 1990s, from a floundering chain into an industry star".

[7] As part of a February 2011, Darden analyst conference, the parent group announced it intended to add more than 200 Olive Garden locations in the following few years.

The company also announced it would begin licensing franchising partnerships, a new direction for the chain and its parent, which had traditionally relied on expansion via company-owned locations exclusively.

[12] In October 2012, Olive Garden became one of the first national restaurant chains to test converting most of its staff to part-time, aiming to limit the cost of paying for health care benefits for full-time employees.

[13] In August 2019, Darden responded to false claims that Olive Garden was financing Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign, stating: "We don’t know where this information came from, but it is incorrect.

Olive Garden does send a number of managers, trainers, and cooks to Tuscany each year, but they stay in a rented hotel and spend only a few hours at a time at a local restaurant in its off-season.

[19][20][21][22] Newer restaurants are styled after a farmhouse in the town of Castellina in Chianti, Tuscany, on the grounds of the Rocca delle Macie winery.

[citation needed] The farmhouse is home to the Riserva di Fizzano restaurant adjoining the company's Culinary Institute of Tuscany which was founded in 1999.

Additionally, the company advertises that its soups and sauces are made fresh in each location daily, instead of importing them from a commissary or outside vendor.

[32] It cited details such as the unlimited breadsticks the chain offered diners, of which too many went to waste since they tended to go stale, Smith claimed, and paying extra for custom-length straws.