ORLANDO, Fla.—The federal government believes that the Olive Garden restaurant chain is a front for the mob and says that it has never-ending evidence to prove it.
After a decade-long investigation, dubbed “Operation Grissini,” involving multiple agencies and countless wiretaps, federal prosecutors in Florida have filed an indictment alleging that the restaurant chain has never turned—and could never turn—a profit and is primarily being used as a money-laundering operation. They claim that the unlimited breadsticks, Never Ending Pasta Pass, and recently introduced Lifetime Pasta Pass are impossible to make money off, thus proving that Olive Garden exists only as a shell company through which the mob launders its illicit profits.
Shelly Corso, a retail food and beverage analyst in New York, says that she always thought the chain’s promotions were merely loss leaders and that its profits came from its beverages, like the Bellini peach-raspberry iced tea, and desserts, like the warm Italian donuts. She says she figured that the demand for the promotional items was probably very low given the less-than-Michelin-star quality of most of Olive Garden’s food, though she notes her colleague discovered that the Create Your Own Pasta option allowed an adventurous diner to create a creamy mushroom five-cheese marinara meat sauce that would shock some food critics with its audacious, if not authentic, texture.
Sources, who preferred to remain anonymous because they still hold Lifetime Pasta Passes, say that for years federal agents often went undercover to dine at Olive Garden locations around the country. Several agents even purchased the promotional passes, keeping the cost of Operation Grissini very low for the government. Except for a single takeout order of a family-style chicken parmigiana, placed by a mafia boss during the holidays in 2018 (when his home’s kitchen was being renovated due to a suspicious fire), agents never documented any mobster or even mob associate patronizing the restaurant during the entire 10 years of the federal operation. That is largely why the government believes this to be the most successful front in mafia history—and why it’s taken so long to bust.
Olive Garden’s corporate office declined comment. A mob representative balked at the suggestion their organization had anything to do with the restaurant chain and observed that if they did, the corporation would be highly profitable. He noted that because the pasta passes are non-transferrable, if the holder were to, say, “disappear” shortly after purchase, the revenue would be pure profit for the company. Just before going to press, this reporter found a Lifetime Pasta Pass in his mail, along with a note that read, humbly, “We know it’s an offer you can refuse—but don’t be afraid to try the Alfredo on us.”
