Darden Restaurants is looking to open more Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse restaurants.
CFO Rajesh Vennam said during Darden’s fourth-quarter earnings call that the parent company is “probably going to have 40 to 45 openings” between the two chains “next year.”
Darden operated over 930 Olive Garden locations as of late May, when its fiscal 2025 year ended. Meanwhile, the restaurant count of company-owned LongHorn Steakhouses stood at over 590.
Ruth’s Chris, Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen, Yard House, The Capital Grille, Chuy’s, Seasons 52 and Eddie V’s are among the other chains currently within Darden’s portfolio of brands.
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“Yard House might be in the mid-single digits, and then you have all the other brands contributing probably another 15 or so,” Vennam went on to say. “But as we look into the future, we expect the other brands to become a bigger part of the mix.”
The CFO told analysts and investors that Darden believes there was still “huge opportunity” for LongHorn to open 25 to 30 locations a year and Olive Garden to be “in the 20-ish range for the foreseeable future.”
“But then we’re also, as I said, the other brands will start to contribute even more” to Darden’s brand mix “as we move into the next few years,” he said.
His comments came in response to an analyst question about the 60-65 total new restaurants that Darden forecasted it would launch in fiscal 2026 and when unit growth was expected to increase.
“We’re actually building the pipeline,” Vennam said. “We expect to be in the 3-plus [percent] range over the next five years.”
Darden has over 2,100 company-owned restaurants across all its brands at the end of fiscal 2025.
Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse have been around since the early 1980s, with Darden acquiring the latter brand in 2007. LongHorn Steakhouse ranked No. 2 for customer satisfaction among full-serve chains in the American Customer Satisfaction Index Restaurant and Food Delivery Study released earlier this month, while the Italian-themed chain was close behind it with a score of 81.
Olive Garden had $5.2 billion in sales for fiscal 2025, marking a 2.8% increase from the prior year. Longhorn’s annual sales rose by 7.8% to $3.03 billion.
Overall, Darden generated nearly $12.08 billion in sales during fiscal 2025 with net earnings of $1.05 billion. For fiscal 2026, it forecast sales will grow 7-8%.
During the earnings call, the company also revealed it was looking at “strategic alternatives” for its 28-location Bahama Breeze chain.
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“We have made the difficult decision that these remaining locations and the Bahama Breeze brand are not a strategic priority for us. We also believe that this brand and these restaurants have the potential to benefit from a new owner,” CEO Ricardo Cardenas said. “Consequently, we will be considering strategic alternatives for Bahama Breeze, including a potential sale of the brand or converting restaurants to other Darden brands.”
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