Olive Garden's Never Ending Pasta Pass has been one of the most surprising promotions of the past half-decade. First launched in 2014, the card that allows its owner to down as much pasta as they want at any of the Italian chain's locations for a designated period of time has continued to grow in scope over the past five years — and has continued to sell out almost immediately. Last year, that meant 23,000 eight-week passes and 1,000 yearlong passes, gone in under a second. These are numbers that put your favorite band's concerts to shame.
So what does Olive Garden have in store for 2019? Here's what we know… and what we don't know.
This year, Olive Garden will once again be selling 24,000 Never Ending Pasta Passes, and they are set to go on sale on August 15 at precisely 2 p.m. ET by following the link olivegarden.com/pastapass. (Synchronize your watches, people! Or maybe just check that your phone isn't broken, I guess.)
Speaking of following that link, if you go there now, you'll find an oblique five-verse poem promising that, this year, "There's something new; A mystery awaits." It alludes to, as an Olive Garden spokesperson told me, the chain has "some bigger news up our sleeves for August 15 as well." Furthermore, if you head to Olive Garden's social media accounts — Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter — the brand currently has a bunch of images of an office (in the case of Facebook, an interactive one) that purportedly features clues hinting at what that second big announcement will be.
I'm going to leave the guessing to you guys (because why steal your fun, right?!) However, I will mention that, as I said up top, the scope of the program has grown every year, and this year, Olive Garden is planning on giving out the same number of passes as last year. That would seem to imply that something about those passes will be bigger than before.
Personally, though I see absolutely no evidence in the clues that this is the case, I say they should add chicken parms to the pass. That would be huge.
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