Olive Garden brought back its Pasta Pass online again for a second year. The passes, which entitle holders to eat an unlimited amount of pasta at the restaurant for a seven-week period, sold out in less than one second.
Last year, the Olive Garden national chain of Italian restaurants introduced a special new promotion called the Pasta Pass. The pass, which cost $100, entitled the holder to eat an unlimited amount of pasta at any of the chain's locations during a seven-week period. Diners who chose to do so could eat lunch and dinner every single day of the promotional period, including free refills of pasta, salad and Olive Garden's famous breadsticks.
The promotion was a huge success last year, with all the passes selling out within 45 minutes. Many buyers who scored multiple passes put them up for sale on websites like eBay and Craigslist for a premium over the $100 cost.
This year, Olive Garden repeated the promotion, but scoring multiple passes was not an option for most consumers, as the passes sold out in less than one second. According to the chain, their online "system allowed in the first 2,000 guests to purchase the available Pasta Passes, which occurred in less than a second." That included 1,000 individual passes, the same amount available last year, as well as 1,000 family passes, which, for $300, entitle up to four diners to eat the unlimited items.
While it may appear to some that a less than one second sellout indicates something shady was going on, that's not the case, according to Sam Cinquegrani, CEO of ObjectWave Corp., which builds retail e-commerce sites. "A second in computer time is actually pretty long," he said, "So selling out that quickly doesn't surprise me, it actually means their technology was up to task." Cinquegrani added that modern computer servers for e-commerce sites regularly process tens of thousands of transactions in a second.
The quick sellout left a lot of customers unhappy and complaining, however, so the chain quickly made three additional passes available to customers in a one-day social media promotion asking diners to tell their best "pasta jokes."
