Never ending Olive Garden Pasta Pass
The long discussed Olive Garden Pasta Pass: some wondered how people could eat that much pasta, some wondered if they could resell it for a profit and some just wanted to flat out enjoy it. If you haven’t heard about Olive Garden’s magical Pasta Pass, it entitled the user to eat as much pasta as they wanted for a seven week period.
However, one man decided that his all-you-can-eat Pasta Pass could actually do more than satisfy his craving for Olive Garden’s culinary delights. Matt Tribe used his Pasta Pass as an experiment in random acts of kindness. Rather than indulge his taste buds in a seven-week eat-a-thon, he used his $100 pass as a spring board for his own website randomactsofpasta.com.
You may ask how Tribe shared this pass with others; the answer is he didn’t share the pass, technically. After checking with Olive Garden to ensure there was no restriction regarding the ordering of pasta to-go, Tribe set out to provide meals to more than 100 people.
He simply ordered, picked it up, and was ready to deliver to friends and strangers alike. This allowed him to share the love, without lending out his Pass, which probably would have violated Olive Garden’s terms and restrictions. Tribe wound up bringing 125 meals to random individuals, as well as friends and family, from eleven different Olive Garden restaurants. He also consumed fourteen meals himself.
Which fills you up more – kindness or pasta?
When asked about the experience, he stated, “it was super fulfilling because the entire time I was doing this for a month, just about every night, the only thing I was thinking about was who I could take Olive Garden to, who could I do Random Acts of Pasta to, who could I do something nice for.” And at the height of his giving frenzy, Tribe wound up going to five different Olive Gardens in a single day!
What can we learn from this? While some people will always look for a loophole in a discount, some people play by the rules, enjoy themselves, and manage to bring this same joy and kindheartedness to a host of other people. Well played, Matt Tribe. Well played indeed.
Jennifer Walpole is a Senior Staff Writer at The American Genius and holds a Master's degree in English from the University of Oklahoma. She is a science fiction fanatic and enjoys writing way more than she should. She dreams of being a screenwriter and seeing her work on the big screen in Hollywood one day.