Just call it pasta-lanthropy.
A Utah man has fed more than 120 people, several of them homeless, using Olive Garden's Never Ending Pasta Pass.
Telling his story on his website, Random Acts of Pasta, Matt Tribe says he was reading usatoday.com when he found Bruce Horovitz's article, "Olive Garden: $100 for 7 weeks of pasta."
The
story outlined the Italian restaurant chain's limited-edition offer,
allowed recipients to eat unlimited pasta dishes for seven weeks.
Tribe scored a pass, but unlike others, who attempted stunts and achieved Internet fame for solely eating Olive Garden pasta for the duration of the promotion, he decided to pay it forward.
Using
the loophole that take-out was included in the pass, Tribe began
knocking on people's doors to deliver them Olive Garden. According to
his website, the project evolved into approaching homeless people and
offering them dishes purchased with the pass.
He documents, along with several humorous anecdotes:
"A
few interesting things I learned from this experience: 1. Nobody is
ever home when you randomly stop by. Some people I tried 6 times and
they were never there. 2. Not one person was pissed that I brought them
free Olive Garden. 3. Homeless people vanish at night. 4. Always check
soup lids to make sure they're on tight or your back seat will hate
life."
However, Tribe has faced online backlash on Reddit, with a post claiming that it's an Olive Garden publicity stunt that's garnered more than 1,467 comments. An online blog post
title sums it up: "Is This 'Random Acts Of Pasta' A Viral Marketing
Ploy by Olive Garden, Or Just a Nice Thing Someone Did (And We're Too
Cynical to Know It)?"
Ultimately, Olive Garden said that it had nothing to do with the website
or video, responding directly to those who made the claims.

COMMENTS