Rick Cardenas
President & Chief Executive Officer at Darden Restaurants
Thank you, Kevin, good morning and happy holidays everyone. I am pleased with our results this quarter. All of our brands performed at a high-level by remaining focused on our back-to-basics operating philosophy anchored in food, service and atmosphere. At the Darden level, we continue to strengthen and leverage our four competitive advantages of significant scale, extensive data and insights, rigorous strategic planning and our results-oriented culture. Being brilliant with the basics, starts with achieving and maintaining appropriate staffing levels in our restaurants. Across our brands, our teams are doing a great job of ensuring we are ready to run 14 great shifts a week. At each of our brands, we are fully staffed at team member level and manager staffing is at historic highs.
As a result, our teams are executing more consistently, which in-turn is driving strong guest satisfaction across our brands according to both internal and external sources. During the quarter, four of our brands achieved all-time high internal guest satisfaction ratings and the others remain near all-time highs. Also within Technomic industry tracking tool, the Darden brand was ranked number one among major casual dining brands in each measurement category. I am particularly proud of Olive Garden's performance. During the quarter, they brought back their most popular limited time offer, Never Ending Pasta Bowl. As you may recall, when I talked last as I shared that any promotional activity, our brands introduced should be evaluated with the following three filters.
First, it needs to elevate brand equity by bringing the brands competitive advantages to life. Second, it should be simple to execute. We will not jeopardize all the work we've done to simplify operations, which allows our teams to consistently deliver an exceptional guest experiences. And third, it will not be at a deep discount. We are focused on providing great value to our guests but doing that in a way that drives profitable sales growth. Three years after it was last offer the 2022 versions of Never Ending Pasta Bowl checked all three of these boxes.
First, it leveraged Olive Garden iconic brand equity by perfectly reinforcing their competitive advantage of never-ending abundant craveable Italian food. Next, It was amplified by only offering existing menu items with limited add-on choices, which made it easier to execute, resulting in great guest experiences. Finally, it was priced $3 higher than in 2019, which significantly improved the margin of this offer, while still providing tremendous value for our guests. Never Ending Pasta Bowl exceeded expectations and we saw a step-change in Olive Garden's positive gaps industry traffic during the seven weeks that we're in. I'm even more encouraged by this performance, given that it was supported with about three quarters of the media in past years.
Going-forward, the team will build-on their learnings and share insights across our brands, but this may be the only limited time offer we do at Olive Garden this fiscal year. Across our brands, we continue to drive strong execution of the off-premise guest experience through ongoing investments in technology that reduce friction for our guests, and our operators. For example, many of our guests still prefer to call them there to go order. However taking payment over the phone or when the guests arrives is both inefficient for our team and inconvenient for our guests. To help address this, we rolled-out online payment for call-in orders during the quarter. Enhancing convenience for our guests and making our to-go specialist more efficient.
Because sales remain sticky across our core casual dining brands accounting for 25% of total sales at Olive Garden, 14% at LongHorn and 13% at Cheddar's. Digital transactions accounted for 62% of all off-premise sales during the quarter and 10% of Darden's total sales. The holidays are the busiest time of the year for our restaurant team and they have enjoyed welcoming even more guests back into their restaurant to see them. In fact, The Capital Grille, Eddie V, and Seasons 52 enjoyed all-time daily sales records on Thanksgiving Day and bookings for this holiday season are encouraging.
The holidays are also a great reminder that being of service is at the heart of our business and we embrace a higher purpose to nourish and delight everyone we serve our guests, our team members and our communities. One of the ways we serve our communities is through our harvest program. One in eight households in our country live without consistent access to food. To help fight hunger our restaurants donate fresh unused food to local food banks and non-profits in their communities on a weekly basis throughout the year. Since the inception of this program, more than 131 million pounds of food have been donated which is the equivalent of more than 100 million meals.
The impact of our harvest program takes on it added significance during the holidays. And I am delighted that our teams are helping to make a difference in so many communities across the country. I'm so proud of the focus and commitment our teams continue to display. Their disciplined approach in executing on our strategy is what enables us to succeed regardless of the operating environment. This is evidenced by the fact that just last week, we surpassed $10 billion in sales on a trailing 52 week basis for the first time in Darden's history. On behalf of our senior leadership team and the Board of Directors, I want to thank our 180,000 team members for everything you do to serve our guests and our communities. I wish you all a wonderful holiday season.
Now I will turn it over to Raj.
