Darden Restaurants (DRI) FY2026 results: revenue $13.2 billion, up 9.4% on the year

Darden is a full-service restaurant company, meaning table service rather than counter service, and it owns and runs most of its restaurants itself. At 31 May 2026 it owned and operated 2,202 restaurants in the United States across eleven brands: Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, Yard House, Ruth's Chris Steak House, Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen, The Capital Grille, Chuy's, Seasons 52, Eddie V's Prime Seafood, Bahama Breeze and The Capital Burger. Another 167 were run by independent operators under area development and franchise agreements, four under contractual agreements and one jointly owned but independently operated. The financial year ends on 31 May. What the company earns comes mainly from food and beverage sales; alcohol was 10.0 percent of sales in fiscal 2026. No customer group matters as a source of sales, and almost all the restaurants and assets are in the United States.

The four segments

Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse each report on their own. Fine Dining holds Ruth's Chris, The Capital Grille and Eddie V's. Other Business holds Yard House, Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen, Chuy's, Seasons 52, Bahama Breeze and The Capital Burger, plus the royalties and fees from franchisees and contractually managed locations. The grouping is by size, economics and which part of full-service dining a brand sits in.

Olive Garden and LongHorn

Olive Garden is the company's own creation and the largest full-service Italian restaurant operator in the United States, opened first in Orlando, Florida in 1982. It now runs 949 restaurants. Most dinner main courses are priced from $12.50 to $24.00 and lunch from $10.00 to $12.00, each including as much salad or soup and breadsticks as a guest wants, and the average check per person in fiscal 2026 was about $25.00, with alcohol 4.1 percent of the brand's sales. LongHorn Steakhouse, 618 restaurants concentrated in the eastern United States, opened its first in 1981 and came to Darden in the October 2007 purchase of RARE Hospitality International. Its menu runs to steaks, chicken, salmon, shrimp, ribs, pork chops and burgers, dinner mains from $14.00 to $42.00, average check about $28.50, alcohol 8.1 percent of its sales.

Fine dining

Ruth's Chris, bought in June 2023 and first opened in 1965, sells USDA Prime and Choice grade steaks served sizzling alongside dishes drawn from its New Orleans origins, with 83 restaurants. Dinner mains run from $40.00 to $92.00 and the average check per person was about $104.00 in fiscal 2026, with alcohol 18.7 percent of the brand's sales. The Capital Grille, 74 restaurants, opened first in 1990 and sits in large American cities. Eddie V's Prime Seafood has 31.

The rest

Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen, 184 restaurants, is mainly in Texas and across the southern, mid-western and mid-Atlantic states, cooking American classics from scratch, dinner mains $10.00 to $24.00 and an average check of about $19.50. Chuy's has 110 restaurants, Yard House 93, Seasons 52 44, Bahama Breeze 13 and The Capital Burger 3.

How a restaurant is run

Each restaurant is led by a general manager or a managing partner depending on the brand, with three to ten further managers according to how complex and how busy it is, and typically 35 to 200 hourly team members, most of them part-time. Those leaders report to a director of operations covering roughly three to eleven restaurants, and above that sit divisional vice presidents or senior directors. The company issues detailed operations manuals and food and beverage manuals setting out how each recipe is prepared.

Supply and growth

Food and supplies are delivered under long-term agreements with several national distribution companies, but the inventory itself stays in Darden's ownership through Darden Direct Distribution, with the outside partners managing the distribution. Because perishable food turns over quickly, the stock held in restaurants is small against sales. Forty-three net new restaurants were added in the United States during fiscal 2026. Since 1995 the company has held a Tip Rate Alternative Commitment agreement with the Internal Revenue Service, which puts education and reporting obligations on each restaurant so that staff cash tips are declared.

From Darden's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 31 May 2026. The filing

Written from the 10-K filed 24 July 2026: read the full 10-K.