Why Olive Garden Was Once Accused Of Pouring Boxed Wine Into Empty Bottles

Most people who eat at Olive Garden expect a certain level of quality. Sure, the chain is often criticized for being a fairly generic and inauthentic version of Italian food. But, if you want large portions, reasonable prices, and a restaurant that offers its own house wine, you could do a lot worse.

That wine seems to have gotten Olive Garden into trouble, though — at least potential trouble. A TikToker going under the handle Witchdoct0r777 posted a video, which went viral, zooming in on the bar at their local Olive Garden restaurant. On the bar sat a couple of boxes of wine, and a few feet away from them, empty wine bottles.

"So, I noticed when we were at Olive Garden, they poured our wine from the bottle," said the post, "but then we saw the boxes, and then they were keeping the empty bottles, so obviously they're filling the bottles with the boxes!"

However, nowhere in the video does Witchdoct0r777 show any of the staff actually pouring the boxed wine into bottles. Nor does the poster even say that they saw it happen themselves. While Olive Garden didn't issue an official response, other folks, including those who claim to currently work at the restaurant chain, did.

Granted, boxed wine's reputation for being vastly inferior isn't entirely fair, as our own taste test here at the Daily Meal revealed. Still, if boxed wine was indeed being passed off as from the bottle, that would constitute a pretty shady deception. Olive Garden employees, however, were quick to dismiss the TikTok conspiracy.

"As someone who works at an Olive Garden, the box wine is for sangrias," replied one commenter, "just because you see them in the same room doesn't mean they are connected." Other comments, also claiming to be from Olive Garden employees, chimed in to back this claim up, saying that the white boxed wine was used for green apple and watermelon varieties and the red for berry-flavored sangria. This would make sense. Though sangria requires wine, the flavor of it is usually overtaken by the fruit mixed into it, meaning its quality is less of a concern. In fact, some sangria recipes explicitly urge people to use boxed wine.

Other commenters on TikTok offered other, similarly non-nefarious explanations for the proximity of the bottles and boxes, including that managers were trying to keep tabs on how much bottled wine was sold and drunk during the shift.

This wouldn't be the first time Olive Garden has been accused of using inferior products and passing them off as high quality. In 2021, a supposedly former Olive Garden employee who claims to have worked at the chain for 10 years alleged, again on TikTok, that the restaurant used a canned mystery chicken in its chicken dishes. They also threw out other disturbing accusations, including some that violated basic sanitary and health codes. However, Olive Garden corporate was quick to deny those rumors.

There have also been speculations about the freshness of the alfredo sauce, which is made daily, and even the kinds of cheese the chain uses. Generally, Olive Garden seems to be fending off these types of claims on a fairly regular basis, though alleging that the chain is selling boxed wine as bottled is on a different level.

After all, Olive Garden is known for touting the quality of its wines in particular. Its website touts the fact that it won an award from the Monterey Wine Festival for "America's Best Casual Dining Wine List." To, in essence, accuse the restaurant chain of wine fraud is to truly hit them where it hurts.