Is It Worth Downloading The Official Olive Garden App?

Virtually everything has an app nowadays, including — if not especially — restaurant and café chains. Some of them are bound to be just another tile taking up space on your home screen, but some can genuinely make your visit quicker and better by offering options like advance ordering and the ability to save dietary restrictions, preferences, and favorite menu items for easy reordering. Even sit-down restaurants like Olive Garden are among them now, and if you're a regular diner, you've likely wondered if you ought to be using the app, too.

As with most food-related things, it largely comes down to a matter of preference. If you're a frequent Olive Garden customer and you like having the ability to order digitally, the app has some features that could help make your mealtimes a little bit smoother. You can use the app to order food for pickup, or to see what wait times are like at the Olive Garden locations nearest you and even put yourself on the waitlist for a table before you even arrive. 

If what you're primarily looking for, though, is a rewards program, you're out of luck. Olive Garden doesn't have a rewards program for frequent diners or big spenders. At present, there are no special discounts or promotions offered through the app, so don't get your hopes up for free fettuccine.

The app mainly lets you do two things: place an order for pick-up, or join the waitlist for a table. It's true that the Olive Garden website also offers these features, but the app version is a little easier to use while on the go.

The app includes a map that helps you find the closest Olive Garden locations in your area with results displaying the current estimated wait time for a table. Once you've selected a restaurant, the home screen options will read "order now," which will take you to the full menu so you can build an order for pickup, and "join waitlist," where you can select your party size to put your name down for a table before you get there. It also shows you the estimated wait until your party is seated.

Some other notable features of the app include the ability to designate who each dish is for, which can be useful when people in your group order similar dishes, especially if anyone has dietary preferences or serious allergies. You can even order catering-sized dishes for pick-up, in case you've got a lot of people to feed.

There are a couple of other minor but notable features in the app, including access to nutritional info for each dish and, conveniently for job-seekers, a link to "apply now" for open career opportunities at each location.

But since the app doesn't really offer any ways to save money on your order, coupon collectors can skip this one. There is a link to join the eClub, a newsletter that offers certain promotions, but tapping the link takes you out of the app to do so. Likewise, if you only visit Olive Garden once in a blue moon, the app will mostly just collect digital dust on your phone.

If you visit or order takeout from Olive Garden regularly, however, you might appreciate the convenience of being able to save favorite locations and quickly reorder past tickets in just a tap. And being able to see the wait time for a table on your phone sure beats waiting for one of those clunky pagers from olden, pre-smartphone, days to start violently buzzing and beeping.