Olive Garden Has Served Alcohol To Children Not Once, But Twice

In the restaurant industry, even in big chain restaurants, mistakes happen all the time. Maybe an order comes out wrong, or maybe the restaurant charges a customer for an item they didn't receive, or maybe a server just forgets to put in an order altogether. One time, Michelin gave a star to the wrong restaurant. There are a lot of people involved in the process of owning and operating restaurants, and mistakes happen, and that's fair.

Sometimes, though, these mistakes are way worse than a simple case of forgetting to put in an order of fries. There was the time Cracker Barrel served a man a glass of cleaning liquid (they ultimately had to pay him $9 million). Or the time McDonald's served coffee so hot it gave a sweet old lady third-degree burns (a story you might have all wrong, thinking it was actually her own fault).

Then there was the time Olive Garden served a literal child alcohol. Or the other time Olive Garden served a literal child alcohol. Yeah, that's right: This has happened twice now, and both occurred in a two-year span.

You might be tempted to think this is a case where some 17-year-old kid snuck a fake ID past the company, but no, it very much is not. In both of these cases, the company served an actual, literal child an alcoholic beverage they very obviously did not order. It wasn't great either time.

The first case happened in March of 2011, when 2-year-old Nikolai VanHeest was served sangria instead of orange juice at an Orlando, Florida, location. Obviously, it's bad for a small child to drink sangria. His eyes "got all big and dilated" and he started climbing all over the place (per CBS News), but ultimately, he suffered no permanent damage after drinking sangria out of a sippy cup.

The second incident occurred in Indianapolis, Indiana, roughly a year later, in April of 2012. This time, an unnamed 10-year-old boy who ordered a wildberry smoothie was somehow given a rum cocktail, despite the fact no one at the table had ordered any alcohol. He drank half of it, started acting weird (no surprise there), and was ultimately taken to the hospital. Much like the earlier incident, he was ultimately fine.

Fun fact: This has actually happened at several chain restaurants across the country before, and for some reason most notable incidents appear to have occurred in that same 2011-12 era, which makes one wonder what was going on during that time frame. In Chicago, a 4-year-old was given a mudslide instead of a chocolate shake. In Michigan, a 15-month-old was served a margarita instead of apple juice. And in Ohio, two teenagers and a 4-year-old were served a drink with peach schnapps and vodka that the server explicitly told them was non-alcoholic. 

Interestingly, though, Olive Garden is the only major chain where it seems to have happened twice, as most other companies seem to have taken strong measures to ensure it never happened again after the first incident.

Children drinking alcohol by mistake is bad — nobody wants that to happen. And since there haven't been nearly as many reports of it happening since that weird 2011-12 corridor, maybe places have gotten a lot better about it since. It's still worth remembering when it happened a lot, though.