Recipe for Success

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Orlando, Fla.—“When you’re here, you’re family” is the well-known slogan of Olive Garden, the Italian restaurant chain. And it turns out that this concept of providing a comfortable, collegial environment is also a key part of the culture of Olive Garden’s corporate parent, Darden Restaurants, a Fortune 500 firm that also owns the Red Lobster and Bahama Breeze brands.

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Photo by Michelle Litvin; courtesy Perkins + Will

Darden expects its new, $152 million HQ to help it recruit top talent and increase creativity and productivity.

Darden expects a 16% reduction in energy consumption at its LEED-Gold HQ

Sidebar:
A Green Diet

Sustainability has been part of the Darden culture for decades. As a major provider and harvester of seafood, the company helped draft the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Concluded in 1982, the treaty establishes guidelines for nations in their use of the world’s oceans and marine natural resources.

With the company’s sustainable heritage in mind, added to the fact that the headquarters is located on a 57-acre, park-like site directly adjacent to the headwaters of the Everglades, Darden was determined that its new home be a highly green one—and, indeed, it’s on target for a final certification of LEED Gold from the U.S. Green Building Council.

“We wanted to build a campus that reflects Darden’s commitment to sustainability,” says CEO Clarence Otis. “Our achievement of LEED Gold certification for the project underscores our commitment to real corporate responsibility in building design.”

The building’s green features include: a high-efficiency heating and air conditioning system that should provide a 16-percent reduction in energy consumption; increased use of daylighting, made possible by a 114,000-square-foot glass curtain-wall exterior; a highly reflective roof; and a reclaimed-water system that is expected to save 2 million gallons of water annually.

It was, in fact, one of the driving forces behind the corporation’s recently unveiled $152 million corporate headquarters here.

“We want our employees to feel great about not only the business, but also about their workplace environment,” says James Lawrence, senior vice president for supply management and purchase and the project director for the recent construction effort. “We think our new building hits the mark there.”

Before embarking on the project, Darden asked its employees what sort of features they wanted—and then executed a “cooked-to-order” headquarters, where employee-requested amenities abound: a dry-cleaning facility; banking center; fitness and wellness center (both staffed by a local hospital); a cafeteria that provides take-home family meals; a Starbucks; gift shop; and a half-mile walking path all add a liveliness to the new, 469,000-square-foot building.

These perks are meant to fulfill one of the key goals Darden had for its new space: “It helps us as we recruit top talent,” says Lawrence.

A second and perhaps even more important objective for its new HQ—or Restaurant Support Center, as Darden calls it—was bringing all of its people and brands together, for the first time, in a state-of-the-art facility, where the chefs, marketing leaders, and operational experts from one restaurant could share best practices with their colleagues. By bringing everyone together, Darden expects increased creativity, productivity and group energy.

“It’s all about sharing ideas and leveraging the strengths that we have as an organization,” says Lawrence.

The approximately 1,300 employees who now work in the headquarters had been separated from each other in 12 different older buildings on the company’s former Orlando campus—in buildings that company officials freely admit didn’t befit a world-class company.

With the new HQ, Clarence Otis, Darden’s chairman and CEO, was determined to change all that. “We wanted to design a campus that would provide a strong feeling of inclusion and create a more collaborative work environment that would help us deliver the excellent support our restaurants count on for continued success,” Otis tells HQ: Good Design Is Good Business.

The third key goal for the project: Transforming the way employees relate to and identify with the Darden brand. Traditionally, company workers had tended to think of themselves first as working for one of the company’s brands, says Manuel Cadrecha, an Atlanta-based design principal at the architecture firm of Perkins + Will. “So this project would be a vehicle for establishing and communicating a sense of Darden, which had been more of an ethereal notion.”

Recipe for Collaboration

Just three stories tall, the low profile of the design inherently encourages employees to walk wherever they go. This, in turn, fosters interactions between workers, who can stop along the overly broad stairwells that were designed precisely with such impromptu meetings in mind.

And if they don’t bump into each other on the stairwells, they might find themselves connecting over a snack in one of the several break areas sprinkled liberally throughout the building—indeed, seemingly wherever workers might find themselves, whether at the top of a main stairwell or in between adjoining departments.

More akin to a home’s well-appointed breakfast room than the typical corporate break area, these impromptu gathering spaces practically demand a quick stopover, turning a mundane walk into a potentially productive sharing of ideas.

“This space was designed for just that sort of spontaneous collaboration,” says Lawrence. “And the building is working like it was designed to work.”

Adds CEO Otis: “We’re very proud of the fact that we accomplished exactly what we set out to do. We were committed to ensuring our employees had input and involvement in shaping the development of this project. And today we see our employees utilizing the space to foster stronger working relationships.”

Down on Main Street

Nowhere is that collaborative intent more evident than along Main Street, the building’s main drag and central artery.

Located just inside the building’s entrance, its broad expanse buzzes with people constantly: employees and their friends and family coming or going from a meal in the 18,000-square-foot, open-air, 450-seat dining room; vendors meeting up with Darden managers; or chefs showcasing their meals in food shows.

Main Street is where Darden’s brands come together. Branded test kitchens are front and center, with the dining rooms behind glass storefronts, where the chefs conduct their food shows, clearly visible to everyone passing by.

“We wanted to make sure that the culinary development kitchens were right off Main Street, to showcase that that’s what we’re all about,” Lawrence says. “The design was established so you can look in and see the food shows being conducted. You can see the chefs in their whites and the energy and the business behind it.”

While each brand has its own separate kitchen, they’re connected in the back, where the chefs work, for enhanced collaboration.

“Darden saw a real advantage to the people that are preparing the food and creating the menus to have a lot of collaboration and exchange of information,” says Cadrecha of the design of the kitchens. “We imagined there would be a moving back and forth of recipes and techniques that could happen.”

This bringing-together of the chefs was a key ingredient in the building’s design, says Lawrence.

“In the past, the chefs were very siloed,” he says. “They worked in a different building. They may or may not have known (the other chefs). Now they’re developing relationships with their counterparts. That’s the beginning of a dialogue that can build upon itself.”

Sitting in the dining room, less than a month after opening—as a family and young children eat and play just a few tables away—Lawrence says he feels good about what he and Darden were able to achieve, both for the company and the family it serves.

The reaction, Lawrence says, “has been overwhelmingly positive. People expected a lot, and they got more than they expected in a very positive way. They’re energized. It feels great.”