Olive Garden is bringing back its Never-Ending Pasta Pass after a six-year hiatus, and the sale is set for July 16 at 2 p.m. ET. Just 10,000 Olive Garden Pasta Passes will be available, each priced at $100 plus tax.
The return matters because the pass has not been offered since 2019, even as the chain said fans asked for it every year. Jaime Bunker said guests still ask about the pass years after it was last sold, and that the lasting interest helped make the decision to bring it back.
For readers trying to figure out what the pass actually gets them, the answer is simple: 13 weeks of unlimited pasta during Olive Garden's Never-Ending Pasta Bowl promotion. Passholders will also get homemade sauces, protein toppings, never-ending soup or salad, and breadsticks, which turns the offer into a full repeat-meal package rather than a single discounted bowl.
The timing gives the promotion its own sales cycle. The Never-Ending Pasta Bowl runs nationwide from Aug. 31 to Nov. 22, starting at $14.99, while EClub members and Pasta Passholders get early access beginning Aug. 24. Olive Garden also says the pass is tied to a long-running promotion that has become one of its most recognizable seasonal offers, with the new run including Spicy Alfredo and Crispy Shrimp Fritta.
But the comeback comes with a hard limit. Olive Garden says Pasta Passes have been claimed within minutes every year they were offered since their debut in 2014, yet it is opening the sale to only 10,000 buyers this time. That leaves the real question not whether interest is there, but how fast the passes disappear when sales open on PastaPass.com.
Olive Garden is treating the return as a reward for loyalty, and the numbers back up that pitch. The company says it has more than 950 restaurants and more than 96,000 team members, and that its restaurants have donated more than 53 million pounds of food to local community food banks across the country. For the people who have waited since 2019, the test now is whether they can get in before the limited run closes out in minutes again.
