No. Darden owns and operates all 906 US Olive Garden restaurants. Marco's Pizza is the Italian franchise you can buy, at $286,477 to $811,186.
Quick answer No. Darden Restaurants owns and operates Olive Garden, which counted 906 company-owned restaurants as of November 2025. Darden's FY2024 10-K listed only 11 franchised US locations, and those are airport and territory placements rather than an open program. Marco's Pizza is the Italian franchise you can actually buy, at $286,477 to $811,186.
People asking this usually want one of two things. Either they are trying to work out whether the Olive Garden near them belongs to a local owner, or they want a full-service Italian restaurant of their own and are hoping this brand sells one. The answer to the first is no, that location belongs to Darden Restaurants. The answer to the second is also no, and it has been no across the entire span of the brand’s mainstream US growth.
Darden Restaurants, which trades on the NYSE under DRI, owns and operates Olive Garden. The brand counted 906 company-owned restaurants as of November 2025. There is no domestic franchise offering, no Franchise Disclosure Document to read, and no development team to call.
Darden’s FY2024 10-K does report franchised locations, which is where most of the confusion on this question starts. The figures were 11 franchised US locations, roughly 31 in Latin America, 1 in the Middle East, and 1 in the Caribbean, operating under franchise or licensing agreements.
Read the composition rather than the count. The domestic units in that group are airport and territory placements, negotiated one at a time with concessionaires and operators who already hold terminal contracts or country rights. The international units go to established restaurant groups buying regional exclusivity. Neither category is an offering a buyer can apply to.
| Arrangement | Who owns the restaurant | Disclosure document | Olive Garden’s use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Company-operated | Darden | None required | 906 restaurants |
| Franchised domestically | A concession or territory operator | None registered | 11 locations |
| Franchised or licensed abroad | A regional operating company | Outside US registration | About 31 Latin America, 1 Middle East, 1 Caribbean |
| Sold to an individual buyer | You | FDD required by the FTC Franchise Rule | Zero |
That bottom row is the one a searcher actually cares about, and it is empty. Without a registered FDD there is no Item 5 fee schedule, no Item 7 investment table, and no Item 19 telling you what a unit sells. Every number circulating online for an Olive Garden franchise was reverse-engineered from Darden’s disclosed build costs and then dressed up with an invented fee and royalty.
An Olive Garden runs a scratch kitchen, a bar, table service, and a couple of hundred seats, and the check average depends on an experience that lives in how the staff behave on a Friday night. That is the part a franchisor can specify in a manual and cannot supervise. Owning the labor means owning the outcome, which is the same logic that keeps most large casual-dining chains corporate.
The portfolio math points the same direction. Darden operates several full-service brands and buys, sites, and staffs across all of them. Royalty income from a few dozen franchisees would barely register against operating profit on 906 restaurants it already owns. Darden has not published a franchise-policy statement anyone can quote, so treat that reasoning as inference drawn from the structure rather than a company position.
The consequence for buyers is category-wide. Italian franchising in the United States lives in pizza and fast-casual formats, where the kitchen is small, the menu is short, and the operating model survives being written down and handed to someone else.
Marco’s Franchising, LLC files the most complete Italian-category document we hold. The business is carry-out and delivery pizza rather than a dining room, which is exactly why it franchises well.
| 2026 FDD line | Marco’s Pizza |
|---|---|
| Initial franchise fee | $25,000 |
| Estimated initial investment | $286,477 to $811,186 |
| Royalty | 5.5% of Net Royalty Sales, adjustable to 6.0% |
| Total marketing commitment | 7% of Net Royalty Sales |
| Franchised stores, end of 2025 | 1,139 |
| Company-owned stores | 45 |
The investment table assumes a leased space of 1,200 to 1,600 square feet. Leasehold improvements run $65,000 to $400,000 depending on whether you inherit a second-generation restaurant or gut raw retail, and the real property line covers four months of rent rather than a purchase. Additional funds cover three months.
The recurring stack is heavier than that single line suggests. Item 6 sets royalty at 5.5% of Net Royalty Sales with the right to move it to 6.0%. On top of that, the Brand Development Fund currently takes 1%, the National Advertising Fund takes 4%, regional funds take between 0.5% and 1.2% depending on the market, and local store marketing is calculated as a minimum of 7% minus whatever those funds already collected. The marketing obligation totals 7% either way, so roughly 12.5% of the royalty base is committed before rent or payroll.
VetMyFranchise pulls Items 5, 7, and 19 out of the filed document rather than a recruitment page, which is why the Marco’s Pizza FDD analysis starts with the tables above.
Chart 1 of the 2026 Item 19 covers the 997 franchised stores that operated the full 52-week period ending December 28, 2025, roughly seven of every eight in the system. Net Royalty Sales is a defined term in Item 6, not a plain gross sales figure, so it is the royalty base rather than everything that crossed the counter.
| 2025 Net Royalty Sales | Median | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Top 25%, 250 stores | $1,213,859 | $1,288,466 |
| Top 50%, 499 stores | $1,052,095 | $1,109,558 |
| All 997 stores | $832,403 | $878,180 |
| Bottom 50%, 499 stores | $661,994 | $646,710 |
| Bottom 25%, 250 stores | $550,454 | $543,668 |
The full range across those stores was $289,736 to $2,052,737, a spread of more than seven to one inside a single system with one menu and one build spec. A second chart in the same item reports that 297 of the 997 stores cleared $1,000,000, which is 29.8%. Seven in ten did not. The document also records 28 store closures during 2025, none of which had been open less than twelve months.
Two figures matter more than the median. The bottom-quartile median of $550,454 is what a store looks like when the trade area underperforms, and against a 12.5% royalty-plus-marketing load that is roughly $69,000 a year leaving before rent. Ask a development representative which quartile the sites they are showing you resemble, then check the answer against the Marco’s Pizza franchise cost breakdown.
Chicago’s Original Italian Beef Franchising LLC is the closest thing in our library to a full-service Italian restaurant sold as a franchise, and its 2026 FDD shows what that costs.
| 2026 FDD line | Buona, single brand free standing |
|---|---|
| Initial franchise fee | $40,000 |
| Estimated initial investment | $3,904,203 to $5,841,375 |
| Land acquisition, inside that total | $500,000 to $1,200,000 |
| Building construction, inside that total | $1,778,965 to $2,406,835 |
| Royalty | 4% of gross sales |
| Brand marketing fund | Up to 2.5% of gross sales |
A dual-brand version pairing the restaurant with a Rainbow Cone Express runs $3,924,203 to $5,871,375 with $60,000 in combined initial fees. Both tables assume you buy land and put up a building, which is why the totals land near nine times the midpoint of the Marco’s table.
The Item 19 reads well and describes the wrong people. It covers 21 affiliate-owned restaurants in the Chicago area, with the headline tables built from 10 single-brand free standing units with drive-throughs over the twelve months ended March 24, 2026. Median gross sales were $3,433,214 against an average of $3,435,660, with a low of $2,865,928 and a high of $4,664,814. Median income came to $541,731, or 15.8% of sales, ranging from $296,970 at 10.4% up to $912,615 at 19.6%.
Now read the label. Item 20 records zero franchised outlets at the end of 2023 and 2024 and exactly one at the end of 2025, a Tennessee restaurant excluded from the performance tables because it had not run a full 52 weeks. Every figure above describes restaurants the franchisor’s affiliates own and operate in a metropolitan area where the brand has traded since 1981. The income line also sits before rent, real estate taxes, interest, and depreciation, which on a build carrying up to $2.4 million of construction is the expense that decides whether the store works.
Nothing in Darden’s behavior suggests a domestic franchise program is coming. The company has spent decades growing restaurants it operates directly, and the handful of franchise and license agreements it signs go to airport concessionaires and country-level operators with existing scale. Waiting for the door to open is not a plan.
The category is still buyable under a different sign. Carry-out and delivery pizza is where the disclosed franchisee numbers live, and Marco’s alone reports 997 stores with a full year of data behind them. Full-service Italian is thin by comparison, and Buona’s document explains why: a free standing build starts near $3.9 million and the franchisee track record is one restaurant old. Our best Italian food franchises comparison ranks the category on Item 7 and Item 19 rather than name recognition.
If the full-service format is what you wanted, start with a document that exists. The Buona FDD analysis breaks out Items 5, 7, and 19 line by line, including the part where the performance tables describe company restaurants instead of franchised ones.
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About this analysis The franchise data in this article is drawn from VetMyFranchise's structured analysis of 2,300+ Franchise Disclosure Documents filed with U.S. state regulators. See our data & methodology.
No. Darden Restaurants does not sell Olive Garden franchises to individual buyers in the United States, and no Franchise Disclosure Document has been registered for a domestic offering. The brand counted 906 company-owned restaurants as of November 2025. Darden's FY2024 10-K did report 11 franchised US locations, but those sit with concessionaires and territory operators under individually negotiated agreements. Any site quoting an Olive Garden franchise fee is quoting a figure with no document behind it.
Darden Restaurants, a public company trading on the NYSE under the ticker DRI. Darden owns the brand and operates the restaurants directly, which means it employs the staff, holds the leases, and books the sales. It also runs several other full-service restaurant brands, and the purchasing and real estate scale spread across that portfolio is part of the reason the restaurants stay in house.
Darden's FY2024 10-K listed 11 franchised US locations, roughly 31 in Latin America, 1 in the Middle East, and 1 in the Caribbean. Set against 906 company-owned restaurants as of November 2025, the franchised share is a rounding error. The domestic units are airport and territory placements, and the international units go to regional operating companies that already run restaurant portfolios in those markets.
Marco's Pizza and Buona both file current FDDs, and they sit at opposite ends of the cost range. Marco's Franchising, LLC estimates $286,477 to $811,186 for a store with a $25,000 initial fee, and its 2026 Item 19 reports a $832,403 median across 997 franchised stores. Chicago's Original Italian Beef Franchising LLC estimates $3,904,203 to $5,841,375 for a free standing Buona restaurant, because that table includes land acquisition and building construction.
The 2026 FDD estimates $286,477 to $811,186, including a $25,000 initial franchise fee. Leasehold improvements carry the widest spread inside that table at $65,000 to $400,000, and the additional funds line covers three months. The recurring stack is a 5.5% royalty, adjustable to 6.0%, plus a marketing commitment that works out to 7% of Net Royalty Sales once the brand fund, the national fund, regional funds, and required local spend are added together.
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