Is This ‘Random Acts Of Pasta’ A Viral Marketing Ploy by Olive Garden, Or Just a Nice Thing Someone Did (And We’re Too Cynical to Know It)?

Marcy FranklinDec 1st, 2014, 11:13 am
 

You can’t completely blame us for being skeptical of a video being passed around that claims a man used his Olive Garden never-ending Pasta Pass to feed the homeless. Despite the fact that some people really do genuinely love it (re: Pasta Pass’ Resident Pastor), some of the events and happenings being passed off as authentic are anything but. So are we to believe that this is real?

Some Redditors are quick to call out Matt Tribe, the “founder” of “Random Acts of Pasta.” But here’s what Tribe had to say about his idea to feed people with the Olive Garden Pasta Pass:

Much to my surprise, I arrived home from work to find a little package from the United Parcel Service sitting on my front porch. Inside? My pasta pass. Needless to say, I was pretty excited. I lobbed a phone call to Olive Garden’s customer relations department to inquire as to whether take-out was permitted with my newly obtained pass. The answer? A resounding yes. Holy crap—this was the best news I had ever received. Random Acts of Pasta was now in full effect.

And so he began to get takeout from Olive Garden, drive around town and give it to anyone he saw. He concludes:

After thousands of miles and hundreds of hours, Random Acts of Pasta was one of the most fun and fulfilling things I’ve ever done. Perhaps it’s because I live a very boring and uneventful life and doing anything is be better than the alternative, or perhaps it’s because that during the time I was doing Random Acts of Pasta, the only thing on my mind was who I was going to take pasta to. Just imagine how cool it would be if everyone did something like this in their life. Obviously not everyone has a pasta pass or has the time to do something of this scale, but what if everyone spent a couple days a month just doing something nice for someone else? One thing I can tell you for sure, is that you, as a person, would be much happier. Don’t believe me? Just try it.

Also, If someone from Darden reads this, I wouldn’t be pissed if you gave me another pasta pass.

MMK. So what is the verdict here?

Granted, the Twitter and Reddit overlords *may* have taken this a tinge too far, calling out Tribe for being a marketing mastermind for Darden, using professional cameras and audio equipment for the video, and building a website that uses web analytics (in this case Weebly, which has built-in Quantast analytics for tracking traffic). It got somewhat ugly, and even Olive Garden tried to step in — until it got uglier and then it slowly backed away.

Yeah, it got worse.

(Olive Garden once again reiterated its participation in the video to Refinery29, saying in a statement, “”We’re proud to be part of this powerful video, as it aligns with our harvest program, which allowed us to donate more than 4.2 million meals to local food banks last year … However, our only role was selling Matt a Pasta Pass and happily fulfilling each one of his orders.”)

So who are we to believe? Should we be upset that some people who maybe wouldn’t have been able to eat a hot meal otherwise got a hot meal from Olive Garden — no matter who was really behind the whole thing? Should we quiet our cynical, mean-spirited minds and just simply believe that a guy wanted to give out pasta to those who couldn’t afford it?

We’re going to go ahead and say yes.

[Reddit, Random Acts of Pasta, Twitter, Refinery29]

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