While most folks who managed to score an Olive Garden Pasta Pass — which gave the holder access to as much pasta from the sorta-Italian-ish restaurant chain as they could eat during a seven week span earlier this fall — used it to either test the limits of their digestive system, make a profit by selling it, or dangle it in front of our faces, one man in Utah used his Pasta Pass to help those in need of a decent meal.
Over at his site RandomActsOfPasta.com, Matt Tribe provides extensive details on how many people he fed with the help of his $100 pass.
“Every day I’d go get pasta, and I’d just go show up and someone’s house and brighten their life with some Olive Garden,” he explains to Salt Lake City’s Fox 13. “I realize it might be stupid to think, ‘I just gave them pasta, how does that make their day better?’ But somebody did something nice for them.”
Rather than lend out his card — which would probably be a no-no — he realized he could just get to-go orders from Olive Garden and then give that food to whomever he wanted. After checking with OG to make sure that there was no restriction on food to-go, Matt set out to provide meals to 100 people during the seven-week period.
He began with family and friends, but then began expanding that circle to include dozens of random people.
In the end, Matt brought meals to 125 individuals (along with the 14 meals that he ate himself) from 11 different Olive Gardens. At his peak, Matt visited five Olive Gardens in a single day.
“It was super fulfilling,” he explains. “Because the entire time I was doing this for a month, just about every night, the only thing I was thinking about was who could I take Olive Garden to, who could I do Random Acts of Pasta to, who could I do something nice for.”
by Chris Morran via Consumerist