Olive Garden, an Italian-American dining chain with nearly 900 locations, announced last month that its signature cheese graters and accompanying Romano cheese blocks are permanently available for delivery and to-go.
The move continues a broader trend of restaurants seeking to offer some of the special aspects of in-house dining to customers who want to enjoy their meals off premises.
In 2023, Olive Garden began seeing an uptick in cheese grater sales after a viral TikTok from creator Bo_Gjerness revealed that the restaurants sold them upon request, according to Olive Garden’s communications manager. The brand started offering delivery services last year, straying from a previous strategy to focus on customers eating at the restaurant.
Aligning its popular cheese graters with its recent off-premises initiative, Olive Garden made the table-side cheese shredder available for online and in-app ordering at $19.99 plus tax, beginning in mid-November. Each cheese grater includes a block of Romano cheese.
The new delivery option from Olive Garden caps a year in which multiple brands have pursued similar efforts to bring the magic of in-house dining directly to customers, wherever they plan to eat.
This past fall, for example, Melting Pot, a 50-year-old American fondue restaurant with over 90 locations, launched the Melting Pot at Home product line into more than 2,500 grocery stores nationwide. According to an Oct. 28 release, the move marked the brand’s largest retail expansion since debuting the ready-to-heat specialty fondue in 2023.
“While nothing beats Melting Pot’s in-restaurant experience, Melting Pot at Home is making it easier for people to enjoy fondue when they can’t make it into the restaurant,” Jennifer Lukas-Bourgeois, director of retail at Melting Pot, said in the press release. “Whether it’s a weeknight dinner, hosting friends or celebrating something special, Melting Pot at Home brings our signature cheese and chocolate fondues to your table between restaurant visits.”
Although 2025 has seen a push from restaurants to deliver the magic of in-house dining, the trend started gaining momentum following the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Shortly after COVID-related shutdowns began threatening restaurant sales, New York City-based quick-service brand Shake Shack launched the Shake Shack Burger Kit, a bundle consisting of eight burgers’ worth of fresh beef patties, potato rolls, slices of American cheese and ShackSauce.
Later that year, similar initiatives were made on the fine-dining side of the industry from Jeff Ruby Culinary Entertainment, according to 2020 reporting from the Cincinnati Business Courier. The restaurant group, known for its upscale steakhouses, launched the online sale of meal kits containing carefully packed ingredients with full cooking/preparation instructions. Those kits are still available for pick-up and delivery, with price tags ranging from $198 to $220, according to JeffRuby.com.
While Olive Garden is the latest brand to make a splash by delivering part of its in-house experience, similar efforts across the industry over the last several years indicate the trend will continue to guide operators’ off-premises strategies in 2026.
