Things To Do In SW Florida

Same-restaurant sales at Darden Restaurants’ fine-dining eateries fell in the quarter ending May 28 despite overall business improving at the Orlando-based chain.

Darden owns Olive Garden as well as other chains, including fine-dining restaurants Eddie V’s and The Capital Grille.

The company reported overall sales in the quarter were up 6.4% to $2.8 billion. Same-restaurant sales grew 4%, but that figure for just the fine-dining restaurants fell 1.9%.

CEO Rick Cardenas addressed concerns about the economy and consumers on an earnings call Thursday, saying Darden has not seen an effect in its customers “as much as maybe our competitors have.”

“There is a tension between what people want and what they can afford,” Cardenas said. “Even in a slowing economy, consumers really continue to seek value, and it’s not always about low prices. It’s about execution. … They’re making spending tradeoffs and, as I said before, food away from home is really difficult to give up, if you’re executing.” read more

The heads of Twitter and Facebook are apparently going to settle their differences with fisticuffs.

According to reports from various media sources, including CNN and the BBC, technology billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have agreed to fight each other in a cage match.

Twitter owner and Tesla CEO Musk recently posted on Twitter that he was “up for a cage match” against the head of Meta. Zuckerberg responded in an Instagram story to “send me the location.”

Meta spokesperson Iska Saric confirmed with The Verge that the post was genuine and said, “The story speaks for itself.”

Musk followed up with a tweet suggesting the Las Vegas Octagon, where many UFC fights are held, as a potential location.

It is not clear whether the two are serious or not about a potential bout. In a later tweet, Musk wrote that he has “this great move that I call ‘The Walrus,’ where I just lie on top of my opponent & do nothing.”

The Verge recently announced that Meta is developing a competitor to Twitter, which Musk has taunted Zuckerberg about on social media. During a Meta meeting recently, The Verge reported, chief product officer Chris Cox told employees that users want a version of Twitter that is “sanely run,” a dig at how Twitter has performed since Musk took it over last year. read more