Video Tip: Darden Restaurant’s Quality “From Farm to Fork”

What I really like about this 12 min. video on Darden Restaurants (Olive Garden and Red Lobster) is that the VP-Quality comes right out and says “we use SPC charts, Pareto charts, process flow diagrams, fishbone charts, and scatter charts”. When you are teaching Ch. 6 and Supp. 6, it’s good for your students to hear that a real company is employing all the tools they see in the text (as in Figure 6.6).

Darden calls its quality program “From Farm to Fork”, since the inspection process begins at the food source (be it farm or pond), continues with inspections throughout the supply chain, and ends with a final check by the chef and server before the customer is served. Fifty scientists and health specialists work in QA throughout the world, most close to the food source outside the US. With 50 million pounds of seafood coming into the US for Darden each year, it is clear that quality cannot be considered just at the end of the supply chain.

The video presents real data in the form of x-bar and R-charts and capability histograms and shows what happens when specs are not met on products like steaks, salmon fillets, and chicken breasts.

Before showing the film, you may want to ask students where they think inspections are taking place on a fish that is caught in Thailand and served 48 hours later in say, Dubuque, Iowa.