Beth GarrabrantThis year, Taylor Swift inadvertently gave a massive Christmas gift to Olive Garden — and boy, are they thankful.
In the murder mystery song "No Body No Crime" on her new album evermore, Taylor sings, "Este wasn't there Tuesday night at Olive Garden." According to Business Insider, the head of Olive Garden's parent company gave the singer a shout-out in their quarterly earnings call.
Gene Lee, the CEO of Darden Restaurants, said on the call, "Just think about what happened last week when Taylor Swift dropped the song with Olive Garden in it, and how we were able to capture that socially and create buzz around that. When Taylor Swift drops our name in a song, our brand becomes very, very relevant."
"Thank you to Taylor Swift for dropping Olive Garden in her song," he added.
"Our team was working around the clock to capitalize on that activity…They did a fantastic job, to be able to make that relevant," Lee noted.
After the album dropped last Friday, Olive Garden spent a good deal of time engaging with fans who were tweeting about the mention.
Este Haim is a member of the group HAIM, who appears on the song with her, and Olive Garden happens to be Este's favorite chain restaurant, which is why Taylor mentioned it. The group posted a video of themselves appearing to dine at Olive Garden while mentioning the song.
Olive Garden responded, "Our dream of being the fifth HAIM sister has come true."
There are three sisters in HAIM, but Taylor says she's officially the fourth one.
The restaurant chain is also tied to Taylor in another way: In its Twitter bio, it says it was "born" — ie: founded — on December 13, which is, of course, Taylor's birthday.
By Andrea Dresdale
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