Palm Coast, FL, will be the testing ground for a new Darden Restaurants Inc. concept of housing two of its restaurant brands in the same building, a company representative said.
The 8,700-square-foot building in the Palm Coast Town Center off State Road 100 will house both Red Lobster and Olive Garden restaurants. The restaurants, which will employ a total of 215, are both expected to start hiring Feb. 9 and are scheduled to open March 7.
Darden spokesman Rich Jeffers said the company created the “synergy restaurant” concept to expand into smaller markets that would not meet its population density requirements to build a single brand. Jeffers declined to say what that population density threshold is, but Palm Coast, about an hour south of Jacksonville, had a population of 73,168 in 2009, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Jeffers said the combined restaurant building, which is about 1,000 square feet larger than the average-size Olive Garden or Red Lobster, will cost about the same amount as it would to build a single restaurant. He declined to say what the average cost of construction for the two brands is.
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