Darden Restaurants has grown to be the top casual-dining restaurant operator in the United States. Their holdings include 650 Red Lobster seafood restaurants, 465 Olive Garden Italian restaurants, and the six Bahama Breeze Caribbean restaurants. The company ... is expanding into barbecue restaurants with Smokey Bones BBQ. They are currently listed on the Fortune 500 with more than 116,000 employees and annual sales figures at more than $3.5 billion. The first restaurant, a Red Lobster, was opened more than 30 years ago in Lakeland, Fla. Red Lobster has grown to be the world's leading seafood restaurant company. Growing even faster than Red Lobster, Olive Garden exceeded $500 million in sales only five years after the decision was made to expand.