Why LongHorn Steakhouse Gift Cards Can Pay For Your Meal At Olive Garden

It's happened to the best of us: Your relative or office Secret Santa has given you a gift card to a restaurant you don't really like. Restaurant gift cards do make for good Christmas gifts, but only if you know the recipient enjoys the food. If your distant uncle casually gave you a card worth $50 at Longhorn Steakhouse, but you're more of an "endless breadsticks" type of diner, you'd be slightly disappointed that you won't be getting Olive Garden's signature dish. Luckily, in this case, you can easily use your Longhorn gift card at Olive Garden, and the staff should accept it.

That's because, in this age where many chain restaurants are owned by large corporations — those steakhouse chains are more valuable than you thought – some companies make it easy for the various restaurant chains they own to cooperate with each other. Darden Restaurants, in particular, owns several popular chain restaurant brands around the U.S., and it's quietly consolidated its gift cards for each brand. That means a Longhorn Steakhouse gift card should be accepted by your server at any of Darden's other restaurants: Olive Garden, Yardhouse, The Capital Grille, Bahama Breeze, Seasons 52, Eddie V's, and, more recently, Ruth's Chris Steak House. The same should also be true of any gift card from those other restaurants. 

To really drive the point home, Darden now offers gift cards featuring the logos of all their different restaurant brands printed on. Functionally, these gift cards should work at any Darden-owned chain. If there's a chance you purchase or receive a gift card that has only one of the restaurant brands at this point, it may just be a visual difference. The money all goes back to Darden anyway, so it doesn't seem concerning with which restaurant ends up receiving the card. Keep in mind that Darden hasn't owned the Red Lobster brand since 2014, so your Olive Garden card certainly wouldn't fly there.

Are there other restaurant companies that let you switch around gift cards in a similar way? As we descend further into larger and larger corporate monopolies, you bet. Bloomin' Brands, which owns Outback Steakhouse, Bonefish Grill, and Carrabba's Italian Grill, lets you use any gift card from any of its restaurants at all its other restaurants. Your Chili's gift card will also be accepted at Maggiano's Little Italy restaurant (and vice versa), because Brinker International owns both. Swapping around these gift cards takes a bit of behind-the-scenes knowledge of which companies own which restaurants, but it will allow you more flexibility.