Sometimes you just need to slam a few pounds of saucy noodles and get on with your day. Sometimes you don’t have the time to get your formal clothes pressed for the half-day commitment of jamming wheelbarrows full of breadsticks into your face. Sometimes, you need Olive Garden drive-through.
This heady vision—one filled with oozing lasagna burgers and wet-cored risotto nuggets—has been realized in a convincing but, alas, fake commercial that imagines an alternate universe where unlimited breadsticks are available with a special day pass and bulk spaghetti is handed out to drivers from a drive-through window.
Munchies interviewed the commercial’s creators, a collective called the Merkin Bros, to discuss their work and why Olive Garden was the perfect restaurant for a parody that is just gross enough that it should probably actually exist.
The Merkin Bros, it turns out, are made up of people with experience in commercials who “can cop any style [they] we want, for very little money.” They’re also, like most who watch the ad, really not opposed to the idea of sloppy “Italian” takeout. (“If there was a drive-through Olive Garden, we would all 100 percent go.”)
There are a handful of other fake commercials worth checking out on the Merkin Bros. official portfolio page (the Dell “innovators” clip deserves a look), but, unfortunately, none that present another concept quite as groundbreaking as drive-through Olive Garden.