Olive Garden Is the Real True North
A lot of people recently have been wondering whether our technology will murder us all. But it’s not all bad. Earlier this year, Jason Goldberg and Steve Nasopoulos, two friends and advertising guys in their thirties, launched a gizmo they’d spent two years developing: a compass that only points to the Olive Garden in Times Square. Five thousand people signed up to order one. “Which we did not expect,” Goldberg said the other day. “It was a joke.”
Like a lot of emerging tech, the compass ran afoul of I.P. law. Olive Garden’s lawyers reached out. “First, thank you for being a fan of Olive Garden,” they wrote. Then they demanded the removal of all references to the brand. (Someone from marketing subsequently messaged, “hey! ignore the cease and desist marketing team loves the compass.” The lawyers won.) The compass consisted of a G.P.S. module, a motor, and a power source—“I think it’s a vape battery,” Goldberg said—initially engineered by a guy in California named Josh. It was encased in brass and etched with “Not all who breadstick are lost.” “That’s a Tolkien line,” Nasopoulos said. “I figured it was public domain, but I was wrong. We’re fielding multiple lawsuits at all times.”
The men ceased and desisted, but they did not give up. They started over. Meanwhile, they’d lost Josh. “He got accepted into Harvard for engineering, and he was, like, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’ ” Goldberg said. They’d found a new engineering partner, Glub Glub Labs, which signed on pro bono. Finally, a new prototype was ready. But would it work?
One recent morning, the pair convened in Brooklyn for a test excursion. They would be blindfolded and driven to a remote location and attempt to navigate to the Olive Garden for lunch. (They plan to pick a new destination, but for now the prototype is still calibrated to Olive Garden.) A Lyft arrived. The men put on sleep masks and groped their way into the car.
“It started with the Times Square Applebee’s,’ ” Goldberg explained. “It turns out there are two,” Nasopoulos said. So they pivoted—a lucky break. “So many people were attached to that Olive Garden,” Goldberg said. “People reached out, like, I want to get engaged there, and I want to use your compass.”
The Lyft reached its destination, and the men stumbled out. They removed the blindfolds. A large bird strutted toward them. “Oh, my God, there’s a turkey,” Goldberg said. “Shall we turn this puppy on?” They began walking, following a red pointer on the compass over hills, past boats on blocks, and by some clucking chickens. Near a driveway flanked by lion statues, Nasopoulos ventured, “I think we’re in New Jersey.”
Then they passed a sign for the Staten Island Mental Health Society. “That makes me think we’re on Staten Island,” Goldberg said. Now there was the problem of the sea passage. Goldberg approached a couple on a bench. “I’m trying to get to the Olive Garden in the middle of Times Square,” he said. “I’ve got a compass that points me there. But there’s obviously water.”
The man answered, “You take this path straight past the baseball stadium, you get on the Staten Island ferry. You take the ferry, and you end up at the Battery. You take Broadway straight up to approximately Forty-seventh Street, and you’re at the Olive Garden.”
“Fantastic,” Goldberg said.
After their crossing, they walked up Broadway for a bit, then hopped on Citi Bikes. Talk turned to Olive Garden’s cease-and-desist. The public had rallied to their cause. “For months, every time Olive Garden would post on their own channels, the comments would be flooded with people saying, ‘I don’t know how to get to your location! Please help me!’ ” Goldberg said.
They hadn’t yet decided on the alternative. Burger King wanted in. A mortuary school sent a pitch. (“We are located above the hard rock Café in Times Square. I shit you not.”) Ripley’s Believe It or Not! was interested—“They want to put us in the book,” Nasopoulos said—as was someone representing the country of Bosnia. Their favorite was the Times Square Margaritaville. The men had encouraging discussions with the company but then got ghosted.
What if Margaritaville resurfaced? “I mean, do we respect ourselves?” Goldberg asked.
The compass hand twitched, and the men found themselves outside the Olive Garden. They entered an empty bar area and then took an escalator to the dining room. At the host stand, Goldberg announced, “We followed a compass to get here!”
“From Staten Island,” Nasopoulos said. “We saw a turkey!”
“All right, your table’s gonna be right over here. Enjoy,” the hostess said.
“She didn’t care at all,” Goldberg said. “Not one bit.” The men tore into some breadsticks. The compass sat on the table. The needle flicked back and forth. ♦