Darden Updates Management at LongHorn and Olive Garden Brands

Published on Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Written by The Editors

Former Olive Garden president John Caron elects to leave the company.

Darden Restaurants, Inc. named Dave George president of its Olive Garden concept and promoted Valerie Insignares to president of its LongHorn Steakhouse concept. In addition, the company announced that John Caron, most recently president of Olive Garden, has decided to leave Darden.

George most recently was president of LongHorn Steakhouse, a position he held since 2003. Prior to joining LongHorn as a vice president of operations in 1998, George served as vice president of operations for Tripps Restaurants. He began his restaurant career out of college as an assistant manager with Houlihans, where he spent 12 years and held a number of positions with increasing leadership responsibility.

Insignares moves into her new role with LongHorn after nearly two years as Darden's chief restaurant operations officer, where she was responsible for strategic operations initiatives across the enterprise. She previously served as executive vice president of operations for Olive Garden for seven years. Prior to that, Insignares held numerous roles with increasing leadership responsibility from the time she joined Darden in 1997 through 2004.