Here's Where Olive Garden Sources Its Tomatoes For Marinara Sauce

When you sit down in an Olive Garden, you might not expect too much from the Italian chain, which has been criticized for its inauthenticity. It might surprise you to learn, though, that its soups are made fresh daily, in-house, and the staff follows strict rules when handling food allergies, among other things that elevate it above its competition. There is also the fact that the Olive Garden can actually trace the tomatoes used to make its marinara sauce right to the source. Tasting Table got the inside scoop on this process, and it reports that the tomatoes come from OPC Farms in Hanford, California, about a 40-minute drive from Fresno.

The farms are under the stewardship of the Neil Jones Food Company, which oversees the entire growing process, from seed to fruit, as well as the harvesting, processing, and shipping of the tomatoes. In fact, 10 different types of tomatoes make their way into the Olive Garden's sauces, and the Neil Jones team is on hand every step of the way to ensure that the crop, which is planted in late winter to mid-spring, and then harvested in late summer, maintains consistent flavor from year-to-year, so the marinara sauce you tasted in a New York Olive Garden in 2024 is exactly like what you taste in a Georgia location in the present and beyond.

There is a lot of science that goes into producing the tomatoes that end up in Olive Garden's sauces, starting with the farms' location. At some point, farmers realized that the Central Valley's hot climate produced sublimely fresh-tasting and sweet tomatoes, and the Neil Jones Food Company has perfected the growing formula, starting seeds in a greenhouse, then after about two months, planting the strongest seedlings in the ground. After roughly four months, when those tomato plants have started bearing sun-ripened fruit, they get harvested, and this, according to Tasting Table, is when the pace really quickens.

Once the tomatoes are picked and sorted, Tasting Table says, the best of the bunch head to the factory, where over the course of a mere four to six hours, they get cleaned, peeled, cut, and cooked down. The pre-sauce gets a bit of seasoning before it's bagged up and shipped out to Olive Garden locations all over the country.

In the Olive Garden kitchens, the uniformly-tasting product gets combined with oil and what's known as "battuto" — in this case, a pre-made seasoning base that arrives at restaurants frozen. The mixture then gets heated up on the stovetop, and where the Five Cheese Marinara is needed, those cheeses are added.

Static Media owns and operates Food Republic and Tasting Table.