Throughout the Company, everyone is aligned with our ultimate goal – to create a great company that is the best in our industry now and for generations. With that alignment, Darden brings another strength to the table – clear direction about our future. This clarity starts with a shared understanding of what being a great company means. First, we believe it means being a winning organization financially – one that consistently grows sales and earnings at competitively superior levels within our industry and delivers a competitively superior total shareholder return. Secondly, it means being a special place – one that everyone wants to be a part of because the people who work at Darden, the people who do business with Darden and the people who invest in Darden are able to fulfill their personal and professional goals.
To become the kind of great company we aspire to be, we will continue to execute our multi-brand growth strategy by working to strengthen our brand-building and brand-support capabilities. That, in turn, enables us to strengthen our brands themselves. More specifically, we are changing how we work in ways that drive increased collaboration across the Company. Our objectives are to better ensure that brand-building expertise we have in any part of the Company benefits the entire organization; further increase the cost-efficiency of our brand support to free additional resources for investment in brand-building; provide our brand leaders with more time to focus on brand building by pushing as much brand support as possible to others in the organization; and enrich the experience we offer our employees by ensuring that we look across all of Darden to help maximize their opportunity for professional growth.
