A bunch of Olive Garden customers is flocking to social media, spreading the good word for grater enthusiasts everywhere—you can most certainly buy the cheese graters the chain restaurant uses to flake your pasta with Parmesan Reggiano.
TikToker Dyan Maillet (@dylan_maillet), however, thinks that those buying the Olive Garden rotary cheese grater are getting hoodwinked. He claims that Walmart sells the same product for a fraction of the price. Many viewers said he’s leaving out how Olive Garden’s offering also comes with Parmesan cheese and that it costs much less than the amount he names in his post.
“Literally sell the Olive Garden cheese shredder at Walmart for $8… y’all paying $24 at Olive Garden??” he asks in a text overlay of the video. Maillet zooms into the product in question, which is a Mainstays plastic cheese grater, Walmart’s branding for its line of home goods products.
Many Mainstays products Walmart sells are made in the U.S., except a few items. It’s not uncommon for many manufacturers to share processing plants for “essential” bulk products, like Ziploc-style food storage bags, so there’s a possibility that the cheese grater Walmart sells could very well be the same one that the Olive Garden offers in its stores.
@dylan_maillet Greatest discory ive made recently. #olivegarden #cheese #fyp #fypシ #familyguy #food #deals #walmart #steal ♬ original sound – Dylan Maillet
The Daily Dot has reached out to Walmart via email to confirm where its rotary cheese graters are made, and to the Olive Garden via email as well.
Many viewers remarked that Maillet had gotten one key fact wrong in his post: the price Olive Garden charges for the rotary grater. Although the TikToker claimed Olive Garden sells the grater for $24, numerous people said he was approximately $10 off and that shoppers who purchased the grater through the restaurant get to take home a hunk of Parmesan cheese.
“Last I heard it was 14 not 24 but I could be wrong,” one person wrote.
“$15 at Olive Garden and it’s not the same one as the one at Walmart,” another penned.
“They give you a ton of cheese to go with it too,” someone else wrote. But it seemed at that point, Maillet had enough of folks trying to justify the charge of the cheese rotary cheese grater at the Olive Garden.
“They don’t give you cheese. You’re also paying for the cheese,” he wrote. “I’m sure you can get much more for much less. Restaurants always gonna up charge.”
So let’s say that the graters are indeed the same ones that Walmart sells, and if you’re planning on buying a hunk of Parmesan cheese, depending on whether it’s worth buying from the Olive Garden depends on how much cheese you’re getting. For context, Parmesan Reggiano goes for about $16 to $17 per pound as of this writing, with prices varying.
However, some agreed with Maillet’s confounded response that folks are purchasing cheese graters from the Olive Garden. “Wait until you see how much people are paying for a box of Andes mints from there,” one wrote.
There was one person who claimed to have tried the Walmart offering and, suffice to say, they weren’t impressed with its quality. “I got the Walmart ones before legit broke with my cheese inside,” they wrote.
The Daily Dot has also reached out to Maillet via TikTok comment for further information.