Darden Restaurants

Per Darden's own August 2026 proxy statement: total sales $13.21B (up 9.4% YoY), 4.5% same-restaurant sales growth, 43 net new restaurants opened, and $1.4B returned to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases in fiscal 2026. Separately, the FY2026 Form 10-K's risk-factor language was substantially reworded from the prior year to explicitly call out AI-related and supply-chain cybersecurity risk as a growing concern — a real, board-approved talking point for a security conversation, not a manufactured pitch.

An enterprise-wide pitch to Darden's central IT organization competes with a 10-year CIO relationship and an active Infosys/Oracle engagement. A narrow, scoped proposal to bring 101–103 specific locations onto Darden's network, POS-adjacent hardware, and security standard — addressed to the Group President who is personally accountable for that integration's success — is a realistically sized first deal, not a company-wide RFP.

Chris Chang has been SVP & CIO since April 2016 — a decade in the seat, with a named, working Infosys/Oracle Commerce partnership he's publicly credited for the company's digital engagement gains. That's not a leader actively reassessing vendors the way a newly-appointed CIO would be. Pitching a broad infrastructure overhaul at that door competes with an entrenched relationship. It doesn't mean central IT is irrelevant — any deal eventually needs Chang's team's sign-off on network and security standards — but it means Chang's org is the compliance gate, not the entry point.

Lindsay L. Koren became SVP, General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer & Corporate Secretary in February 2026, succeeding retiring Matthew Broad. New legal/compliance leadership commonly revisits vendor-risk criteria and approved-supplier terms — a conversation worth having with her office independent of any specific deal, to get Connection's security and compliance credentials pre-reviewed ahead of a live proposal moving through Coupa.

Unlike the Gerdau account, where three executives are genuinely Tampa-based, nobody in Darden's confirmed leadership or board appears to live or work in Tampa. Every corporate officer works from the Restaurant Support Center in Orlando — roughly 80–90 minutes from Tampa by car, not a shared commute. The board's eight non-employee directors have public backgrounds rooted elsewhere — Group 1 Automotive (Houston), the former Penn National Gaming CEO (Pennsylvania), the former Walmart U.S. CEO (Arkansas and multiple other boards), FULLBEAUTY Brands (New York), Mattel (California) — none of it pointing back to Tampa. Darden's own proxy statement, like nearly every public company's, doesn't disclose directors' personal residences, so this is checked against public professional backgrounds, not property records or social media. If a face-to-face matters more than any one person's home city, Orlando — not Tampa — is where this account actually lives.

No confirmed Darden executive speaking slot was found at any 2026–2027 restaurant-tech or restaurant-industry conference. Ranked by how actionable each real venue is:

1. Florida Restaurant & Lodging Show — the best one by far. October 25–27, 2026, Orange County Convention Center, Orlando. It's Darden's own home city and the state's flagship restaurant/hospitality trade show — exactly the kind of event a multi-brand Orlando restaurant company would have a presence at, with no travel required for a local rep.
2. ICR Conference — a major investor event in Darden's backyard. January 11–13, 2027, JW Marriott Orlando Grande Lakes. A leading investor conference for public and private companies; worth checking the presenting-company list once it's published for whether Vennam's IR team is on it.
3. Restaurant Finance & Development Conference (RFDC). November 9–11, 2026, Wynn Las Vegas. The restaurant industry's dedicated finance event, ~4,000 attendees including CFOs from multi-unit public companies — requires travel, but the attendee caliber is exactly right.
4. National Restaurant Association Show. May 22–25, 2027, Chicago. The largest industry trade show overall — good for brand-side contacts, requires travel, less IT-specific.
5. MUFSO (Multi-Unit Foodservice Operators Conference). No confirmed 2026–2027 dates as of this research; historically an October, Dallas-based event for multi-unit restaurant leadership, produced by Nation's Restaurant News. Worth checking NRN's site directly for the current year before planning around it.

No golf tournament or gala tied to Darden or the Darden Foundation turned up anywhere public — this isn't a golf-and-charity-circuit relationship the way some accounts are. What is real and verifiable, straight from Darden's own community-impact page and its FY2026 proxy: the Darden Foundation is a major, sustained funder of hunger relief and food insecurity in Central Florida — Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida (20+ years, funds a Darden Foundation Community Kitchen, mobile food pantry, and Fresh Market program), Feeding America ($22.3M+ contributed since 2010, including a $2M grant for refrigerated trucks), the Darden Harvest food-donation program (six million pounds of food, roughly five million meals, per the proxy), Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida ($1.25M in 2026 toward its Center for Women and Families), Heart of Florida United Way, and United Arts of Central Florida. A CSR-aligned gesture — sponsoring a volunteer shift or a matched donation tied to Second Harvest or Darden Harvest — is a more honest relationship-building angle here than inventing a golf outing that doesn't exist.