Called Breadsticks at ten

A Little League coach nicknamed Braden Sinclair "Breadsticks" after he ate too much at an Olive Garden birthday dinner and missed a whole game. His initials are B.S., his number was 11.

“I had to be called 'Breadsticks' for the rest of the season.”

One of fifty on Earth

In 2019 Sinclair got an Olive Garden Lifetime Pasta Pass. Only 50 people have ever held one.

A gold card with no end date

The pass covers unlimited pasta, toppings, breadsticks, and soup or salad for as long as the chain exists and he keeps showing up. Dine-in only, no delivery.

How he won it

Olive Garden offered the first 50 buyers of a temporary pass the chance to upgrade to lifetime for $400 more. Sinclair had been trading jokes with the brand's Instagram for years and still wonders if he was picked.

“It felt a little weird, something like divine intervention.”

Staff either gasp or squint

Servers carry the card back to the kitchen to show everyone. Occasionally he has to prove it is real, which he says he understands completely.

“If someone came in with a gold card that said I don't need to pay, I would also have questions.”

Pasta as a comfort object

Olive Garden was steady ground when his family moved from Maine to Wisconsin as a kid. He has a tattoo of the rotary cheese grater captioned "SAY WHEN" and collects 1980s and 90s chain merch.

Then he built the dashboard

Lifetimepastapass.com logs 112 visits since 2019, 152 bowls of pasta, 154,817 calories, $1,878.87 in meal value, and $607 in tips.

Rigatoni, alfredo, chicken fritta

Charts break down his favorite noodle, sauce, and topping, plus a map of every location he has tried up and down the East Coast. He hit nine visits in August, his busiest month since a record 20 in October 2019.

Strangers order for him

He added a poll so anyone can vote on his next combination. He expected ten friends to play along. A couple of Reddit posts later, 700 votes decided he was eating angel hair with spicy alfredo and crispy shrimp fritta.

“I thought it was just gonna be a joke among my friends.”

The vote broke his rut

Left alone he ordered the same thing every time. Outsourcing the decision turned up a combination he now swears by.

“I realized that alfredo and meatballs is an insane combination.”

Power used quietly

He tips every visit, skips refills, and tries to be a low-impact diner rather than the kind who buries a bowl in grated Parmesan because he can. The trophies he chases are his own.

“I see some pictures of people with the pasta passes who go crazy.”

Lonely at the top

Covid hit right after the cards went out, so Olive Garden never connected the winners and friends tire of free breadsticks. His 4-year-old, though, is pasta-obsessed and next in line.

“There's only so many times I can go sit at the Olive Garden by myself.”