Next time you eat out, keep a close eye on your gift cards. Kenzie Schmid (@kenzie.schmid) and her boyfriend went out to eat at Olive Garden and nearly lost $80 worth of gift card money in the process. She explained the entire situation in a viral video posted last Saturday.
As of publication, her video has over 240,000 views.
A visit to Olive Garden
“Y’all we just got [expletive] scammed at Olive Garden,” Schmid begins. “We got scammed at Olive Garden,” floats over her head in bright red capital letters.
Schmid explains that she and her boyfriend went to Olive Garden for his birthday. They used the remaining balance of a $200 gift card to pay for a $37 meal, which Schmid says left around “80-something” dollars on the card.
“We give our server the gift card, and I [expletive] you not, she comes back, ‘Oh, by the way, the gift card is gone now, it’s empty, like there’s nothing left on it,’” Schmid recounts. “And we were like, ‘Oh! OK, that’s weird.’”
The couple says that they asked for the card back anyway. “What if we wanna reload it or something, right?” Schmid points out. The waitress apparently agreed to go fetch the supposedly empty card, but never returned to the table.
Wait… where did the waitress go?
“She goes back to ‘get the gift card,’ and she never comes back. Like, never comes back.” Schmid emphasizes. With no other option, Schmid’s boyfriend went to speak to the manager.
“He’s just like, ‘Hey, can we just have our gift card back?’” says Schmid. “And I saw the receipt, and it literally says, ‘$87 remaining.’” She holds the receipt up to the camera, motioning to the remaining balance with her finger. “$87 is our balance—that is [expletive] insane.”
“Don’t go to Olive Garden guys,” she concludes, bringing the camera closer to her face. “They’re scam artists.”
A note left onscreen clarifies that the couple did, in fact, get the card back after speaking with the manager.
“She purposefully didn’t give the card back after checking the balance until the manager made her,” the onscreen text reads.
Commenters debate the situation
Many commenters pushed back against Schmid’s claim that Olive Garden scammed her.
“‘Theyre scam artists’ babe. Its not the restaurant. It was just the server being a thief,” responded one viewer. “Be foreal.”
“It’s one server who is a thief,” agreed a separate comment. “Olive Garden didn’t scam you….one server did.”
However, some commenters agreed with Schmid.
“News flash to yall in the comments… If you were scammed by an Olive Garden employee. That means you were scammed by Olive Garden,” a commenter retorted. “‘yOu wEreNT scAmMeD bY oLiVE gARdeN’ yes they were.”
Some questions and some answers
Schmid herself took the opportunity to clear up some viewer concerns in the comments.
“I hope yall called and made sure they gave you the same card back and didn’t just give yall an empty card,” said a viewer. Schmid replied, stating that she and her boyfriend double-checked the balance online. They also added the card to their Apple Wallet.
“As an olive garden server she prob got fired because that’s STEALING,” another commenter speculated. “I wouldn’t go back to that olive garden restaurant again.”
“Well it happened tonight so i doubt she got fired that quickly,” Schmid countered. “I just don’t know if i should go to corporate cuz the manager didn’t seem to care.”
Many other comments urged Schmid to report the incident to Olive Garden corporate or to bring it back up to the franchise’s management. However, Schmid made no indication in the comments that she would follow this advice.
Schmid follows up
Schmid posted a follow-up video on Sunday, a day after her original video. “A lot of you have some questions, so stick around and I will answer all of them,” she opened.
The first question she answered was a long comment from her original video, essentially asking how Schmid was “scammed” if she received the full contents of the gift card before she left.
Schmid explains that the kiosk at the table wasn’t working, so the server ran their gift card in the back to pay for their food. She then brought it back to them, with a receipt stating the remaining balance. The couple insisted that she go back and add an unspecified tip to the bill for herself. When the waitress returned, she told the couple the card was used up.
“She comes back—without the card—and she’s like, ‘Oh, it covered dinner,’” Schmid recounts. “And we were like, ‘What?’ ‘Cause we knew how much was left on the gift card, so we were just like, ‘That’s impossible.’”
Schmid says she knew there had to be at least $80 left on the card. When the couple asked for their supposedly empty card back, their waitress disappeared for 20 minutes, which led Schmid’s boyfriend to speak to the manager.
“My boyfriend kept making eye contact with her throughout the restaurant and she was clearly avoiding us,” Schmid says. “And so we were like, ‘Something’s up, something’s wrong.’”
While Schmid’s boyfriend was speaking to the manager, their server finally returned with the card and gave it back to the couple.
@kenzie.schmid Replying to @Seaira answering some questions #olivegarden #food #storytime #questions
♬ original sound – kenzie ♡
Accusations of mismanagement
“And for those of you saying like, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t blame Olive Garden, just because the employee did a bad thing’—I get that,” Schmid allowed. But at the same time, Olive Garden was the person that hired her.” She says the situation didn’t seem normal and that she wanted to raise awareness of situations like this for future customers.
Schmid also shares that she was nonplussed by management’s reaction when confronted with the situation. “It wasn’t just the server that did something—the manager refused to do anything either,” Schmid emphasized. “She completely brushed off the entire situation like nothing was going on and nothing was wrong.”
“I’m not attacking Olive Garden in any way. I could care less about what they do about the situation,” Schmid clarified. “All I wanted to know was if anybody else had this situation happen to them, if this was a normal occurrence. I wanted some answers.”
Who’s to blame?
There’s no one answer across the food service industry as to who is liable for a situation like Schmid’s. Olive Garden’s parent company, Darden, only mentions theft twice in its 2025 Code of Conduct. Both times, it’s within the context of an employee stealing from the company, rather than a customer.
According to Stuart Cooke at Hoteliga, the sweeping solution to concerns like this would be for restaurants to get hospitality insurance. There are several types of hospitality insurance, and different areas it can cover. However, one of the most important is Public Liability insurance, which protects you against claims made by the public, including “injury, loss and damage” that happens at the business.
To take it a step further, an article by The Hartford insurance company mentions Professional Liability insurance, which protects employees if they make a mistake, mess up, or are negligent. While this type of insurance usually applies to industries like consulting or real estate more than restaurants, it’s still an option for restaurants to consider when planning for situations like Schmid’s.
The Daily Dot reached out to Schmid via TikTok and Instagram direct message and Olive Garden via email.
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