Olive Garden's Never-Ending Pasta Pass Is Baaaaaack

The first day of fall is right around the corner: Kids are back in school, wearing white is officially a fashion faux pas, and in a glorious symbol of American gluttony, Olive Garden has once again resurrected its Never-Ending Pasta Pass.

For the third year in a row, America’s most ubiquitous faux-Italian chain is offering OG fans the chance to gorge themselves on bottomless bowls of pasta — along with soup or salad, breadsticks, and soda — for seven weeks straight. The cost of this one-way ticket to Carb Town? A mere $100.

In previous years, the competition to score one of these Pasta Passes has proven fierce: Last year, all 2,000 of the cards sold out in literally one second. This year, though, the chain is upping the ante by selling 21,000 of them. The golden tickets to excess go on sale Thursday at 2 p.m. EST at Olive Garden’s website, and the company is clearly expecting them to go quickly because they’ll only be available for an hour.

The Pasta Passes can be used multiple times in one day, but they’re not valid on to-go orders, so buyers better be prepared to get awfully chummy with the staff at their local Olive Garden. Also keep in mind that the passes come emblazoned with the purchaser’s name and are non-transferable, so when you wake up face-down in a pool of fettuccine alfredo you will have no choice but to soldier on.

Additional Pasta Passes will be auctioned off on eBay following the public sale; proceeds will go to the nonprofit Feeding America, which seems like a nice gesture.

• Olive Garden’s Unlimited Pasta Passes Sold Out in Under a Second [E]
• Real American Hero Eats $1,840 Worth of Olive Garden in Seven Weeks [E]