Darden Restaurants (DRI 0.87%) just closed out a tough year. Sales at the company's flagship Red Lobster, Olive Garden, and LongHorn Steakhouse locations fell hard this past winter as value-minded customers flocked to cheaper alternatives.

In the following video, Fool contributor Demitrios Kalogeropoulos talks about how Darden has responded to the exodus, noting one recent good sign: a bounce in traffic back to its Olive Garden restaurants. The bad news for investors, though, is that Darden has had to sacrifice profits to get customers back into those booths.