T.G.I. Friday's
 |
|
| Private | |
| Industry | Restaurants |
| Genre | Casual dining |
| Founded | March 15, 1965 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Founder | Alan Stillman and Daniel R. Scoggin |
| Headquarters | Dallas, Texas, U.S. |
|
Number of locations
|
992 (March 2011) |
|
Area served
|
Worldwide |
| Owner |
Sentinel Capital Partners TriArtisan Capital Partners |
| Website | TGIFridays |
T.G.I. Fridays is an American restaurant chain focusing on casual dining.
The company is a unit of the Sentinel Capital Partners and TriArtisan Capital Partners, who purchased the company from Carlson Companies in May 2014. The name is asserted to stand for "Thank God It's Friday", although as of 2010[update] some television commercials for the chain have also made use of the alternative phrase, "Thank Goodness It's Friday." The chain is known for its appearance—with red-striped canopies, brass railings, Tiffany lamps, and frequent use of antiques as decor—and its Long Island iced teas.
Alan Stillman opened the first T.G.I. Fridays restaurant in 1965 in New York. He lived in a neighborhood with many airline stewardesses, fashion models, secretaries, and other young, single people on the East Side of Manhattan near the Queensboro Bridge, and hoped that opening a bar would help him meet women. At the time, Stillman's choices for socializing were non-public cocktail parties or "guys' beer-drinking hangout" bars that women usually did not visit; he recalled that "there was no public place for people between, say, twenty-three to thirty-seven years old, to meet." He sought to recreate the comfortable cocktail party atmosphere in public despite having no experience in the restaurant business.
With $5,000 of his own money and $5,000 borrowed from his mother, Stillman purchased a bar he often visited, The Good Tavern at the corner of 63rd Street and First Avenue, and renamed it T.G.I. Fridays after the expression "Thank God! It's Friday!" from his years at Bucknell University. The new restaurant, which opened on March 15, 1965, served standard American cuisine, bar food, and alcoholic beverages, but emphasized food quality and preparation. The exterior featured a red-and-white striped awning and blue paint, the Gay Nineties interior included fake Tiffany lamps, wooden floors, Bentwood chairs, and striped tablecloths, and the bar area added brass rails and stained glass. The employees were young and wore red-and-white striped soccer shirts, and every time someone had a birthday, the entire restaurant crew came around with a cake and sang T.G.I. Fridays traditional birthday song. The first location closed in 1994 and is now a British pub called "Baker Street"; the brass rails are still there.
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