When I was in college and law school, I loved TGI Fridays. Whenever I was in New York, D.C., Boston, or traveling to California, the beauty of this chain restaurant was that you’d get the same quality meal. I always went for the Chicken Caesar Salad and the Rockslide Pie was a great dessert.
Like Bennigan’s before it, it looks like the near end of Fridays. From 600 plus restaurants, down to a little more than 100, TGI Friday’s just filed for bankruptcy and it looks like it will be the end. The Fridays by me just closed suddenly, and while I loved the chain, I’ve only been there a couple of times over the past 5 years. While they cite the pandemic, Friday’s has been eclipsed by other restaurants like The Cheesecake Factory and Chili’s. Even Ford’s Garage opened up shop in Suffolk County, and they will be the next booming chain. What happened to Fridays is that they stayed stagnant, didn’t offer much enticing food on their menu, and always seemed to change their loyalty program.
You have to continuously fine-tune things and deal with the competition. Chili’s is doing gangbusters with their business because of their $6 Margaritas and Triple Dippers. If you don’t evolve, you run into trouble and end up out of business.
