Narrator: When you hear TGI Fridays,
perhaps you think of family meals and colorful cocktails.
But the chain started out by riding the wave
of the sexual revolution in the 1960s
as one of the first singles bars in the US.
Dan: My favorite line was, "Hi darlin', I own this place."
And it worked every time.
Narrator: But as Fridays became a family restaurant,
it struggled against the competition
and began shuttering restaurants
after the 2008 financial crisis.
So how did TGI Fridays go from the hottest spot in town
to a diner in decline?
When Alan Stillman opened his first bar in 1965,
he was thinking about one thing.
Alan: My business plan was to meet a lot of women.
It's a hell of a business plan, I'll tell you that.
Narrator: Back then, women rarely went out drinking
in public.
It was even banned in some places.
Betsy: Women didn't have a lot of the rights.
I mean, you couldn't have even your own credit card.
Everything had to be, you know, under the aegis of a man.
You had to be connected to a male figure.
Narrator: But things were changing, fast.
Betsy: Out of the Vietnam War protests
and out of the civil rights movements,
there was a women's liberation movement.
Announcer: A new movement for women's liberation
is launched.
Narrator: Cities were increasingly full of working women
looking to spend time with their friends,
or find a date, just like Stillman.
So he came up with a simple concept --
a cocktail party that anyone could attend.
Stillman redecorated an old bar
on the corner of First Avenue and 63rd Street in Manhattan,
with Tiffany lamps, ferns, and bentwood chairs.
The waitstaff dressed in red and white stripes.
And his concept was to create a space
where women could feel welcome.
Alan: The word "singles bar" was not invented,
and I certainly didn't think that I was inventing
anything like that whatsoever.
Narrator: Stillman's plan to find a date had worked.
Not only for him, but for single people all over New York.
In 1970, a TGI Fridays opened in Memphis,
this time as a franchise.
And four more franchises followed soon after.
Dan: So I saw that, and I'd always vowed
that after 10 years of corporate life,
I was going to be an entrepreneur.
And this looked like a good opportunity.
Narrator: This is Dan Scoggin.
He signed a deal with Stillman to launch eight new locations,
starting with Dallas.
Dan: Little did I know that this decision would have me
in a Volkswagen bus with a beard and bell-bottom pants
and going around and buying antiques.
Narrator: Until 1971, selling anything
besides beer or wine at a bar in Dallas
had been illegal for more than five decades,
even after prohibition ended.
Announcer: And Prohibition is repealed.
Narrator: But things were about to change.
Dan: We wanted to upscale what Alan had been doing.
Narrator: When Scoggin's TGI Fridays opened in 1972,
it had phone booths, outdoor patios,
and a raised square bar.
Betsy: You had patrons at a bar,
and then there was this teeny, narrow passageway.
The bodies were all smooshed up together very deliberately,
and that was a huge hit.
Dan: And we opened at 30% profit,
which was over three times the best
that any Fridays had ever done.
Narrator: Scoggin introduced strawberry daiquiris
and other frozen cocktails,
a new kind of drinks menu designed to appeal to women.
Mikie: We would go every night and see what guys
we could pick up the at the bar.
We were usually very successful
because we were young and cute way back when,
and I actually met my husband there.
Dan: We still wanted to be the best bar in town.
And so all of our bartenders had to be able to free-pour
better than a machine could do it,
and they had to be the most friendly, outgoing,
wonderful people that you could ever buy a drink from.
I'd start doing the trick and then stop, make some drinks.
So then you and the people you didn't know beside you
would start talking. "Oh, what are they doing?"
Now you're making friends.
We were the biggest show in town.
People would line up outside.
We'd have to rope off the bar.
We'd have to let people out to let people in.
Narrator: But eventually, the lines began to dwindle.
Dan: Unfortunately, the singles bar thing ended.
It was all of a sudden, and it caught me by surprise.
Narrator: So Scoggin decided to pay
more attention to food.
Dan: We expanded the menu quite a bit.
I mean, there were a lot of products in there.
And that was our first step
into being a restaurant, not just a bar.
Narrator: Favorites like loaded potato skins
were added to the menu.
Waiter: He's going neutral territory, guys.
Narrator: TGI Fridays was making a comeback
as a pioneer of family dining.
Host: Welcome to Fridays.
Come on in!
Narrator: In 1975, Scoggin and his partners
sold the company to the Carlson Group.
Stillman left the business and eventually went on
to create Smith & Wollensky, the famous steakhouse.
Scoggin stayed on as CEO.
Dan: We went to work on a strategy of becoming an impulse buy,
an alternative to eating at home.
Narrator: A new category of restaurants was on the rise:
casual family dining.
In the 1970s and early '80s, chains like Ruby Tuesday,
Chili's, Applebee's, and Olive Garden
entered an increasingly crowded market.
TGI Fridays tried hard to stay ahead of the curve.
In 1983, Carlson decided to take the chain public.
Menus changed every season.
TGI Fridays came up with a kids' menu,
and nonalcoholic drinks debuted in 1983.
By the time Fridays turned 20 in 1985,
there were more than 100 locations across the US,
and the focal point of every restaurant, the bar,
had become part of popular culture.
Flair bartending, as it was called,
reached a whole new level.
TGI Fridays went on to launch its own world championship.
Alan Stillman even claims that Tom Cruise's character
in "Cocktail" was based on him.
Woman: What is this, hire the handicapped week?
Man: If you're going to sit in the water, go to Coney Island!
Narrator: But for Scoggin, growth came at a price.
Because of the rapid growth,
we were having stores that were problematic.
It was all because we had just expanded way too rapidly.
Narrator: Scoggin left in 1986, and three years later,
Carlson companies bought out all the shareholders
to take the chain private again
and make a major push to expand.
Dan: I was at the end of my contract.
He wanted me to stay on and do the international thing,
and I said, "No, you know, I've got this boat
I've got to go get on and take my family and leave."
Narrator: By the mid-1990s,
almost every state had at least one TGI Fridays,
and the brand had gone international.
There was even a location at the US air base in Afghanistan.
Over time, TGI Fridays introduced a low-carb menu
and toned down the decor.
Announcer: At TGI Fridays,
we let our chefs flex their muscles,
and we have a whole new menu to show for it.
Narrator: But in spite of high ad spending,
Fridays struggled to stand out.
Fridays was not distinguishing itself
from the competition.
A Fridays felt like an Applebee's, for an example,
or an Applebee's felt like a Chili's.
They were all sort of working off of the same playbook
in many ways.
Narrator: In 2008, TGI Fridays
had more than 600 restaurants in the US,
but sales started to dip as a financial crisis
gripped the restaurant industry.
David: You started to see the rise of this new segment
called fast casual.
They were now starting to offer extremely high-quality meals,
and they were doing it cheaper, they were doing it faster,
they were doing it where you didn't have to wait
at your table, you didn't have to tip.
Narrator: Between 2008 and 2019,
Fridays closed more than 200 restaurants in the US.
Sales also crashed.
In 2020, plans to take TGI Fridays public once again
were pulled as the pandemic rocked the industry.
Kate: When a company is planning on going public
and then does not go public,
that's usually not a great sign.
Narrator: During the pandemic,
TGI Fridays closed more than 74
of its 386 restaurants in the US.
Kate: People wanted things delivered to their homes.
The pandemic really, really supercharged that.
Narrator: But all is not lost for casual dining chains.
It's very premature to write off casual dining.
The growth that casual dining has seen during 2021
has been nothing short of remarkable.
Narrator: TGI Fridays still has 700 restaurants
around the world,
and its focus on delivery has started to pay off.
In the UK, the iconic American chain
rebranded to just Fridays in 2020.
Robert: I first bumped into Fridays in '89
when I first came to London, and it was a great place.
It was lively, it was packed, it was four deep at the bar,
cocktails were great,
food was stuff you'd never eaten before.
Narrator: The UK franchise is also hoping to rekindle
some of the buzz of 1965.
In May 2021, they launched a bar called none other
than 63rd+1st,
a nod to Stillman's very first Manhattan bar.
Robert: The big thing for us is to rekindle the bar.
Let's go back to our heritage, let's take the name,
the two streets that it was created on, 63rd and First,
let's use that as the name, make cocktails front and center,
and do Americana food in a sharing-plate environment
with great music.
Narrator: Returning to its roots,
the company is hopeful to bring back
some of that lost Friday feeling.