T.G.I. Friday's

TGI Friday's 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 Goodness It's Friday", although as of 2010 some television commercials for the chain have also made use of the alternative phrase, "Thank God It's Friday's." The chain is known for its appearance, with red-striped canopies, brass railings, Tiffany lamps, and frequent use of antiques as decor.

History

Alan Stillman opened the first T.G.I. Friday's 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.