What kind of restaurant is tgif

For families that frequent T. This free program offers guests a free appetizer just for signing up. Although the wait staff is friendly, the wait for food is a bit long. A wait time of 20 minutes is not optimal for families with small children that want to eat NOW!

It became the meeting place that served not just hot food and drink but legendary atmosphere too! Made with premium spirits, our cocktails are handcrafted by our expert bartenders who can recommend the perfect serve just for you, including the icons like the classic Long Island Iced Tea, which was born at Fridays. We also have a great range of mocktails for a refreshing alternative.

The propeller is mounted above the bar in every Fridays restaurant. The bar's early nights were pretty much just cocktail parties, with a young clientele who were particularly enthusiastic because as Stillman himself theorizes it appeared on the scene the same year that the birth control pill was invented. Food was served — mostly hamburgers and fries — and the waiters were given that iconic red-and-white to wear. Otherwise, however, the bar would have been unrecognizable from Fridays today, instead aiming for a feel that its visitors were "going to someone's apartment for a cocktail party.

Another singles bar, Maxwell's Plum, then opened up across the road, and the dating scene in America was forever changed. In , an entrepreneur from Memphis named James Robinson visited Stillman's bar on a trip to New York City, and so fell so in love with it that he convinced Stillman to allow him to open a second location in his hometown. The Memphis branch of TGI Fridays became a hub for the city's youth, and soon garnered a reputation for its boozy parties, heavy drug use, and support for the city's burgeoning queer scene.

In many ways, the establishment of the restaurant in New York and its Memphis sister had, according to an article in American Heritage , "began the commercialization of sexual freedom. Before the bar opened, drinkers in Memphis had to bring their own bottles to bars, where they could then have drinks made from them by the bartenders. TGI Friday's, however, sold mixed drinks ready-made. Unsurprisingly, for this reason it was a smash success. Robinson himself went on to open more branches, in Nashville and Arkansas, and the chain's name began to spread.

The rest is history. But TGI Fridays' days as a hip, swinging singles bar were not to last. As the early franchises became more and more popular, they began to expand into larger suburban towns across the south of America. According to Stillman himself : "Those cities have a very different way of interacting with the street in the first place, but the big shift was that during the day, we started to get families. We had very informal, casual food — you could get an omelette or a hamburger — so families were coming in with their kids.

That was the big change. The shift towards family-oriented dining didn't exactly come overnight. In fact, Stillman believes it took six or seven years for TGI Fridays to become more or less what it is today. And in , he was approached by a potential buyer for the chain and offered him a significant amount of money to sell. Stillman, enticed by the size of the offer and anxious about the state of the economy, sold. TGI Fridays became a corporate entity. Today, the bar's raucous party days seem like nothing more than a distant memory.

One of the more memorable aspects of TGI Fridays' personality is the trademark clutter that fills each of its restaurants. The astronauts included Alan Shepard , who, in , became the first American to fly in space.

The chain has become known for its "flair bartending" when bartenders perform tricks , which was started by staff member John Mescall in the mids. When word of his skills made the rounds, he created a how-to video for other bartenders at the chain. The competition not only includes flair bartending , but also a written test, a speed test, as well as a test on pour accuracy and "garnish specs.

One hundred and one Fridays employees together hold the Guinness World Record for "most people cocktail flairing ," which they won at the Covent Garden location in London in The restaurant sent out a press release saying that they had petitioned the International Olympic Committee to add bartending as an official Olympic sport. I was lucky enough to do it for three years — he only did it to make a movie," he said in an interview with Edible Geography.

Want to know more about TGI Fridays' colorful history? Listen to Business Insider's interview with the founder on new podcast "Household Name. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options. Get the Insider App.