TGI FRiDAYS

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Location & Contact:

1315 Centennial Ave
Piscataway, NJ 08854
732-465-0101
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Description:

1965

The first T.G.I. Fridays restaurant opens in New York City at the corner of First Avenue and 63rd Street. T.G.I. Fridays on Manhattans upper East Side quickly becomes THE meeting place for single adults, totaling $1 million in revenues its first year.

The first T.G.I. Fridays menu was a chalkboard.

1970

Memphis, Tennessee becomes the location for the second T.G.I. Fridays.

1972

T.G.I. Fridays opens in Dallas in the spring of 1972. As in New York and Memphis, T.G.I. Fridays took the city by storm. The Dallas restaurant nets a record-setting $2 million in revenues its first year.

After this dramatic success, the Dallas franchise joins the T.G.I. Fridays restaurant in New York to take the concept nationwide, excluding Manhattan. T.G.I. Fridays Group, Inc. (Dallas) merges into TGI Fridays Inc. (New York.)

T.G.I. Fridays starts its tradition of welcoming Friday in at midnight on Thursday night. Every Thursday night is like a New Years Eve party, with champagne, confetti and noisemakers.

Thursdays are always the big deal at Fridays, since thats when the usually packed-anyway restaurant has its midnight gala with balloons and champagne.
Dallas Times Herald, March 30, 1972

Bar where the Singles Mingle (local swingles) hang outFridays is the present phenomenon on the Dallas scene.
Dallas Times Herald, April 25, 1972

Fridays in Old Town is one of the highest volume restaurants in Texas.
Dallas Times Herald, October 19, 1972

1973

It all began modestly enough. An unmarried New York City perfume salesman named Alan Stillman decided that the coolest way to meet the stewardesses in his neighborhood would be to buy a broken down beer joint, jazz it up with Tiffany lamps and mod young waiters and christen it with an eye toward attracting the career crowd the T.G.I.F. (Thank Goodness Its Friday). Within one week the police had to ring Fridays (as it quickly became known) with barricades to handle the nightly hordes of young singles. Hundreds of blatantly imitative emporiums soon opened their doors in scores of major cities and an industry was born.
Newsweek, July 16, 1973