On Thursday, the TGI Fridays in Meheun, Massachusetts, hosted a community fundraiser. There was music, prizes and a raffle, and local police and firefighters faced off in Olympic-style events like shooting a ping-pong ball into a cup taped to their partner’s stomach.
The place was packed. And when pictures of the revelry made their way to Ray Blanchette, TGI Fridays’ newly appointed leader and the owner of the Meheun location, he had to smile.
“It just reminds you that TGI Fridays is a place that you can let your hair down a little bit,” he said. “There’s not a lot of brands that can say yeah, that fits. But for us, you go, yeah, I get it.”
As Blanchette takes the reins at the chain, he wants to recapture that energy—that flair—that the brand was once known for, before a cascade of setbacks led it to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for its 39 corporate locations in November.
Prior to that, the chain had closed about 100 locations, lost control of most of its assets due to an issue with its whole business securitization, and had a deal to merge with its U.K. franchisee fall through.
It has not been an easy stretch for the 60-year-old brand that helped create casual dining. But Blanchette is uniquely qualified to lead a Fridays revival. He has spent most of his career with the chain across two stints, first from 1989 to 2007 and then again from 2018 to 2023, when he was CEO.
And even after leaving, he couldn’t quit the brand. Early last year, he acquired a group of locations in New England through his newly formed Sugarloaf Hospitality. And then, when Fridays went into bankruptcy, Blanchette threw his hat in the ring to take over as manager of the whole operation. Needless to say, he got the job, which became official on Jan. 1.
In the 100 days since then, Blanchette has built a new support staff and moved into Fridays’ former test kitchen, where he oversaw an almost total revamp of the menu. He hired a new digital marketing team to help tell the Fridays story around the world. And he wants to grow the brand again, both at home and abroad.
"I bleed red and white, no doubt," Blanchette says. | Photo courtesy of TGI Fridays
He has his work cut out for him. Bankruptcy completely transformed TGI Fridays' U.S. business. At the end of 2023, the company had 269 domestic locations, a little over half of which were company-owned. Today, it has between 80 and 90 restaurants, all franchised.
That is a long fall from the chain’s peak in the mid-2000s, when it had 600 units and broke $2 billion in annual sales, making it the 26th largest restaurant chain in the country, according to Technomic data. By 2023, it had sunk to No. 80.
In between, it faced a recession, the decline of in-person retail, the rise of fast-casual restaurant chains and, to top it off, a global pandemic that slammed full-service dining. All of those forces siphoned off customers, revenue and locations from TGI Fridays, leaving it at just a fraction of its former size.
It also lost some relevance along the way, slipping into a muddled middle class of bar and grill concepts with similar food and atmosphere.
That’s where Blanchette, who saw the brand through its glory days, believes he can help. He bleeds red and white, he said. But he’s also realistic about how far TGI Fridays has strayed from its roots.
“In any turnaround, you’ve gotta confront the brutal facts without placing blame or excuse,” he said. “We have to fix what’s broken, or else it’s just an endless perpetual downward spiral.”
The first thing Blanchette tackled was the menu, which he sees as Fridays’ single most important asset. (“It’s your business card,” he said.) Under his guidance, Fridays has reworked about 80% of its offerings, mostly with ingredient upgrades and new cooking processes.
Chicken tenders will now be hand-breaded, and the chain is also testing hand-cut steaks, an idea brought by a franchisee that Blanchette decided to run with. After hearing from customers that its burgers were dry, Fridays developed a new signature sauce—TGI Sauce—that will go on its burgers but also act as a dip for tenders and tots.
Blanchette played a hands-on role in the R&D, sometimes attending tastings six or seven days in a row. It was a lot of work in a short period of time, but the goal was simple: “Is it as good as it can be? And if not, then fix it,” he said.
Fridays also hired an outside firm to re-engineer its menu design. The new layout spotlights appetizers and other shareables, such as a new mozzarella stick flight featuring different coatings and sauces. The chain hopes items like these will satisfy consumers' hunger for socialization coming out of the pandemic, Blanchette said.
A refreshed bar program could also help in that regard. The bar has always been Fridays’ focal point, and it was long known for its seven “house specialties”—classic cocktails like Manhattans and Rob Roys that came in generous 2-ounce pours.
Under Blanchette, Fridays is bringing back house specialties but modernizing the lineup with things like margaritas and the popular strawberry Henny. They’ll come in eye-catching glassware with touches of freshness, like a strawberry on the rim of the Henny. Fridays is calling the drinks Power Pours and marketing them as “sips that slap.”
Fridays will begin testing the new menu at a handful of locations next week before taking it chainwide. Down the line, restaurants will upgrade other parts of the dining experience, including music, lighting, furniture and even layout.
While some of these changes, like hand-cut steaks, will add complexity to Fridays’ operations, Blanchette said that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Back in the day, he noted, the chain made everything from scratch, from salad dressings to its famous loaded potato skins.
“We kinda wear complexity like a badge of honor,” he said. “Anytime you do things that enable [employees] to serve food that they’re proud of, they lean in harder and they want to train harder and they want to learn more.”
At the same time, the chain will remove steps and processes that don’t contribute to things that matter, namely excellent food. The emphasis on food quality is one area where Blanchette believes Fridays can get an edge on some of its larger competitors in casual dining.
“We can do things that cause them to hurt themselves,” he said, pointing to hand-cut steaks and signature sauces as an example. “If people want to late-chase, it could be expensive for them.”
TGI Fridays employees in Australia celebrate its 60th birthday. | Photo courtesy of TGI Fridays
Though Fridays has struggled lately in the U.S., it has been a different story internationally, where it has about 300 locations. It just inked a new development deal in Peru, Blanchette said, and had six new openings last year in the Philippines.
One of Blanchette’s goals as CEO is to unite TGI Fridays behind a single global strategy, rather than having two playbooks for national and international operations. It has kicked that off with a new social media approach that incorporates content from Fridays around the world, such as a recent “global cheers” campaign across all of its markets to celebrate the brand’s 60th anniversary.
“When TGI Fridays gets to kind of take you around to see other countries … that’s kind of fun,” Blanchette said.
But he also wants to grow the brand in the U.S. after many years of retrenchment. He's particularly interested in nontraditional locations such as hotels and airports, where travelers tend to gravitate to name brands, he said. More urban locations with smaller footprints are also a possibility.
“Once we get through this near-term issue and start competing harder, the brand is more likely to grow than contract,” he said. “We certainly have every intention of growing this brand domestically and internationally.”
At the same time, he sees the chain’s smaller size as an advantage. Pruned back and unencumbered by debt, the company can move faster and take chances.
In other words, TGI Fridays can let its hair down a little.
“We’re sort of free to go out and take the calculated risks that we want to provide better experiences for our guests,” he said. “We have to make it an advantage. We have no other choice.”