Hip and Groovy

You’ll soon be reading in VMSD’s magazine pages about T.G.I. Friday’s new international makeover. It’s beginning in Westbury, N.Y., about 25 miles east of where Alan Stillman opened the first Thank God It’s Friday bar and restaurant, on the Upper East Side of New York in the about-to-be-hip mid-1960s.

The Westbury location, which was Friday’s first suburban joint, claims to have invented the Long Island Iced Tea cocktail. Friday’s says it invented “happy hour.”

That was when T.G.I. Friday’s was a brand that stood for something: youth, irreverence, emancipation, fun. Stillman saw that the first wave of baby boomers was out of college, making some money and looking for a place that was all about them, to celebrate the weekend – even if that weekend began on Wednesday afternoon. Time magazine made it all official with a 1966 article about Manhattan’s Swinging Singles Scene and Friday’s was off and running.

But running where? The scene changed, as scenes do, and Friday’s expanded, as successful retailers do. But in expansion, it seemed to retreat from cutting-edge urban singles bar to a chain restaurant in the mall if you have a coupon. It became – egad! – a family restaurant.

Even the fact that we call it “TGIF” or just “Friday’s” indicates how far the brand had wandered. Friday’s? What the hell does that mean, anyway? And Philip Harrison, the London store designer who did the U.K. prototype, told me that in England they called it “TGI’s.” It’s not the first retailer to bury its zest beneath meaningless acronyms and nicknames.

Carlson Restaurants, the parent company, is working hard to resuscitate the brand by going back to some original design concepts, like enlarging and celebrating the bar area and upgrading the eating zones, and adding some new ones, too – many of which are deliberate attempts to celebrate the brand’s heritage.

A little bit about that heritage, by the way. The urban legend is that Stillman opened the location at First Avenue and 63rd Street because that’s where all the airline stewardesses lived (it’s what we called them then), in high-rise apartment buildings called “stew zoos.” (Ugh! I apologize on behalf of my entire generation.)

Stillman figured if the “stews” frequented his place, the junior executives in the neighborhood would follow. The stewardesses did show up, and so did the guys. A lifestyle was born. How many retailers get credit for that?

But the restaurant isn’t necessarily returning to those roots. Rather, it’s trying to interpret the modern version of that swinging ’60s single, he with turtleneck sweater and bell-bottoms, she with a miniskirt and go-go boots.

The miniskirts and go-go boots are long gone. That’s okay. It’s not nostalgia T.G.I. Friday’s is after. It’s relevance.