TGI Fridays Plans on Revamping Its Bar to Ignite Alcohol Sales

TGI Fridays plans on living up to its name this year by relaunching its bar, according to CNBC. The revamp includes allowing the service of a beer and a shot at the same time and a new partnership with actor Ryan Reynolds' gin company, Aviation Gin. The brand will also improve music, lighting and seating to encourage socializing. 

As younger consumers demand convenient off-premise food occasions, casual dining sales and traffic is declining at a rapid rate. To better compete, TGI Fridays plans to take advantage of one of the casual dining segment’s major advantages: the bar. In fact, 30% of Fridays' $2.1 billion in sales come from the bar. This development is also part of the company's plan to go public after 45 years following its November sale to Allegro Merger.

In June of last year, TGI Fridays launched America’s Longest Happy Hour and a Five Bar menu featuring $5 beer, wine and clean-label premium cocktails. Other franchisors have been honing in on improving alcohol offerings, including Applebee's happy hour deals and recent partnership with Valentine Distilling Co. to offer two craft cocktails in 65 of its store locations. IHOP added its first full-service bar at one of its Phoenix locations.  Recently, P.F. Chang's launched a new restaurant concept named Chang's After Dark in Miami to provide a late-night destination with exclusive bar and dining menu, bottle service and live entertainment. 

Despite alcohol consumptions in America falling 0.8% in 2018, reported by Bloomberg, alcohol sales typically yield generous profit margins for restaurants. Hopefully, this will be the case for TGI Fridays, which saw year-over-year sales fall nearly 7% at company-owned locations and more than 8% at franchised locations. It also just closed a number of California restaurants.

As full-service, fast casual and QSR dining chains continue to look for new ways to bring the delivery-obsessed younger generation into the restaurant, appealing to the late-night crowd could be what TGI Fridays needs to stay ahead.