In the 70s and 80s, TGI Friday's grew in popularity as the first singles bar in the U.S., a happy hour hotspot where the bartenders did tricks.

But TGI Friday's has since lost its flair, closing over 200 locations across the country since 2019.

And in November, the restaurant chain filed for bankruptcy, citing a problematic capital structure and fallout from the pandemic.

TGI Friday's went from being an American icon to being a shell of itself.

So what went wrong?

New York restaurateur Alan Stillman says he opened the first TGI Friday's in 1965 to meet the flight attendants in his neighborhood.

Is it fair to say you got into the business because you wanted to meet women?

Absolutely fair.

Not only fair, but accurate and true.

And it worked.

Stillman says the restaurant started as a side hustle, funded by a $5,000 loan from his mom.

I was just out to have a very good time.

It exploded so quickly.

TGI Friday's really knew its niche, and that was the bar.

The people that were coming in were young people, and they were looking to meet other young people.

They were looking to stand at a bar.

In the early days, bartenders at the restaurant went through rigorous training that involved memorizing nearly 500 drink recipes and learning tricks to entertain customers.

You've got to make your job fun.

You're out there.

That's what bartending is all about.

TGI Friday's is famous for having this annual bar championship where bartenders would compete and who had the best technique and skills.

Its bartenders also famously trained Tom Cruise for his role in the 1988 movie Cocktail.

The bartender.

TGI Friday's opened its first franchise location in the U.S. in 1967, then expanded internationally in 1986.

They've had and had a big presence in lots of other countries, and I think that did help get its name established.

It kind of became synonymous with this American vibe.

The company started to shift its strategy in the 90s and 2000s, away from bar and grill, to focus more on catering to families.

Some industry experts say this was a mistake because it made the brand's messaging less clear.

Its U.S. sales peaked in 2008 and fell continuously after the recession.

Then in 2014, two private equity firms bought TGI Friday's.

TriArtisan later bought out Sentinel in 2019.

There were changes that were made, like unlimited app deals.

Endless apps just got endlesser.

More focus on some kind of deals to try to get more than just the happy hour office crowd.

All day, every day drink specials, only at Friday's.

In 2017, TGI Friday's signed a financial agreement known as whole business securitization.

This is where investors lend money to a company in exchange for bonds.

In the case of TGI Friday's, these bonds were secured by its franchisee royalties.

Whole business securitization is something that some other restaurants like Domino's and Jimmy John's had experimented with in the 2000s and 2010s.

It's a great way to borrow up front, but there's, you know, covenants and risks if something goes wrong.

And the big thing that went wrong for TGI Friday's was the pandemic.

In 2020, the company closed around 50 U.S. restaurants, and its total sales fell below the standards it had to keep under this financial agreement.

This meant that all the royalties that franchisees had paid to the company had to go toward paying back investors.

An actual silver lining for TGI Friday's after the pandemic hit was they were very quick to reopen.

But then other chains opened up as well and other restaurants, and that siphoned off some of this business.

So TGI Friday's got creative to compete by selling sushi.

The private equity firm that owns TGI Friday's had invested in a ghost kitchen platform called C3.

And one of the brands on C3 was a sushi brand called Crispy Rice.

The chain began by hosting Crispy Rice's to-go operations in some of its kitchens, and eventually started serving that sushi in its restaurants.

From talking to operators and executives, that was a bad move because it was not on brand for TGI Friday's, and it made things much more complicated for the restaurants.

And it just didn't generate enough money to justify that.

TGI Friday's didn't respond to requests for comment.

By 2023, TGI Friday's was a brand in freefall.

There was some decline in the levels of service and food and hospitality and being able to reinvest back in the restaurants because, remember, all those royalties were going to the investors, not the restaurants.

We waited two hours for our food.

It's old.

And stress at the management level only made matters worse.

TGI Friday's went through a huge succession of CEOs, and I think that was disruptive to the company overall.

In late 2023, TGI Friday's brought in some veteran operators to try to improve operations, but they couldn't overcome the company's financial issues.

This securitized debt they took on 2017, I think really complicated things and also led to their really tough times they're in now, which is bankruptcy.

In April, the company entered into a deal to be acquired by its largest franchisee, Hostmore, and to go public on the London Stock Exchange.

This potential IPO in the UK with their biggest franchisee there was really a Hail Mary pass.

They didn't really have a lot of other options at this point, but that did not come to be.

TGI Friday's isn't alone in its financial struggles.

Restaurant chains and operators this year are on track to declare the most bankruptcies in decades outside of 2020.

TGI Friday's has closed dozens of U.S. locations this year.

They also got kicked out of their headquarters, so it's been a long time coming.

The broader change among casual dining and where people want to go out and hang out has been a real challenge for them.

The company's franchised operations, which are independently owned and operated, stayed out of bankruptcy.

Franchisees have a lot of questions about what this process means for them and who's the CEO of the company and how do they get help and support and does this brand last?