Two Scottish TGI Fridays restaurants to shut as list of 35 closures revealed

Two TGI Friday’s restaurants in Scotland will shut despite the overall chain business being saved.

It comes after it was announced that more than 1,000 TGI Fridays staff were made redundant on Monday, as 35 restaurants closed with immediate effect.

Among the list of closures is two restaurants in Scotland – the outlet at Fort Kinnaird in Edinburgh and the venue in Dundee.

Six restaurants will remain open in Scotland, including Aberdeen’s Union Square, Glasgow Fort, Braehead, Silverburn, Glasgow’s Buchanan Street, Aberdeen Beach and Edinburgh’s Castle Street.

The announcement of the closures comes after the hospitality firm scrambled to sell its chain of 87 restaurants, including eight in Scotland, after plans to buy the US restaurant chain for £177m fell through.

On Monday, it was announced Breal Capital and Calveton UK acquired 51 restaurants after the group’s previous operator fell into administration.

But joint administrators at Teneo said 35 restaurants were not included in the sale and have been closed immediately, resulting in 1,012 redundancies.

TGI Fridays was first launched in New York in 1965, and continues to operate about 130 restaurants in the US.

The business grappled with weaker spending in the UK in recent years, and said it had been impacted by a post-Covid slowdown in demand across the casual dining sector.

Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell, said TGI Fridays is a brand “wrapped in nostalgia but one the new owners are hyper aware needs to modernise to appeal to today’s diner”.

“Keeping the essence of what made the business successful whilst finding a new direction won’t be an easy task and the new owners have carved off 35 branches they don’t feel confident taking forward,” she said.

“The buyers, Breal Capital and Calveton UK, have a good track record in hospitality and with more than 2,000 jobs saved the brand has a chance to rediscover its mojo.”