TGI Fridays’ ex-CEO—who introduced sushi to a restaurant chain famous for potato skins and mozzarella sticks—will step up to oversee hundreds of locations post-bankruptcy

Blanchette, who led the restaurant from 2018 to 2023, will step in with his company as new management for more than 400 TGI Fridays locations, the Wall Street Journal reported. He replaces FTI Consulting, which oversaw the company after it defaulted on its debt. Founder and CEO of Sugarhill Hospitality, Blanchette owns seven TGI Fridays.

Blanchette’s new role will occur in tandem with the chain gaining court approval to sell nine of its 39 corporate-owned locations for $34.9 million.

TGI Fridays Franchisor, LLC, which owns and operates 39 TGI Friday locations, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November, citing pandemic-era challenges. The chain has struggled to compete with fast-casual alternatives like Shake Shack and Chili’s. It has cycled through three chief executives since Blanchette resigned and closed more than 100 locations over the past 12 months.

TGI Fridays and Blanchette did not respond to Coins2Day’s requests for comment.

For all the restaurant’s struggles, Blanchette has expressed interest in reviving the chain. He snatched up a handful of TGI Fridays locations in January last year and bid, though unsuccessfully, on the nine restaurants the company recently was approved to sell. 

Though his tenure as CEO began in 2018, Blanchette served as a manager in training at a Philadelphia TGI Fridays location at age 23 in 1989, when the restaurant was in its heyday. However, Blanchette’s later run as CEO wasn’t so smooth. Battered by the pandemic, TGI Fridays reopened its doors quickly to attract customers, but the chain struggled to find its footing and identity. Under Blanchette’s leadership, TGI Fridays—known for its warm spinach-and-artichoke dip, chicken strips, and bacon-and-cheese-smothered potato skins—began selling sushi in partnership with C3’s Krispy Rice, owned by restaurateur Sam Nazarian.

While the incongruous combination of sushi, pub fare, and cheeseburgers was initially successful, with the partnership expanding in October 2023 after Blanchette’s departure, spicy tuna rolls and bento boxes ultimately couldn’t save the chain. That same month, a Brazil court approved bankruptcy protections for SouthRock Capital, which owned the TGI Fridays locations in the country.

The long road to bankruptcy

But TGI Fridays’ missteps didn’t begin or end with new food ventures. Founded in 1965 in Manhattan as a singles bar, the restaurant was once a haven for young people to meet, mingle, and make merry, in large part due to the chain’s extensive bar program and cocktail-wielding bartenders. In fact, TGI Fridays bartenders trained Hollywood megastar Tom Cruise for his role as a business student who turns to mixology in the romantic comedy Cocktail.

Yet, when the now Dallas-based company decided to rebrand itself as a more family-friendly restaurant in the aughts, its success slowed. By 2023, its U.S. Sales were $728 million, down from its 2008 peak of $2 billion across more than 600 U.S. Locations.

In 2014, private equity firms TriArtisan Capital and Sentinel Capital Partners (which was acquired by TriArtisan in 2019) took ownership of the company. Three years later, TGI Fridays entered into a debt refinancing deal called a whole business securitization that saw franchise royalties go to investors in order to secure bonds. But the rocky pandemic years meant TGI Fridays couldn’t uphold the terms of the deal, and it was terminated as the manager of its business, replaced by FTI Consulting in September. 

The future of the chain is now in Blanchette’s hands.

“I’ve spent the vast majority of my career here,” Blanchette told the WSJ in December. “It’s an entire body of work. I don’t want to see the brand go away,”