TGI Fridays gets bought
Happy Friday!
On the road, so expect an abbreviated edition of Industry Bites this week. Let’s go!
3 Numbers
$220 million
Price paid by TGI Fridays franchisee Hostmore for the TGI Fridays brand. Hostmore is a UK-based public company and Fridays’ largest franchisee. Assuming the deal closes, the combined company, TGI Fridays Plc, will trade on the London Stock Exchange. (Happily, the ticker "TGIF” was available.)
100
Number of Buffalo Wild Wings Go locations, with #100 opening last week in New York. Inspire Brands launched the quick-service brand just four years ago and sees ample white space for further growth. BWW Go fits in a small format (1,500 square feet) and features a pared-down, takeout-only menu.
25
Percentage of diners who have increased their usage of restaurant-specific mobile apps in the past three months, according to a new report from Tillster. 17% of customers also said they plan to use third-party delivery apps less in the coming year.
What’s In the News
McDonald’s is reintroducing bagel sandwiches in California and investing $15 million in local advertising — both in an effort to boost traffic and offset the effect of wage increases in the state, according to a Bloomberg report:
McDonald’s assembled a task force of employees and restaurant owners to figure out a strategy for offsetting the expense, according to people familiar with the matter who weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The company called them the “Rise and Dominate” team.
“This team has gathered best practices from around the world where municipalities have managed wage increases and will pilot innovative short- and long-term solutions for California,” the company said in a statement.
Their suggestions included reintroducing bagels, which the company knew would attract diners. Ad money was also allocated to drive traffic, particularly to the more profitable digital channel.
McDonald’s franchisee @McFranchisee gave a slightly different take on X, saying that bagel sandwiches are actually being reintroduced to 90% of the system, and the menu reintroduction has nothing to do with the California wage hikes.
(Whatever it’s worth, I did notice that commercials advertising McD’s bagels hit the airwaves in Texas over the weekend.)
Still: the $15 million spent in local advertising is illuminating. It shows that McD’s is not just relying on price increases to counteract increasing costs in labor — it’s investing heavily in boosting traffic counts as well.
Headlines
Jersey Mike’s CEO Peter Cancro said the chain is “always for sale,” but the right offer hasn’t come along just yet. Red Lobster is reportedly considering a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing to restructure its debt. Domino’s launched New York Style Pizza, featuring a thinner, foldable crust. Bojangles introduced the “Bird Dog” — a chicken tender served in a hot dog bun — and (separately) announced it will open its first California store next year. Momofuku will no longer enforce the trademark “chili crisp” after receiving criticism over its trademark challenges.
领英推荐
Name That Chain!
You’ve got one guess to name this week’s mystery chain:
Last week’s answer: Checkers and Rally’s
#Content Recs
‘Member When?!
If you love this section of the newsletter and you ever find yourself in LA, you’re probably going to want to get on the waiting list for the restaurant Chain.
The New York Times published a fascinating story this week on the buzzed-about restaurant, which was founded by actor B.J. Novak as a chef-driven homage to vintage fast food.
The restaurant has had an extremely LA existence — beginning as a series of pop-up dinners in parking lots and alleyways in 2021, then moving to a house in West Hollywood, and now settling in a larger space in the neighborhood of Virgil Village.
The interior was designed by the production designer for Oppenheimer (seriously!) and is filled with McDonald’s and Pizza Hut relics. Tables are slightly hard to land — the waiting list is now 25,000 people long.
On the night the reporter went to Chain, the menu included a well-crafted homage to Pizza Hut’s personal pan pizza. From the NYT:
“Before going, I worried that Chain would feel like a pantomime, mocking the restaurants it referenced and the people who loved them. But there was a warmth to the place, a clear affection for the subject and its hard-wired pleasures. As I waited for the buzzer I’d been handed to flash, telling me the pizzas were ready to pick up, I gripped it too tightly. The anxiety of missing the notification — the thrill when it buzzed! — was all very, very real.
“[Chef Tim] Hollingsworth used a childhood memory as a reference point for the pizza dinner: the night he was stuck in a Pizza Hut in Houston during a flash flood. But like everyone there, I brought my own set of references. By the end of the night, it felt as if I’d gone to an eccentric billionaire’s party for which he’d painstakingly recreated his last birthday from the summer before his parents’ divorce. The thoroughness. The precision. The sublimation of heartbreak and longing.
“Mr. Hollingsworth has a serious fine-dining background — he was chef de cuisine at the French Laundry for years and now runs Otium in Los Angeles. But he resists all fussiness — no miniaturization, no textural transmutation, no construction that would make the dish unrecognizable. This is why it works. The food is chef-driven, technically, but the chef knows how to disappear.”
You had me at “eccentric billionaire’s party for which he’d painstakingly recreated his last birthday from the summer before his parents’ divorce.” I’m in!
Thanks for reading! We’ll be back next Friday with a recap of industry news.
Andy