Winner winner, pancake dinner. (With a side of Riblets.)
Yet another idea which supports this - big chain restaurants are usually near the big road, have advertising, and thus are a safe bet before there was GPS. Now if you find a nice sounding restaurant a mile away from the exit, you know you can find your way back. Makes for more risk taking.
I only went to a TGI Fridays a couple of times. It would have been somewhere in the 2007-2009 timeframe I expect. I was living in Kirkland, WA, and there was one in the southern part of the city.
It was not good. The only thing I ever ate there that I didn’t hate was their crispy fried green beans which were available as an appetizer. They were actually very good. Everything else I ever got was at best mediocre.
If they were good in the 90s, that was before I had a chance to try them out. 
We rarely eat at sit-down restaurants anymore, with one exception. There is a local, family-owned Mexican restaurant here that we’ve been going to since they opened. When we first went my daughter was literally a baby, and they’ve watched her grow up as we typically go there once a week. Their food is fantastic, prices are amazing, and they literally treat us like family because they know all of us and we know all of them so well. They also dote on my daughter and call her “princess” all the time, and bring her extra things like bean dip and sometimes desserts without charging extra.
That place is doing very, very well and weathered the pandemic without missing a beat. (During the pandemic, we could order and pick things up curbside, and still ate from there as often as before.)
The fact that places like that still seem to be doing okay (as mentioned at other times in this thread as well) shows that the problems of the chain restaurant model is a weakness of that model. You can still run a successful restaurant today if you’re not treating it like some commodity to wring every cent out of until it gets crushed indifferently.
There’s a business saying about being careful who’s ass you kick on the way up since you’ll have to kiss it on the way down. It seems your friend showed Applebee’s top management who’s really the Final Boss of this game. 
In recent years, I’ve seen this snippet about her show up more than once on social media.
There should be one more sentence in that meme:
… And then cleaned house at Applebees’ HQ.
Don’t the combo KFC/Taco Bells have “limited menus” though to make up for needing double the supplies/ingredients in a single restaurant?
I’m still pissed that IHoP got rid of the kangaroos.
I remember when I was a kid the’d give you a little plastic kangaroo on a base with a spring in between the two. You’d put it on the table & it would hop
Honestly it’s the only place in this thread where I actually still enjoy the food. Though granted I haven’t been to one since pre-pandemic. But all the rest are pretty aggressively mediocre these days. An Outback just closed in my vicinity and I could only shrug.
Now I’m picturing a giant switch, they throw it, and all the IHOP furniture rotates into the floor, evil-lair style, to reveal the Applebee’s furniture.
Their numbers do seem to support this. They reported same-stores sales growth of around 8% in their most recent quarter, and it appears that customer traffic is also increasing a bit.
For what it’s worth, there’s a Texas Roadhouse near us, and it does seem to be doing quite well. We get carryout from them from time to time, and when I got to pick up our order, the place is always packed.
Don’t forget the suction cup component. You’d press it down on a smooth surface and it would “release” unpredictably. Oh what fun.
I’ve decided we’re going out to dinner tomorrow night at a soon-to-be-defunct chain, just so I can say I’ve been there recently before they went the way of the dodo. I don’t think I’ve been at a TGI’s in at least 5 years but do remember liking them when we used to go there. They used to have a Jack Daniels glaze (which now looks like the generic whiskey glaze w/o the marketing partnership) that I remember being pretty good.
The other option is Red Lobster, which I haven’t been to in more like 20+ years. I don’t think I’ve ever had their Cheddar Bay biscuits & want to try them once, but then I’m not a real cheddar fan anyway.
What say you?
- TGI Friday’s
- Red Lobster
0
voters
They don’t taste like cheddar, they taste like magic.
If you only have those two places to go to, go to Red Lobster.
Red Lobster’s menu is okay. There’s not much that excites me. But those biscuits are insane, and get served at your table as part of your meal before you order (like chips and salsa at a Mexican restaurant).
We have many other options, a lot of them much better but tomorrow night’s dinner theme is one last time before they’re gone…unless you know of another chain that’s dying that could be added as a third option…provided you also know where I can get a three sided coin.
I voted Red Lobster (“RL”) despite disliking the place from the one and only time I was forced by the group to eat there.
But I didn’t vote that way to screw @Spiderman.
I voted that way because IMO RL is much closer to shutting down than is TGIF. So by hurrying to RL before they close, you can then visit TGIF after RL is gone and you’ve recovered your desire to sample corporate near-bankrupt once-was-mediocrity once more. Which you probably can’t do in the other order.
They brought biscuits to the table, in a basket covered by a napkin. Pulled back the napkin & they were warm. Unfortunately, that’s the only positive thing I can say about them. The first bite was salty. I ate them because they were there but I wouldn’t order them or ask for more or buy them in the grocery store.
We figured the sauce for the scampi came in 5-gallon buckets because it was swimming in it (not that swimming in butter & garlic is a bad thing!) & there were three more tails than bodies. Isn’t there a 1:1 ratio between bodies & tails? Did someone else luck out & get shrimp they didn’t even need to pull the tail off of? The alfredo sauce was bland & uninspired. Someone in the next room had a birthday & all of the servers came over & sung & clapped - Uggh!
In short, I remember why it’s been two to three decades since I’ve been to one. At least I’ll know when the last one closes that I won’t be missing much. 91%, eh? A serious blow to the gastronomic cred of the Dope!
One more thing, It was probably four miles to the bay & six to the ocean & we drove there after going out to the lighthouse & being literally a few steps from the ocean; no lack of fresh seafood restaurants around here.
Wait until you go to Friday’s
I’ve never eaten at a Red Lobster, but the fact that they are salty is probably exactly why people like them 
. Just like I’m fond of those cinnamon-butter Texas Roadhouse rolls, while those with more refined palates turn up their nose at them because they’re so sweet.
Sweet and salty triggers that moreish impulse.
I enjoyed Red Lobster the one time I went to them more than TGIFridays , and would probably go there again if I had to choose between the two. If I ate out every single week and only had the two to choose from, I might prefer TGIF eventually due to being tired of seafood all the time, but there are plenty of other casual dining spots that are equivalent.