4 Las Vegas TGI Fridays Locations Were Raptured Overnight
TGI Fridays. | TGI Fridays And the closings leave a loaded potato skin-sized hole in many millennial hearts There’s a unique endearment to chain restaurants for those who grew up as teenagers in Las Vegas in the early 2000s. While the city caters to the over-21 crowd — and, to a degree, that crowd’s very young children — teenagers are left with few options for weekend entertainment. So for Las Vegas teens in the early-aughts, weekends looked like visiting an off-Strip casino for a movie and dinner, often somewhere like a TGI Fridays. Today, TGI Fridays closed its locations at four Las Vegas casinos — leaving a loaded potato skin-sized hole in many millennial hearts. On Friday, January 31, Boyd Gaming announced that the restaurants are closed, effective immediately at the Orleans, Sam’s Town, Aliante, and Gold Coast casinos. TGI Fridays filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2024 and has closed about 130 of its locations since the end of 2023, leaving it with half of the restaurants it operated last year, according to its website. The chain has been struggling for years — between 2008 and 2023, it closed 55 percent of its U.S. locations, and sales declined by 63 percent, according to data from Technomic. In Las Vegas, Friday’s announcement about the TGI Fridays closings means more than just the erosion of the middle-class family’s celebration restaurant — it’s the harbinger that our Fridays have changed, too. TGI Fridays cemented itself in the cultural canon more than a decade ago when the movie Office Space satirized the brand’s commitment to pieces of flair so resolutely that the chain eventually got rid of its mandatory button accessories, according to director Mike Judge. “Maybe I made the world a better place,” he told Deadline. In 2014, a reporter for Gawker bravely asked the question, “What if I told you that mozzarella sticks never had to end?” — and made Tumblr history by posting her 14-hour appetizer investigation at a TGI Fridays. The TGI Fridays at Sam’s Town — the Boulder Highway casino and inspiration for the Killers’s album of the same name — had its own charms. Many a family celebrated birthdays, Little League games, and high school graduations with endless appetizers and then a visit to the Mystic Falls Laser Light Show. There has been no shortage of discussion about how aging millennials may be singularly responsible for the downfall of the mid-tier chain restaurant — gallingly more interested in food from locally owned businesses. But chain restaurants are making a comeback, baby. Restaurants like Chili’s have re-endeared themselves to customers, drawing Gen-Z and avid TikTok users (often one in the same) for ironic-but-not nights out for Triple Dipper appetizer platters. Applebee’s has also gotten in on the night out with $1 margaritas and the Day-Glo blue $1 Halloween drink. In Las Vegas, the chain restaurant often meant a visit to the casino — with post-dinner slot play for families or cosmic bowling for the after-school crowd. Recent Las Vegas trends have done away with chains, replacing food court stalwarts like Sbarro and Johnny Rockets with luxe new food halls with big-name chefs and higher prices. Boyd Gaming has not offered comment on its plans for the TGI Fridays spaces, so it remains to be seen whether chain restaurant nostalgia will reign again in the form of an Olive Garden or Longhorn Steakhouse, or if the end of the comforting familiarity of low-effort appetizer platters means our Fridays are no longer something to be thankful for.
Tomas Kauer - Las Vegas Syndicated News 
And the closings leave a loaded potato skin-sized hole in many millennial hearts
There’s a unique endearment to chain restaurants for those who grew up as teenagers in Las Vegas in the early 2000s. While the city caters to the over-21 crowd — and, to a degree, that crowd’s very young children — teenagers are left with few options for weekend entertainment. So for Las Vegas teens in the early-aughts, weekends looked like visiting an off-Strip casino for a movie and dinner, often somewhere like a TGI Fridays. Today, TGI Fridays closed its locations at four Las Vegas casinos — leaving a loaded potato skin-sized hole in many millennial hearts.
On Friday, January 31, Boyd Gaming announced that the restaurants are closed, effective immediately at the Orleans, Sam’s Town, Aliante, and Gold Coast casinos. TGI Fridays filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2024 and has closed about 130 of its locations since the end of 2023, leaving it with half of the restaurants it operated last year, according to its website. The chain has been struggling for years — between 2008 and 2023, it closed 55 percent of its U.S. locations, and sales declined by 63 percent, according to data from Technomic. In Las Vegas, Friday’s announcement about the TGI Fridays closings means more than just the erosion of the middle-class family’s celebration restaurant — it’s the harbinger that our Fridays have changed, too.
TGI Fridays cemented itself in the cultural canon more than a decade ago when the movie Office Space satirized the brand’s commitment to pieces of flair so resolutely that the chain eventually got rid of its mandatory button accessories, according to director Mike Judge. “Maybe I made the world a better place,” he told Deadline. In 2014, a reporter for Gawker bravely asked the question, “What if I told you that mozzarella sticks never had to end?” — and made Tumblr history by posting her 14-hour appetizer investigation at a TGI Fridays.
The TGI Fridays at Sam’s Town — the Boulder Highway casino and inspiration for the Killers’s album of the same name — had its own charms. Many a family celebrated birthdays, Little League games, and high school graduations with endless appetizers and then a visit to the Mystic Falls Laser Light Show. There has been no shortage of discussion about how aging millennials may be singularly responsible for the downfall of the mid-tier chain restaurant — gallingly more interested in food from locally owned businesses. But chain restaurants are making a comeback, baby. Restaurants like Chili’s have re-endeared themselves to customers, drawing Gen-Z and avid TikTok users (often one in the same) for ironic-but-not nights out for Triple Dipper appetizer platters. Applebee’s has also gotten in on the night out with $1 margaritas and the Day-Glo blue $1 Halloween drink.
In Las Vegas, the chain restaurant often meant a visit to the casino — with post-dinner slot play for families or cosmic bowling for the after-school crowd. Recent Las Vegas trends have done away with chains, replacing food court stalwarts like Sbarro and Johnny Rockets with luxe new food halls with big-name chefs and higher prices. Boyd Gaming has not offered comment on its plans for the TGI Fridays spaces, so it remains to be seen whether chain restaurant nostalgia will reign again in the form of an Olive Garden or Longhorn Steakhouse, or if the end of the comforting familiarity of low-effort appetizer platters means our Fridays are no longer something to be thankful for.
