The flagship Leicester Square branch of the TGI Fridays US themed dining chain has been shut down.
The ribs, steak and milkshake venue was originally one of 51 earmarked to stay open following a rescue takeover by Breal Capital and Calveton UK last October.
However, the keys have now been returned to the landlord and the site is closed for good, according to the Propel hospitality website. The closure leaves TGI Fridays with no outlets in central London though it is still operating at Westfield Stratford City, the O2 in Greenwich and at Wembley Park.
TGI Fridays invested £3.5 million in opening the Leicester Square site, which was located beneath Capital Radio, at the end of 2015. It was described by the brand at the time as the “Fridays jewel in London’s crown”, after a huge refit to create an open kitchen and large four-sided stand-alone bar.
See also: Which TGI Friday’s establishments are closing?
Breal Capital and Calveton, which acquired D&D London in 2023, paid £9.55 million to acquire the bulk of TGI Fridays UK out of administration through a new vehicle, the Liberty Bar and Restaurant Group last Autumn. The deal saw 51 out of the 87 TGI Fridays across the country acquired, with circa 2,300 jobs saved.
The flagship had seating for 260 indoors and 60 outdoors.
News of the closure came as new figures showed how Britain’s hospitality sector demonstrated remarkable resilience last year despite the challenges of rising costs and faltering consumer confidence.
The latest Hospitality Market Monitor from CGA by NIQ and global consulting firm AlixPartners shows a total of 99,120 licensed pubs, restaurants and hotels were operating in December 2024, almost unchanged from the 99,113 in December 2023. It follows two years of contraction in 2022 and 2023, when the licensed sector shrunk by 4.5% and 2.9% respectively. There were 4,078 closures and 4,085 openings over 2024—a turnover equivalent to 11 venues a day.
CGA by NIQ director Karl Chessell said: “Given all the challenges that were thrown at hospitality in 2024, stability in site numbers shows the impressive resilience of operators. However, we continue to see a rapid churn of sites as the sector adapts to consumers’ changing habits, while hundreds of net closures in the final quarter of the year emphasise that the burden of costs—made even heavier by the Autumn Budget—is threatening hospitality’s fragile renewal.
“The long-term confidence of leaders, entrepreneurs and investors is solid, but January has already brought further closures of venues that clung on through Christmas. With economic uncertainty lingering, many more hospitality venues remain extremely vulnerable.”
