• United Airlines' share price has more than doubled in 2024, outperforming competitors.
• The airline benefits from its hub airport structure and has been smart with deploying capacity.
• Strong finances and planned share buybacks have also helped.

United Airlines may be Boeing's biggest customer, but the two companies have had wildly different years.

A quality-control crisis and seven-week labor strike have led to layoffs, increased regulatory scrutiny, and — perhaps most problematically — production delays.

And despite massive headwinds across the entire airline industry, United has outperformed most of its peers, with its stock price up 148% in 2024.

Financial analysts and industry consultants say the airline's strong finances, share buybacks, broad network, and a coming fleet refresh are among the reasons it has been doing so well.

That's despite impacts from Boeing delivery delays, which forced United to offer pilots unpaid leave and rethink its flying this year. The airline coped by leasing planes and shrinking its domestic supply.

Clark Johns of Alton Aviation Consultancy told Business Insider that United's advantageous hub structure and hundreds of incoming narrow-body aircraft helped position the airline to better manage Boeing-related headwinds.

The carrier also benefited this year by refocusing on long-haul flying to boost business and revenue.

"Basic economy is still a major revenue stream for them, and they're expanding their premium seating," Johns said. "In some senses, they're kind of firing on all cylinders."

United flies to more overseas cities than any other US carrier

Among the biggest boons for United has been international flying.

Analysts at HSBC raised their price target for United in December to $116 —about 14% above current levels — citing its international network as a key driver.

"Its exposure to the international markets is well above its peers, and the international demand is quite strong," HSBC said, adding that United's 2024 transatlantic winter bookings — typically a slower period — are 30% higher compared to pre-Covid levels.

Johns said United "has done a good job with regards to the timing" of deploying its capacity amid delays to deliveries of new Boeing planes.

He said United had a strong performance in Europe — operating long-haul routes when demand was high but more modestly on domestic routes when overcapacity impacted US airline revenues.

United has also expanded its capacity on flights to Asia. Tokyo's Narita Airport has been a particularly key base for United, and Johns praised the airline as "tactical" in redeploying aircraft there from weaker routes out of its Guam base. In 2025, it plans to further expand in the region.

United's diverse hubs provide a strategic advantage

United benefits hub airport locations that create strong network opportunities across oceans and the Americas.

Large population centers, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and Newark, New Jersey, act as strong international gateways.

Johns said these airports help United target high-yielding premium and business traffic.

The airline also feeds passengers through hubs in Chicago, Denver, and Houston, providing good connectivity across the interior US.

In an October report seen by BI, Deutsche Bank analysts said they anticipate 2025 will be a "strong year of regional growth" for the airline's network.

Johns said Delta and American don't have the same vast hub structure and have dominance in fewer places, like Dallas-Fort Worth and Charlotte for American and Atlanta and Detroit for Delta.

United is revamping its fleet with hundreds of new planes

A fleet renewal plan that includes 270 new Airbus and Boeing narrow-body planes, plus 150 widebody Boeing 787 Dreamliners, is powering United's expansion.

Data from the manufacturers show that as of November 30 this year, United had received 21 Airbus A321neos, 31 Boeing 737 Maxs, and one Dreamliner. The 737 deliveries are less than half of the 71 Max planes United received through November 2023.

As it shifts capacity, United has removed the yet-to-be-certified 737 Max 10 from its future fleet plan. It has 150 units on order.

United also has new planes from rival Airbus to look forward to in the coming years, including its first A321XLR in 2026.

United's SVP of global network planning and alliances, Patrick Quayle, previously told BI the airline plans to replace its aging Boeing 757s with the A321XLR and fly to new destinations, like northern Italy and West Africa.

This influx of narrow-body planes could help United lower costs and make the airline even more competitive.

United's fleet allows for diverse revenue streams, including basic economy and money-making premium cabins; the latter is especially lucrative as corporate travel remains on the rise.

Deutsche Bank analysts said United's adjusted pretax margin of 9.7% "reflects the company's advantage of having revenue diversification with premium customers, basic economy customers, and domestic road warriors."

United's third-quarter premium revenues, including Polaris business class and premium economy, were up 5% year over year.

Basic economy was up by a fifth, signaling United's discounted fare has likely poached some business from budget carriers struggling to maintain customers who prefer more perks when flying.

Share buyback signals strong finances

In its third-quarter earnings, United's adjusted earnings per share of $3.33 beat analysts' estimates. It also announced plans for a $1.5 billion share buyback.

"We intend this buyback to be the beginning of a consistent and disciplined return of capital that is paced by our ability to generate increasing levels of free cash," said CFO Michael Leskinen.

Johns told BI that this was another sign of United's progress toward becoming a dependable "blue-chip" stock as it works to reduce its debt-to-earnings ratio.

"I think that's probably the market broadly seeing the positive aspects in terms of how the airline is performing," he said.

In a recent earnings call, United CEO Scott Kirby said the airline has been confident for the past two years that the industry is evolving to produce higher margins.

Deutsche Bank analysts are also bullish, saying: "We believe the solid earnings momentum will continue into the next two years."

The 1988 buddy-comedy action flick "Midnight Run" had an unexpected impact on the restaurant industry. While the romp about a bounty hunter transporting an accountant across the country didn't make a box-office splash, one line stuck around.

"A restaurant is a very tricky investment," the accountant, played by Charles Grodin, tells the bounty hunter, played by Robert DeNiro. DeNiro's character dreams of opening a coffee shop with his big score, but the accountant shuts him down: "More than half of them go under within the six months."

The idea that restaurants are a bad investment predates the film, but the quote lodged in people's minds. Over the past 20 years as a cook, restaurant critic, and food writer, I've heard Grodin's risk assessment quoted repeatedly, almost verbatim. But if restaurants really are a lousy investment, then why would private-equity firms be dumping billions into the sector? Data from PitchBook found that private-equity investments into fast-casual restaurants grew from $7.7 million in 2013 to $231 million in 2023 — a nearly 3,000% increase.

In 2024 alone, Blackstone purchased 1,400 Tropical Smoothie Cafes and a majority stake in Jersey Mike's — deals that gave the chains multi-billion-dollar valuations. Sycamore Partners also bought 250 Playa Bowls locations. Before its IPO in 2023, the Mediterranean eatery Cava raised nearly $750 million from private investors. Meanwhile, SoftBank Vision Fund has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into restaurant tech over the past decade.

All that cash has led to a boom in places like Chipotle, Shake Shake, and Sweetgreen. Between 2009 and 2018, the number of fast-casual restaurants in America doubled, while sales have nearly tripled. Meanwhile, the amount of money Americans spend eating out has jumped by nearly 60% since 2009. That doesn't exactly sound like a lousy investment.

The trouble is that private equity has a knack for destroying businesses. Red Lobster declared bankruptcy earlier this year after 10 years under private-equity management, Toys "R" Us famously shut down following a private-equity takeover, and even hospitals have struggled after private equity got involved. The cash infusion to wannabe chains and franchises has also made it harder for independently funded restaurants to compete for customers, real estate, and staff. When the gravy train stops, fast-casual restaurants are going to be in trouble.

To understand why private equity is pouring money into restaurants, we have to start with the appeal of the fast-casual model. In some ways, it's the golden mean of restaurants. You can charge twice as much for a meal at a fast-casual spot as you can at a fast-food joint. In Manhattan, a Burger King cheeseburger costs $3.40, whereas a Shake Shack burger will run you $7.79. But when you look at the overhead costs, there isn't much difference. Both restaurants staff a similar number of people and rely on similar ingredients. Chipotle may offer a burrito, a bowl, a quesadilla, and a salad, but it's all more or less the same ingredients: beans, corn, salsa, cheese, and basic proteins. The limited menu enables both fast-food and fast-casual restaurants to be efficient, keep costs down, and avoid losses from food waste and labor. And since fast-casual spots appear to be the nicer restaurants — with gourmet ingredients like brioche buns, healthy-sounding options, and claims of sustainable sourcing — they can charge more. If price and speed aren't priorities, many people would prefer to grab lunch at a Chipotle than at a Taco Bell.

The model also has an edge over sit-down restaurants, which have struggled in recent years. "Casual dining proper is not doing so well," Alex M. Susskind, a professor of food and beverage management at Cornell University, says. "Fast casual has provided consumers with a better meal experience that's equal to, or in some instances better than, a casual-dining restaurant, with less of a time and financial commitment."

The food is just as good, but the service is much faster. He says that's helped make the model a better investment than a place like Applebee's. Thanks in part to those higher profit margins, one restaurant analyst said it takes 18 months for a Chipotle to pay back buildout costs, compared to five years for a Cheesecake Factory.

"PE is investing money in the fast-casual market because the economics of a fast-casual concept is much better than any other type of restaurant concept," says Chris Macksey, the CEO of Prix Fixe Accounting, which specializes in hospitality. "Profit margins are anywhere from 10% to 15% as opposed to a full-service restaurant, which is 5% to 8%. Fast casual is just a far more scalable concept."

Scalability is really the brass ring. Investors in fast-casuals aren't buying restaurants; they're buying the potential growth of restaurant brands. Susskind says the boom reminds him of the late 1990s when casual-dining brands like Applebee's, TGI Fridays, and Olive Garden were taking off. He sees the recent shutdown of some of those chains — such as TGI Fridays, Red Lobster, and Smokey Bones — as a market correction for their overexpansion.

"That's what's making the investments in these businesses attractive. Because a lot of the weaker players have been weeded out," Susskind says about fast-casual restaurants. The frenzy has also been encouraged by the successful IPOs of companies like Sweetgreen in 2021 and Cava in 2023. Seeing Cava's stock grow by nearly 250% since its IPO has left investors searching for similar success.

While Sweetgreens and Dave's Hot Chickens are popping up across the country, independent restaurateurs are often left scrambling — not even for a piece of the pie, but for the crumbs.

Tracy Goh is the chef and owner of Damaran Sara, a two-year-old Malaysian restaurant in San Francisco, home of some of the most expensive commercial real estate in America. She's experienced landlords' preferences for fast-casual chains over small businesses like hers. "Especially for me, because it's my first restaurant. I don't have data to convince them that I can stay on a lease as long as they are likely to," Goh says. "They have a preference for the franchises or the big names."

A landlord's job is to generate money from their property. Their business isn't about enriching their community; it's about finding the most reliable tenants who can pay the most rent. In the restaurant real-estate space, that often means fast-food and fast-casual brands backed by major investment firms.

"If you're Chipotle or Shake Shack, you may decide to take a lease above market. You can afford it because you're privately funded," says Talia Berman, a partner at the hospitality advisory firm Friend of Chef and an expert in New York's restaurant real-estate market. "You beat out the competition because you don't care how much money you make in that space because it wasn't meant to be profitable based on the unit economics. It's part of a larger strategy."

That strategy is all about growth, she says. The primary goal of investment-backed restaurants is to expand quickly. "They're typically barreling toward an exit. So they're looking to get purchased by Nabisco or Darden or Levy or one of these huge restaurant conglomerates. And they need to show distribution — that they're operating in many states and that they have high top line," Berman says, referring to high sales volume.

A location that can gross $2 or $3 million in a year can demonstrate to a potential buyer that the eatery is successful — even if a high rent lowers the average unit profit margin. "They're thinking short term. It's a private equity mentality," says Berman.

Investment-backed restaurants also have a timing advantage over smaller shops. When a developer begins work on a new building that might lease space to a restaurant — a strip mall, food hall, or multipurpose apartment complex for instance — it's usually working on a multiyear timeline. Moshe Batalion, the vice president of national leasing for RioCan, one of Canada's largest real-estate-investment trusts, told me the firm starts thinking about who to lease to before it even breaks ground on a new property. Leases might be signed years before the space is even ready for move-in. Independent restaurateurs typically can't plan for a restaurant that won't open for two to three years.

"For independent operators, the real disadvantage is access of capital," Susskind says. "If they have access to a decent level of capital, they can grow, open more units." For chains, that's easy to do. But, he adds, "if I'm an independent, I don't know where I'm going to get $500,000 to ink a deal and build a restaurant."

When small-time restaurants get left out of the real-estate market, diners are left with a food scene that increasingly looks and tastes the same.

Thomas Crosby, the CEO of Pal's Sudden Service, a Tennessee-based chain of 31 burger shops, is all too familiar with the downsides of private equity. It's why he has eschewed outside investment. Millions of private-equity dollars might help triple the number of Pal's locations in five years — but could the chain continue to train and retest staff to remember that the perfect french fry is 3.7 inches long?

"As soon as you start taking investments or go public, you confuse your mission," Crosby says. "It becomes, what metrics can I do to wow stockholders instead of wow customers? And I think that's how so many companies get sideways. It's kind of like cars: You drive down the interstate, and you cannot hardly tell one brand from another. It becomes so homogenous." He adds: "That's what happens in the restaurant industry."

Chasing the success of another restaurant chain means everyone just tries to copy everyone else. "To please the stockholders or investors, they've got to be all things to all people," he says. By maintaining control over his operations, Crosby says, "We don't owe people money. We don't lease land. We have zero debt."

Since the early 2000s, private-equity firms started taking on a bigger role in the companies they'd invested in; these firms didn't just expect returns down the line, they began telling companies how to achieve those goals. This was good for innovation and safety, but bad for job creation and wages, with "sizable reductions in earnings per worker in the first two years post buyout," professors from Harvard and the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business wrote in a 2014 research paper.

In the long run, private equity often leaves companies worse off. In 2019, researchers found that public companies that are bought out by private-equity firms are 10 times as likely to go bankrupt as those that aren't — a finding that complicates the argument that companies like Toys "R" Us closed simply because of market forces. Similar to the casual-dining boom before it, Susskind, the Cornell professor, believes that the investment boom in the fast-casual sector will eventually lead to a bust.

Already, the graveyard of private-equity-backed restaurants is growing. BurgerFi, which has 93 locations and 51 pizza subsidiaries, primarily in Florida, received $80 million in investments just a few years ago. But despite last year's plan to update the chain's stores, menus, and technology, the investment has largely transformed into debt. The company defaulted on $51 million in credit obligations this year, and in September, it filed for bankruptcy.

Between 2015 and 2019, Mod Pizza received a total of $334 million in private-equity investments, which enabled the brand to grow to 512 locations across Western states, with over 12,000 employees. In 2019, the firm boasted of being "the fastest-growing restaurant chain in the United States for the past four years," with a plan to hit 1,000 locations in five years. The rapid expansion outpaced realistic sales growth, and earlier this year, the company closed over 40 locations.

Similarly, Rubio's Fresh Mexican Grill, founded in 1983 in California, was acquired by Mill Road Capital in 2010 for $91 million. The new ownership updated the name (to Rubio's Coastal Grill), the interior design, and the menu. Renovations at each location cost about $200,000. The chain ended up declaring bankruptcy twice: once in 2020 and again earlier this year. Though the company attributed the first filing to pandemic lockdowns, it was already struggling to maintain its growth and stay in the green prior to 2020. When it closed more restaurants earlier this year, some employees found they were unable to cash their final paychecks.

Even some of the most visible success stories of investment-based growth haven't borne fruit. Sweetgreen, "the Starbucks of salad" that was heavily backed by venture capital before its IPO, grew from one location in 2007 to 227 this year, with plans to open another 30 a year — though the company still hasn't seen a profitable year. The chain lost over $26 million last year.

At some point, the market taps out and there isn't room for more growth. Americans are already spending 42% more money on dining out than they are on groceries.

Berman says that the high volatility creates opportunities. For one, when a cash-rich restaurant bails on a retail location, it becomes available as a turnkey space, complete with HVAC, grease traps, and floor drains. Berman's company recently made a deal for a popular food brand to build out a research kitchen. It's designed to be an experiment, but they signed a 10-year lease. "Believe me, this place is not going to be around in three years, I promise you," she says. That leaves the door open for other entrepreneurs to take over.

In other words, don't get too attached to the Sweetgreen down the street. It may take longer than six months for private-equity-backed restaurants to go under, but there's a good chance your new fave won't be around in a few years.

Corey Mintz is a food reporter focusing on the intersection between food, economics, and labor. He is also the author of "The Next Supper: The End Of Restaurants As We Knew Them, And What Comes After."

• I'm a bisexual woman who just got engaged to a man.
• I haven't officially dated women because I was afraid to come out to my family.
• Now, I'm worried I'll never get the chance and that I'm cutting off my queerness.

When my boyfriend proposed, my younger sister was surprised; she was convinced that I hated men.

This joke started in my teenage years because I was a naive but outspoken feminist, which caused some stir in my traditional Protestant family. My beliefs never really meshed well with my religious family.

Though I was a proud bisexual woman, I kept my queerness a secret from them. It helped that my romantic history only involved men.

Now I'm engaged to a man and thrilled. But I'm worried I've put up a permanent wall between two parts of my sexuality — and I'll lose access to my queer self entirely.

Bisexual women often deal with stereotypes

Many people have certain beliefs about queer women: Bisexual women sleep with women but only date men, or they only sleep with men because they find women so intimidating, or they like women but are happily settled with their "golden retriever boyfriend."

If you go on social media, where these jokes are recycled for content and solidified in cultural canon, you'd think a bisexual woman had never successfully dated another woman before.

It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I worried for years that I wasn't being true to my sexuality. Sometimes, I'd wonder if I was straight and somehow duping myself. With an impending marriage, the anxiety returns.

Julia Shaw says in her 2022 book "Bi: The Hidden Culture, History and Science of Bisexuality" that there's a "sense that, once people are married, the gender of their partner is indicative of their 'real' sexuality."

It's taken years to admit that my hesitation to pursue women came from the restrictive, internalized ideas of my Christian youth. I believed in the church, and only after discovering my sexual interests in my late teens did I question my faith.

I spent the better part of a decade agnostic and happily bisexual, in theory, but struggling in practice. I kept thinking I would eventually date a woman. After all, I found women attractive and daydreamed about them plenty.

But dating a woman meant coming out at home. I convinced myself that I'd come out to everyone if I fell in love with a woman. I didn't recognize how much that would subconsciously dissuade me from pursuing them. So, not coincidentally, I kept dating men.

Fetishizing versus respecting bisexuality

Many men fetishize queer women, and this provided an outlet for me in past relationships. I could flirt or be intimate with women without jeopardizing my relationship with a man because my sapphism wasn't viewed as "real" or "valuable" the way heterosexuality is.

My sexuality was finally viewed as something other than a sin: It was hot. I felt bad for furthering this horrible dynamic, but I was suffocated no matter what I chose.

When I met my current partner, I nearly avoided dating him. I'd repressed my sexuality for too long, I told him, and I wanted to explore it.

In the end, though, I wouldn't sacrifice my time with him for the theoretical pursuit of queer romance with women I didn't yet know. Discussions abounded in the first months of the relationship, and I felt a grief I'd never encountered before.

It took a while to recognize it was because he fully respected my sexuality, thus removing my toxic outlet. It felt ironic. He saw physicality or romance with women as equally valuable, so it could have no space in our monogamous relationship.

I'm now mourning missed opportunities

I mourned this loss, which may be confusing to someone heterosexual. I don't want to cheat or be non-monogamous. I'm happy with one person and feel no need to experiment with that.

My relationships with women — romantic, platonic, or familial — have simply been different from those with men. It's something integral and hard to articulate. They each bring something unique to my life.

Nothing is scarier than the unknown, except maybe missed opportunities, and I felt I'd spend the rest of my life not knowing what I missed. Ultimately, though, we lose something no matter what we choose.

After much discussion, my partner and I know maintaining my connection to queer people and events is integral. I may be in a heterosexual relationship, but I don't have to bar myself from all the beautiful cultural aspects of the LGBT+ community.

Beyond that, my partner and I acknowledged that things change. My decisions aren't all made now. Our sexuality and our needs can develop as we age, and we may have to return to and approach the issue differently throughout our marriage.

Honesty and understanding are the best features of our relationship, and they make my bisexuality feel cherished instead of stifled.

TGI Fridays has gone through a lot of iterations. It started in the 1960s as a hot singles bar. By the '80s and '90s, it had transformed into a nice-enough family-friendly spot for a cheapish night out. Nowadays, the chain has become a place that nobody really wants to go to — at least not enough to keep the casual dining chain out of bankruptcy.

The writing has been on the wall at TGI Fridays for a while. The restaurant has been struggling to pay its bills and foot traffic is down. Its CEO of five years, Ray Blanchette, stepped down in May 2023, and the next guy in the CEO role, Brandon Coleman III, only lasted for two months before exiting for "personal reasons." Coleman was replaced by Weldon Spangler, who, according to his LinkedIn profile, left the role in August.

Fridays closed 36 underperforming corporate-owned restaurants at the start of the year, citing efforts to "optimize and streamline" its operations — business speak for "things aren't going so hot, and we need to cut costs." On November 2, it filed for bankruptcy, citing the COVID-19 pandemic and its capital structure, meaning the setup of its debt and equity, as the primary drivers. The company says it plans to maintain operations across the 39 remaining corporate-owned US locations when it emerges from bankruptcy. The hundreds of TGI Fridays franchises across 41 countries are independently owned entities and, therefore, not part of the bankruptcy process.

If you're a TGI Fridays lover, that means you can still go to the one nearby if you want. But given the restaurant's troubles, I'll take a guess that applies to very few of you. Even if you can't remember the last time you went but happen to have a Fridays gift card, you may want to hurry up and use it. Apparently there are $50 million in unused credits floating around that the company says it will still honor, but you never know how long that will last.

It's been a tough year for many restaurant chains, including Red Lobster and Buca di Beppo. As The Wall Street Journal notes, other than that pandemic-triggered wipeout of 2020, chains appear to be on track to declare more bankruptcies than they have for decades. Like companies in a similar situation, the story of TGI Fridays is one of slow decline before an accelerated crash. The chain was cool and hip until it wasn't, and no one's been able to right the ship — including its private-equity owners. While those firms aren't the sole reason for the chain's death knell, they haven't helped by putting debt on the books they can't pay off.

"You just really have a lot of different challenges. And then eventually private equity looks at businesses like this, and they're like, 'Let's load it up with debt, and that's how we're going to make our money,'" Jonathan Maze, the editor in chief of Restaurant Business Magazine, said. "That's really kind of what happened here."

Your memories of TGI Fridays likely depend on your age. If you're a baby boomer, you may remember the original singles bar that started on New York City's Upper East Side. (If you want to get a sense of the vibe, check out the 1988 Tom Cruise movie "Cocktail," because that's where some of it was filmed.) If you're Gen X or a millennial, you might recall it as more of a family-friendly sports bar. On the fancy scale, it fell closer to Olive Garden than McDonald's but also developed a reputation as a little hokey. (For a sense of this, see the 1999 film "Office Space.") Over time, TGI Fridays became indistinguishable from other bar and grill chains like Applebee's, Chili's, and Ruby Tuesday. So maybe it's no surprise that those restaurants — with the exception of Chili's — have floundered.

"You've got these bar and grill concepts that, on balance, there's just not as many people who want to visit these on a regular basis any longer, for one reason or another," Maze said.

This is partly a story of changing tastes: If diners want a good burger, they'll go to Shake Shack or Five Guys, where the quality is comparable but the price tag is lower. A night on the town might be somewhere nicer, perhaps not a chain restaurant at all. And if they're in the mood for a chain sports bar with more of a focus on the actual sports, they'll hit up, say, Buffalo Wild Wings.

"Buffalo Wild Wings started with, originally, the sports aficionado who'd get bombed on a pitcher of beer and watch NFL games all Sunday afternoon and night," Burt Flickering, the owner of the retail consulting firm Strategic Resource Group, said. "It's been moving to more family-oriented and team-oriented."

It's not that TGI Fridays hasn't tried some different things — getting into events, adding different menu items, trying out different cocktails — but none of it has really worked. Adding to the chain's woes was the pandemic, which crushed dining establishments everywhere. There's been a "delayed effect" of the pandemic on certain restaurants, said John Bringardner, the head of Debtwire, a trade publication that covers dealmaking and debt. Many restaurants were able to scrape by, banking on customers returning post-lockdowns, but that hope has faded.

"The ones that managed to stay through, now they just can't hang on any longer," Bringardner told me. "Business didn't bounce back in the same way that they were hoping."

In addition to grappling with changing tastes, TGI Fridays has also been subject to another trend in the restaurant business: private equity financial maneuvering. The restaurant chain was sold to a pair of PE firms — TriArtisan Capital Advisors and Sentinel Capital Partners — in 2014, though Sentinel eventually exited in 2019. In 2017, Fridays' PE owners decided to undertake a financial deal called whole business securitization, where a company issues debt that's secured by assets that generate cash, like royalties paid by franchisees. They sold debt that was contingent on money that was expected to be made in the future on franchise agreements, IP, licensing agreements, etc. It's not an uncommon practice — Five Guys and Planet Fitness have done it, too. Bringardner explained that at a basic level, it's similar to a bond, but instead of the debt being backed by the entire operations of the company, the assets and liabilities associated with the WBS are carved out from a company's balance sheet and put into a separate entity called a special purpose vehicle, which can usually borrow money at a lower interest rate.

"The interest rate is lower because investors are given very detailed data on the underlying royalty and franchise payments being made to ultimately repay this debt, and investors are first in line for payment, ahead of the company's other costs," he said. The setup has not gone well. As part of the WBS, Fridays was supposed to make regular updates on the associated finances — stuff like the amount of incoming franchisee royalties. But Citibank, the manager overseeing Fridays' financing, terminated its role in September after the company failed to make certain financial reports on time. (Think of it like a publicly traded company being late in filing its annual report with the SEC.) That's the first time a company's been dropped by its financing manager since the 2008 financial crisis. There's now a backup manager, FTI Consulting, in place.

"That was a clear sign of trouble. I mean, a healthy company does not get kicked out of managing it," Bringardner said.

Ragini Bhalla, the head of brand and a spokesperson for Creditsafe, which tracks businesses' financial stability and credit, said the company's track record of paying its bills on time has been "erratic and volatile" over the past 12 months. "You could see they're struggling," she said.

Alicia Kelso at Nation's Restaurant News outlined the "dizzying number of changes" at TGI Fridays over the past few years as the private-equity-led owners tried to see what might stick. One of those attempts included a partnership between TGI Fridays and the virtual kitchen company C3 to add items such as poke bowls and sushi to its menus, which are not Fridays' normal fare. As Kelso notes, TriArtisan invested $10 million in C3 in 2021, so there may have been some mixed incentives there. (I'll note here that TriArtisan is also an owner of Hooters, which, when is the last time anyone was in one of those?)

Strategic Resource Group's Flickering also argued that TGI's owners have been less nimble in reacting to the current environment. The Wall Street owners have been happy to take what profit they've made to pad their bottom line, he told me, rather than reinvesting that money back into the chain to help it improve operations and adapt to changing tastes.

"The private-equity people were so obtuse and not operators, they didn't look at their food-service competitors and channels," Flickering said.

Earlier this year, it looked like Hostmore, which operates TGI Fridays' UK locations, might take over the entire company, but that deal fell through. In September, Hostmore fell into administration, which is basically British for bankruptcy.

TriArtisan and TGI Fridays did not respond to requests for comment.

TGI Fridays isn't necessarily a case where absolutely everything went wrong. It's a situation where enough things just didn't go right. Consumer trends and tastes changed. The pandemic hit. It failed to reinvent itself or pivot. Private equity, as is often the case, wasn't really a boost. The goal of those firms is ultimately to make a profit on their investment, which can happen even absent a true business turnaround.

I went on my very first date, in high school, to a TGI Fridays, though if I'm being honest, it might have been a Chili's or Applebees. I can't tell the difference. That's part of Fridays' problem. The other part of the problem is that I probably wouldn't go there in this day and age unless there really weren't any other options. And apparently, I'm not alone. Given the chain's struggles, a lot of people feel that way. It can always be Friday anywhere, not just TGI Fridays, and maybe at a better price point or nicer experience.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.