They Know Us So Well

TGI Fridays introduces alcohol delivery and Dallas will be first to try

Get your alcohol delivered along with your TGI Fridays order.

Photo courtesy of TGIF

Known 'round the world for its loaded potato skins, Dallas-based TGI Fridays is about to become even more famous as the first national restaurant brand to offer alcohol delivery. Yay for booze delivered to your door.

The food/alcohol ordering will be done entirely through the Fridays-branded experience on their app or website. They'll launch it on a test basis in November, just in time for the holiday season. The good news for local tipplers: The test markets are Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston. If the test goes well, they'll follow with a national rollout in 2018.

In other words, for the good of the country, it's up to us to order booze from Fridays like it's going out of style. Do it for America.

The capability for this kind of delivery is made possible via a partnership with Dallas startup Lash. Using the Fridays app, customers will be able to order alcohol from local liquor stores, to be delivered by Lash with their online food order. "I'll have the potato skins, and also a six-pack of beer."

How it works: A customer selects their menu items and then has the option to add beer/liquor to their order. A third-party driver then makes a stop at a partner liquor store to pick up the drinks, and then heads to Fridays for the food order to deliver it all as one cohesive package to the customer's home. Before handing off the delivery, drivers will check IDs.

For cocktails, Fridays will sell an "everything but the booze" kit, along with the recommended bottle of liquor; customers can mix the drink themselves.

They're still figuring out what the charge for delivery will be, whether it's a flat delivery fee or based on factors such as order price or distance.

Once they go national, they'll have to customize the service state-by-state in order to follow local ordinances.

They've created a video that shows how it works, found here on YouTube.

Online ordering is already a bright spot for Fridays. Since they launched the service last summer, their take-out sales have grown by 30 percent. More than half of their delivery orders 60 percent come from younger folk: diners who are 40 or younger. And 48 percent of people who joined the Rewards program in 2017 are millennials between the ages of 21-32. Millennials taste so good.

Ice Cream News

Global gourmet ice cream chain debuts in U.S. with 2 Dallas-area shops

Dumont Ice Cream

An ice cream concept from India has made its U.S. debut, right here in Texas: Called Dumont Creamery & Cafe, it's a ice cream chain founded in Hyderabad that now has two locations in the Dallas area.

Their first location was Frisco, which opened at 1951 FM 423 at the end of 2023; a second location opened in late October in Coppell at 1535 S. Belt Line Rd. #160.

Dumont was founded in 1999 by brothers Vivek and Bhashkaar, and currently has 23 locations in Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Vijayawada listed on their website.

Bringing the concept to Texas are local franchisees and friends Sai Sashank and Tarang Tirumala, who moved to the U.S. in 2005 to attend college.

Both have successful consulting careers, but craved a taste of home.

Ice cream is the centerpiece at Dumont with more than two dozen flavors, ranging from gourmet to classics to flavors boasting global influences: from Italian-inspired sorbet to a New Zealand-inspired honey ice cream called "hokey pokey."

There is vanilla, chocolate, and mint chocolate chip — but also unique options such as cake and jam, an ice cream with a vanilla base, bites of cake, and spiced jam; and kheer, a coconut ice cream studded with dried fruits and nuts — a nod to the kheer rice pudding that's one of India's favorite desserts.

A single scoop is $4. They have cups and a cute version of waffle cones: shorter and fatter than usual, to provide a greater ratio of ice cream-to-cone.

In addition to ice cream, they have a beverage program with coffee and espresso drinks such as lattes, plus boba tea. There are also special drinks like falooda — an exotic Indian milkshake with rose syrup and vermicelli — as well as limited-edition drinks like iced kheer, a cool beverage version of that same popular rice pudding dessert.

Both locations are spacious, bright, and clean, with pale green banquettes at Frisco, and pale blue chairs and tables at Coppell. Both feature an astronaut theme with statues and framed photos and cartoons on the wall. The Coppell location also has a mural dedicated to great moments in Coppell history.