TGI Friday’s will likely suffer the fate of many restaurants amid the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, as the company reportedly won’t reopen the doors at 386 locations after seeing a sharp decline in sales.

CEO Ray Blanchette told Bloomberg about TGI Friday’s planned closures saying, “Some will close forever, without a doubt. Right now, it’s all triage and it’s all about cash: How are you going to make it through and keep the company solvent?”

TGI Friday’s was forced to close its dining rooms amid the coronavirus outbreak as stay-at-home orders required restaurants to eliminate in-service dining. The restaurant chain saw its sales decline about 80% at the start of the COVID-19 crisis, and as the company shifted to pickup and delivery services, sales were still down about 50%, the news outlet reported.

As stay-at-home orders lifted, TGI Friday’s, which has both company-owned and franchised locations, has undergone some changes to try to draw in customers and make them feel at ease when dining in its restaurants. In New Hampshire and Connecticut, the company has reportedly rented party tents for spaced-out parking lot dining while offering a limited amount of seating inside its restaurants.

“We’ll run it for a month and we’ll see how it goes, and if we can do that profitably we’ll do it,” Blanchette told Bloomberg, “We have become very entrepreneurial. No one’s got a playbook here.”

TGI Friday’s has 850 restaurants in 55 countries and about 74,000 employees worldwide, according to its website.

TGI Friday's
TGI Friday's has plans to permanently close restaurants during the coronvirus pandemic. A homeless person rests on a street as a person walks by a TGI Fridays while the streets are empty due to the coronavirus on March 24, 2020 in Queens, New York City. New York City has about a third of the nations confirmed coronavirus (COVID-19) cases, making it the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States. Getty Images/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez
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