Soft Strip Outs to Former TGI Fridays Restaurants — Sale & Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent

Two Restaurants.
One Programme.
Back to Shell.

Following the closure of TGI Fridays restaurants across the UK, Jim Wise Demolition was appointed by a national fit-out contractor to deliver the full soft strip of two former restaurants — one on Cross Street in Sale, Greater Manchester, and one in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent — taking both buildings back to a clean structural shell ready for their next tenants.

Anyone who ate in a TGI Fridays will remember the fit-out: the red-and-white striped ceilings, pressed-tin panels, dark timber booths, brass rails and memorabilia-lined walls. All of it — front of house, commercial kitchens, bars, cold rooms, suspended ceilings, partitions and redundant mechanical and electrical services — was methodically stripped, segregated and removed off site by our directly employed team.

Running the two stores as one programme meant one point of contact, one set of standards and a team that carried the lessons of the first building straight into the second — the same reason clients hand us multi-site packages in the first place.

What We
Delivered.

Both restaurants followed the same phased sequence under a CDM 2015 construction phase plan, with all works carried out in accordance with BS 6187:2011. Site establishment came first — secure fencing, signage and controlled access, with every vehicle movement banksman-controlled and segregated from the public, as both units sit on live retail and leisure parks with neighbours trading throughout.

Survey-led removal of non-licensed asbestos containing materials was completed by our UKATA-trained operatives before any strip out began, with full hazardous waste consignment documentation. The soft strip then ran room by room: kitchens, bars, servery counters, booth seating, joinery, wall linings, suspended ceilings, floor finishes, partitions and redundant M&E, all taken back to core and shell. The internal mezzanine areas were removed structurally, taken down methodically with mini excavators working alongside hand demolition behind segregated barriers.

All arisings were segregated on site into dedicated waste streams, loaded by grab into 40-yard bins and removed to licensed waste transfer stations with full waste transfer notes — in line with our 96% landfill diversion record.

Live Retail Park
Management.

Restaurant strip outs generate an unusually mixed waste stream — catering equipment, refrigeration, timber, metals, plasterboard and decades of layered refits. Delivering that on live retail parks added the constraints we plan for as standard: shared service yards, trading neighbours either side, pedestrian interfaces and strict delivery windows. Both sites ran on agreed working hours with dust suppression in use throughout, and both handovers completed on programme.

The result: two clean, empty shells — every ceiling, partition, kitchen and finish removed, services safely terminated, floors cleared and swept — ready for the incoming fit-out teams.