Daniel R. Scoggin

In 1998 a venture capital group led by Scoggin purchased Houlihan's Restaurant Group. The Houlihan's Restaurant Group includes: Devon's Seafood Grill, Darryl's and J. Gilbert's Wood-Fired Steaks & Seafood. These new restaurant concepts developed by Scoggin are still doing well today. Scoggin retired in 2000.

After returning from sailing and having been on the board since 1991 Scoggin was named president of Ground Round/Gold Fork in 1995. Ground Round/Gold Fork saw a stabilization of the company's identity as well as menu enhancements from a 60-item menu to a 200-item menu. Highlights of the Ground Round turnaround included: enhanced employee training, improved management-employee communications, increased margins from 12% to 20% profit, doubled restaurant productivity and reduced the company's debt by $30M. Five new Gold Fork restaurants were created and sales increased from $5,000 per week to $50,000 per week at a single location.

Although advertising was never rarely an expense at Friday's, Scoggin was not averse to free advertising. At their first anniversary celebration, Scoggin sold all menu items at 10% of their current price, emulating 1965 prices. This stunt created local traffic jams and was covered by newspapers around the country. In another stunt, due to the obscure location of the Phoenix restaurant location, Scoggin contracted the tallest crane in Arizona, and raised a cutout hand with a finger pointing straight down to the restaurant. While generating newspaper coverage and customer traffic, Scoggin received a citation for the sign violation.

Dan Scoggin (born July 18, 1937) is an American businessman and the person credited for expanding nationwide the first casual-theme restaurant, T.G.I. Friday's.

Born July 18, 1937, Scoggin graduated from San Jose State University and began his career in 1960 with Boise Cascade. Boise Cascade promoted him to District Sales Manager in 1963, Plant Manager in 1964 and General Manager in 1965. By 1967, he was the Southern Area Manager in charge of half of Boise Cascade's box production for the U.S. After leaving Boise Cascade in 1971 he founded T.G.I. Friday's, Inc. in Dallas, Texas. Eight additional restaurant locations were licensed from Alan Stillman, founder of Smith & Wollensky. The first restaurant was located on Greenville Avenue in Dallas and heralded in the Singles Era as well as the casual dining theme restaurant industry. Scoggin took the company public in 1983. By 1986, there were 103 U.S. locations (with 20 under construction) one international location, licensed to Whitbread (Birmingham, England) as well as 27 Dalt's restaurants. Scoggin retired in 1986 to sail the oceans with his family.