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Company type | Limited Liability Company |
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Industry | Restaurants, bars |
Genre | Casual dining |
Founded | 2005 |
Founder | Boomtown Entertainment |
Number of locations | 2 |
Key people | Toby Keith |
Products | Alcoholic beverages, french fries, hamburgers, steak |
Owner | Hal Smith Restaurant Group |
Website | tobykeithsbar |
Toby Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill is a restaurant chain inspired by the country music singer Toby Keith and founded by Boomtown Entertainment. The bar is named after Keith's 2003 single "I Love This Bar", which was taken from his eighth studio album Shock'n Y'all .
Toby Keith's Bar & Grill locations operate as full-service restaurants with large bars in the shape of guitars. They primarily serve American cuisine, especially Southern food. The bars regularly have live musical entertainment from local performers without a cover charge. During his lifetime, Keith himself made surprise visits to franchises, where he performed and socialized with fans.
Later, new restaurants were opened as a franchise under Scottsdale, Arizona-based Capri Restaurant Group Enterprises LLC, owned by Frank Capri, which purchased the master license agreement to build more Toby Keith restaurants nationwide. [1]
The franchise collapsed through the 2010s. By 2020, lawsuits across the country had resulted in Capri and his companies being ordered to pay tens of millions of dollars in civil judgements. Capri was revealed to be an ex-mobster who used the Toby Keith-branded restaurants, along with Rascal Flatts-branded restaurants, to defraud developers. [2]
After the closures and following the death of Toby Keith in 2024, only two locations remain open, neither owned by Boomtown Entertainment. Both are located in Oklahoma and are operated by Hal Smith Restaurant Group. [3] [4]
The first Toby Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill restaurants opened in 2005 in Oklahoma, [5] Keith's native state, in Oklahoma City and at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Tulsa. Restaurants at the Chickasaw Nation's WinStar World Casino in Thackerville, [6] Oklahoma and in Las Vegas, Nevada, soon followed.
From the spring of 2009 through 2010, A Toby Keith’s I Love this Bar and Grill explanded rapidly, opening locations across the country, including Auburn Hills, Michigan; Mesa, Arizona; [7] St. Louis Park, Minnesota; and Denver, Colorado. [8]
In April 2010, the New England Patriots announced that the first New England I Love This Bar & Grill was to be located at the Patriot Place complex outside Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. [9] It opened in May 2011. [10] [11]
In March 2011, a Dallas location was announced for half of the former AMC Grand 24 multiplex. [12] That location opened on May 15, 2012, with a formal grand opening in September 2012. [13] When it opened, the Dallas location was the second-largest in the chain. [14] [15]
In early 2013 a location opened in Syracuse, New York at the newly constructed Destiny USA. [16]
Other locations existed in Peoria, Arizona, Cincinnati, Ohio, City Center at Oyster Point in Newport News, Virginia and Rancho Cucamonga, California and Rosemont, Illinois until 2015.[ citation needed ]