The result is a kind of permeative mono-aesthetic—blond wood, clean lines, bright-but-soft lighting—that is designed, always, to “appeal to Millennials,” and that is inflected not just by Chipotle’s faux industrialism, but also by the design logic of Silicon Valley and Marie Kondo and minimalism. Strategically de-cluttered, devoid of flair—devoid, indeed, of any decor that might distinguish them from their fellow establishments—chain restaurants are melding, visually, into one tentacular beast. They are, en masse, going normcore.

For Fridays, the new look is taking the brand back to its roots. The chain, founded in 1965, didn’t start as a full-service restaurant: It started as one of New York’s City’s first singles bars. The ‘60s marked the start of the sexual revolution in the U.S.; bars, though, in the early ‘60s, still tended to be frequented mostly by men or by couples who were already on dates. Enter Alan Stillman, a 28-year-old perfume salesman who knew that his Upper East Side neighborhood was populated by models and flight attendants and who wanted to find a way—a dignified way—to meet them. So he bought an old building on 63rd Street and 1st Avenue, and decorated it with Tiffany-style stained glass, candy stripes, framed photos, and knickknacks—anything, basically, that would make the place feel homey and welcoming. (He also included on the menu drinks like “Harvey Wallbangers” and daiquiris—concoctions meant to appeal in particular to women who might not otherwise like the taste of alcohol.) “The principle involved,” Stillman would later explain, “was to make people feel that they were going to someone’s apartment for a cocktail party.”

The bar, which Stillman named Thank God It’s Friday!, was a hit. And its concept quickly spread. The second Friday’s opened in Memphis in May of 1970, six months after Shelby County, TN, first allowed restaurants to sell “liquor by the drink.” The new outpost, Collectors Weekly notes in a fantastic essay about the current fate of the chain’s wall memorabilia, “became a hotspot for the Memphis counterculture,” known for “for its boozy adventures, drug experimentation, and sexual subversion—including an underground queer scene.”

But the new Friday’s imitated the original in its old-school decor: It, too, featured leaded lamps and candy stripes, and cluttered its walls with memorabilia. This new Friday’s was, one newspaper declared, “a place with so much atmosphere you have to push it aside to get in.”

The Friday’s brand (and aesthetic) soon inspired imitators: Ruby Tuesday opened in 1972 in Knoxville, near the University of Tennessee campus. So did Houlihan’s in Kansas City; and Spaghetti Warehouse in Dallas; and Steak and Ale; and Bennigan’s. Bars, in less than a decade, had become equal-opportunity establishments for single people—so much so that by the early ‘70s, according to Stanford University research, some 20 to 25 percent of American couples had met at a bar.