When TGI Friday's announced a promotion involving mistletoe-toting drones flying around inside its restaurants, the idea seemed both dumb and unoriginal. Now, that the restaurant's gimmicky marketing campaign has shed blood in Brooklyn, it just seems dangerous. And TGI Friday's isn't even taking the blame!


Over the weekend, TGI Friday's showed off the mistletoe drone for the first time in New York City. A local reporting team from the Brooklyn Daily went down to the chain's Sheepshead Bay location to see the lovely bird in action. However, unlike the friendly looking quadcopter featured in the promo images, TGI Friday's deployed two drones—a smaller 10-inch quadcopter and a large 23-inch drone with six rotors and no prop guards—inside a crowded restaurant. The Brooklyn Daily reports on what happened next:

Drone operator David Quiones said an accident like this had never happened before, and even blamed our reporter for the bloodshed. Quiones had encouraged our reporter to let him land the smaller of the two aircraft on her hand, but she flinched when the 10-inch drone touched down — and he said that is what caused the four-bladed flying machine to careen into the face of our photographer nearby. But Benvenuto insisted that the responsibility lies with the man operating the controls.


TGI Friday's never officially acknowledged the injury. The spokeswoman even "dismissed concerns about further injuries," the Brooklyn Daily reports.

It's dumb and dangerous and, ultimately, irresponsible. Flying drones indoors is unsafe; we know this because we've seen accidents happen and have been warning people for months to fly safe! Of course, some drones are designed to fly indoors, safely. But TGI Friday's two-foot-wide hexacopters without prop guards are not those drones. [Brooklyn Paper]