Señor Frog's Brings Spring Break to Times Square
Señor Frog’s giant $22.50 margarita, served in a souvenir plastic palm tree.
Photographer: Amy Lombard for Bloomberg Businessweek
At Señor Frog’s in Times Square, you should pretend it’s your birthday. If you do, a scrum of young staff will gather by the DJ booth, then loop around the cavernous restaurant waving white flashing lights and carrying a whipped cream cake. When they get to your table, some of them will stand on the banquettes and dance. Others will light your dessert on fire. But they don’t quite have that part down yet, so the flames may get out of control, and someone will have to stomp them out on the floor.
The relentlessly cheery employees have been trained to parade whether the restaurant is full or relatively empty, as it was one Thursday in September. The owners of Señor Frog’s, a chain of successful clubs based in Mexico, feel confident their tequila-plus-poor-decisions parties will fill an unmet need in Times Square. It’s the company’s debut in the Northeast and its second club not near a beach. (The first was Las Vegas, in 2012.)