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Once a global sensation with its own airline and casino, Hooters is now fighting for survival. The founders and the first-ever Hooters Girl weigh in on whether a back-to-basics approach can spark a comeback.
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00:00Since 1983, customers have flocked to Hooters for wings, beer, and the waitresses.
00:08And for decades, that combo seemed unstoppable.
00:12By the mid-2000s, Hooters had its own calendar, casino, and airline, and operated over 450
00:20locations in nearly 30 countries.
00:23And the servers?
00:24Sometimes we could walk away with stripper money.
00:29But what most people don't realize is that Hooters wasn't one company.
00:33It was two.
00:35In 2025, the larger one filed for bankruptcy and closed dozens of restaurants.
00:41They started making some changes that we warned them not to do.
00:45Now the original founders are stepping back in to try to rescue the brand.
00:51So how did one of America's most famous restaurants lose its mojo?
00:56We went to the original Hooters in Clearwater, Florida, and spoke with people who've been
01:00with the brand since the beginning.
01:03I'm Lynn Austin.
01:04I'm Lynn Austin.
01:05I'm Lynn Austin.
01:06I'm the original Hooters girl.
01:09Legend has it, this Steve Martin bit inspired the name Hooters.
01:13And I believe it's derogatory to refer to a woman's breasts as jugs or golden bozos.
01:21And you should only refer to them as Hooters.
01:26Hooters opened its doors in 1983.
01:29When Hooters opened up, there were only really few other places in the country serving chicken
01:34wings.
01:35Ed Droste is one of the original founders.
01:38He and five other close friends set out to build a casual, family-friendly restaurant
01:43that would make you feel like you were at the beach.
01:46We said, man, if we could combine that atmosphere and food with the fun and carefree environment
01:52all in one deal, we might have something there.
01:55Except that at the time, none of them knew how to run a restaurant.
02:00Most would claim we still don't.
02:02They wanted to create the go-to spot for people to watch games, with beer and wings served by
02:07an all-female waitstaff.
02:12When it comes to the Hooters girl, we collectively came to the point of that would be the star of
02:17the show.
02:18We just didn't realize how much.
02:20Ed discovered Lynn when she won the 1983 Jose Cuervo Bikini Contest.
02:26I bet my partners that I would hire the girl that won the bikini contest.
02:30His secretary came running up with a soggy business card and said, my boss is going to
02:35open a restaurant and we would love for you to be, you know, involved.
02:38And I'm like, yeah, right, right.
02:40She went on every billboard and went on to be just pretty much internationally famous.
02:44If you like what you see here on the outside, you're going to love what you'll see on the
02:50inside.
02:51At the center of it all was the Hooters uniform, modeled after popular 80s athletic wear.
02:57I tell people in the 80s, dolphin shorts were big, running was big.
03:01It's sporty and it connotes what we're trying to create, the beach.
03:05So the uniforms, yes, they were revealing, but not to the point where you'd feel strange
03:10bringing a kid into the restaurant.
03:13That balance was really a big ingredient in their early success.
03:19But in the early days, bringing in customers wasn't always sexy.
03:23There's a chicken costume over here that out of desperation, I went out and stood around
03:28in traffic to wave people in.
03:31I saw a boat sunk that everybody on the causeway was driving by.
03:34I swam out and painted Hooters on that.
03:37The founders also used their biggest asset to amplify the brand, Hooters Girls.
03:42Hooters' success is completely due to marketing.
03:45It was off the wall.
03:47I mean, it was just everywhere.
03:50It wasn't long before Hooters caught the attention of the restaurateur Hugh Conardy,
03:54who later helped develop Outback Steakhouse.
03:57In 1984, he struck a deal with the founders to take the brand nationwide.
04:03The deal gave the so-called Hooters Six the right to continue owning and operating locations
04:08in and around Tampa and Chicago under the name Hooters Inc.
04:13And in exchange for a 3% royalty, Conardy could open branches everywhere else.
04:18Those would become part of what's now known as Hooters of America.
04:23Essentially, it created two chains, one owned by the founders, Hooters Inc.,
04:28and the other by the franchisor, Hooters of America.
04:32But Conardy needed more financing to scale up.
04:35So he turned to his friend Bob Brooks, who is largely credited with the expansion.
04:40But he also began to push Hooters in a more explicit direction,
04:46and that did create tension between the two sides.
04:49As the chain grew, so did public interest in Hooters Girls.
04:54In 1986, the original founders had an idea to capitalize on that interest.
05:00I don't think any other restaurant at the time had been doing calendars of their actual waitresses,
05:05and it just took us to a whole new level.
05:08The calendar wasn't just a new source of revenue.
05:11It also attracted more talent to the brand.
05:13It became a recruiting tool because girls knew that it could get them exposure.
05:18As the stores built out, we did calendar tours, we did pageants.
05:21It's a connection that's hard to explain because we are treated as celebrities,
05:28but we also work our butts off.
05:31That's Marsha Drosty.
05:33She's the wife of co-founder Ed Drosty and a former Hooters girl.
05:37Even if you haven't been to a Hooters, you've seen the Hooters calendar,
05:40and it's really our biggest tool to reach the public for marketing
05:43and also for meaningful, charitable things.
05:47By 1991, Hooters had roughly 50 locations across the U.S.,
05:51and Hooters of America reported revenues of over $100 million.
05:55For comparison, Applebee's, which opened four years before Hooters,
06:00reported nearly $60 million that same year.
06:04Back then, Hooters' rise showed no signs of slowing down.
06:08Everybody thinks it's all girls, it's all atmosphere, it's the music.
06:11But actually, it's also about the wings.
06:14It's the highest ordered item on the menu.
06:17Domestically, we sell about 30 million pounds a year, so it's a very critical item.
06:21The recipe for Hooters chicken wings is so secret, even our cooks aren't allowed to know it.
06:28They made stuff from scratch. I mean, it wasn't an afterthought in those early days.
06:33The food was good.
06:34You know what they say, sauce sells.
06:39And with every endeavor, the brand stayed true to its slogan.
06:44Delightfully tacky, yet unrefined.
06:47Whether in commercials.
06:49Hooters, where all the big guys hang out.
06:52Late night TV.
06:54Hooters chicken wing dock.
06:56I wouldn't turn down a breast, would I?
07:00Or NASCAR sponsorships.
07:02Everywhere we went, we revolutionized the market, and that was by necessity.
07:06By the end of 1993, the chain had doubled its footprint, with around 100 locations across
07:12the U.S., and Hooters of America was reporting $200 million in revenue.
07:18But beyond the restaurant floor, opinions about the Hooters girl and the company's
07:22all-female waitstaff were shifting.
07:25That year, the National Organization for Women launched a campaign against Hooters,
07:30calling it sexist and exploitive.
07:33There have been Hooters girls who have said they experienced unwanted sexual advances.
07:39There's an inherent risk to it for the women working in those restaurants
07:43versus the average casual dining chain.
07:47But some early Hooters girls, like Lynn and Marsha, say their experiences were different.
07:53We have a sisterhood.
07:54You know, we were all partying together.
07:57We're all waitressing together.
07:58It was literally family.
08:01It's too empowering to be a Hooters girl for it to feel like we're being objectified.
08:06Nevertheless, the rise of Hooters in the 90s popularized the term Brestaurant
08:10to describe chains that built their brand around sex appeal.
08:13I think you can safely say Hooters started this segment.
08:17Twin Peaks came later.
08:19A bunch of other copycats came later.
08:21If you ask those closest to the original concept, they'll reject the label.
08:26We get it, but we don't necessarily embrace it.
08:30And we'd like to think that we are so much more than that.
08:34People are going to always have an opinion about the way women might dress or the way
08:39women might carry themselves or even where they work.
08:42But we just don't subscribe to that and we don't care.
08:47Beyond its reputation, Hooters was facing bigger threats.
08:51In 1993, six former waitresses sued a Hooters in Minneapolis for allegedly perpetuating an
08:57environment in which customers sexually harassed them.
08:59All these lawsuits cannot have been good for Hooters' public image.
09:05It was already walking a fine line.
09:08By 1995, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was publicly challenging Hooters'
09:14policy of hiring only women servers, calling it sex discrimination.
09:18It's scary when the federal government says they want to basically shut you down or charge
09:23you at the time. I think it was 22 million.
09:24To change our method of operation for 10 years, it's where to put us out of business.
09:29And we weren't that big.
09:30We were probably 50, 60 stores.
09:32So Hooters did what it does best.
09:35It got the public's attention.
09:37The company rallied around 100 Hooters waitresses for a march on Washington outside government offices.
09:44That's me with all of our girls.
09:46What a thrill to look back and see a wave of orange marching for our right to be Hooters girls.
09:53We put a guy on a billboard up there that brought us quite a bunch of notoriety.
09:58And we actually won.
09:59In 1996, the commission quietly dropped the case against Hooters,
10:04due to limited financial resources and heavy caseload.
10:08It became more exposure than we ever thought.
10:10Our sales and growth just skyrocketed after that.
10:14Then in 2003, Hooters of America chairman Bob Brooks tried something few brands would dare.
10:20He launched an airline.
10:24Hooters Air offered $129 flights to 15 destinations,
10:29each staffed with two Hooters girls and three FAA-certified flight attendants.
10:34I wasn't a big fan of Bob Brooks going into Hooters Air because I always said,
10:38well, wait, what happens when a plane goes down, you know?
10:41But he ran a really good business. They weren't late. They were clean planes.
10:46But the timing was tough.
10:48Rising fuel prices and fierce competition from low-cost carriers like Southwest
10:53made it difficult for a niche airline like Hooters Air to survive.
10:57After just three years, the airline was forced to ground operations,
11:02leaving behind $40 million in losses.
11:05Running an airline is quite a bit different than running a restaurant.
11:11But Hooters was ready to make another wager.
11:14In 2006, it opened Hooters Casino Hotel near the Las Vegas Strip.
11:19The resort featured nearly 700 rooms, a casino floor, and multiple dining outlets.
11:26It wasn't a winning bet. By 2008, the Hooters Casino Hotel was reporting losses.
11:31Yet Hooters sales hit almost $1 billion that year, which wasn't far behind larger competitors
11:38like Chili's and Applebee's. Just as the brand was reaching new heights, the economy crashed.
11:45People were spending less, and the entire industry felt it.
11:50The recession was hard on all full-service restaurant chains. Consumers were struggling.
11:57They were pulling back on their dining visits.
11:59And that hit Hooters just as much as it hit Chili's, Applebee's, TGI Fridays, etc.
12:05Hooters was also facing more competition than ever before,
12:09from the rise of fast casual dining to growing rival chains like Twin Peaks and Tilted Kilt,
12:15which also employed all-female waitstaffs.
12:18From 2007 to 2010, Hooters sales tumbled 7.5%, and the company began exploring a potential buyer.
12:26At that point, more than 450 locations still operated in 44 states and nearly 30 countries.
12:34A vast majority of those were under the franchisor, Hooters of America.
12:39But in 2011, the Brooks family sold Hooters of America to private investors.
12:44This is when some insiders say things began to change.
12:52Terry Moberly, a former franchise manager, witnessed the brand's decline firsthand.
12:58For over two decades, he oversaw four locations across Indiana.
13:02I'm a bit of a pack rat. I keep a lot of mementos around.
13:06There was a convention that would come into Indy downtown every year
13:09called the Fire Department Instructors Conference.
13:12I purchased a 1959 American La France fire truck.
13:15This is the kind of commando marketing stuff that we used to really revel in.
13:19What we were selling was the All-American Girl Next Door brand
13:23and not being the appetizer for a strip club.
13:24But when Hooters of America stepped in, it wanted to redefine the brand.
13:30Starting with a new logo and restaurant redesign in 2013.
13:34The HOA guys sterilized everything.
13:36You know, the signs were up on the wall.
13:38It's like, free beer tomorrow.
13:40Where it's just kind of a very tongue-in-cheek.
13:41All those things were taken away because they wanted to be more like Applebee's and O'Charlie's.
13:47More importantly, Hooters of America also changed the recipes.
13:51They switched to a margarine-based sauce rather than butter.
13:55They started, you know, shorting the portion sizes.
13:58They came through and thought that they'd offer a salad menu,
14:01thinking it would attract more female clientele.
14:03Again, another misguided decision.
14:05I think that corporate was out of touch with what was going on at the restaurants.
14:12Jarden Taylor began waitressing at Hooters of America locations in 2015.
14:17First in Oklahoma and later in Texas.
14:20A lot of the girls that were working at Hooters during my tenure
14:23there went on to be nurses, engineers, lawyers.
14:28The girls at Hooters are so multi-talented,
14:31and that was a huge misconception was that we were just ditzy.
14:35Working at Hooters helped Jarden Taylor finance her way through college and graduate school,
14:40partially thanks to the company's tuition reimbursement program,
14:44which offered up to a thousand dollars per semester.
14:47I can't tell you how many times I've been in a hospital where,
14:50when they find out I'm with Hooters, I have to listen to their story,
14:53how they put themselves through college.
14:55But being a Hooters girl also meant adhering to a strict image policy.
15:00When I started out in 2015, some of the basic rules were there was absolutely no braids,
15:07no visible tattoos, no color on nails.
15:10You needed to maintain the look that you had the day that you were hired.
15:14Girls would come with different color hair,
15:18and whether you were allowed to work was at the discretion of the manager.
15:23That same year, a Maryland Hooters girl was awarded $250,000
15:28after being fired for having blonde highlights.
15:31Her manager allegedly told her black people don't have blonde hair.
15:36An arbitrator later called the restaurant's image policy discriminatory.
15:41I myself pushed back on a lot of rules, more specifically the hair.
15:46I had braids all the time.
15:47But sometimes they would push back too, and you would get sent home.
15:51In the past few years, there have been a couple of high-profile racial discrimination
15:56lawsuits against Hooters that have resulted in settlements of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
16:03From 2015 to 2018, annual sales at U.S. locations fell nearly 4%.
16:08Facing mounting pressures from declining revenue and shifting consumer tastes,
16:14Hooters of America was sold again to two private equity firms in 2019.
16:20Just two years later, the company took on another $315 million in new debt,
16:26using its restaurants and brand assets as collateral.
16:29Just as it came time for Hooters to start repaying all of that debt, its costs for food and labor
16:35started to rise significantly coming out of the pandemic.
16:39COVID was a challenge, right? Inflation took hold, and it was really a perfect storm.
16:44It was one Hooters of America couldn't weather.
16:49Management began cutting operational costs and raising menu prices.
16:54From 2019 to 2021, the price for 10 wings increased by nearly 14%.
17:01In a last-ditch attempt to turn the business around,
17:03Hooters of America made the most visible change yet.
17:06We switched to the thong shorts, which for reference, the difference is this.
17:14It's a little bit cheekier, and it caused quite the controversy.
17:18The feeling was that it really alienated female customers, families,
17:23and so it was really counterproductive for what Hooters needed to be doing at that time,
17:28which was to reach a wider audience.
17:30I think it just got to the point where they overemphasized the sexuality,
17:34and that's not what the brand is about at all.
17:37Hooters of America eventually backed down from its uniform policy,
17:41stating its waitresses could determine which style of shorts
17:44best fits their body style and personal image.
17:48There are a group of people that think that the salacious way to go
17:51in the brand is the way to go, which is what the Twin Peaks brand, that's what they do.
17:56And it worked for that chain.
17:57From 2022 to 2024, Twin Peaks sales increased by nearly 20 percent,
18:03while Hooters sales dropped by 21 percent.
18:07Through all of HOA's struggles, the original owners continued to
18:10successfully operate their primary locations in Florida and Illinois.
18:14While Hooters of America was going into bankruptcy,
18:18Hooters Inc. was having one of the best years in its history.
18:21Three, welcome Hooters!
18:24Hooters Inc. didn't share exact figures,
18:27but in a press release, it said its restaurants made more than
18:30double the average revenue of Hooters of America's in 2024,
18:34all while maintaining the decor, uniforms, and recipes the brand was built on.
18:39If the second and third acquirers of our brand had just stuck with the basics,
18:45and we were not silent about our views on that,
18:49they would be experiencing what we are now, and that's record sales.
18:53Forbes reported Hooters Inc. had an estimated annual revenue of over $100 million in 2024.
19:00Meanwhile, Hooters of America abruptly closed roughly 40 locations across the country that year.
19:07In 2025, the franchisor filed for bankruptcy and shut down 30 more restaurants.
19:13However, this gave the original founders a chance to reclaim the brand.
19:19That November, the original Hooters group announced it had finalized a deal to acquire 111 Hooters of
19:26America restaurants.
19:27So we're looking at a situation where the very people who founded Hooters might end up being the ones who save it.
19:35Their goal is to bring the company back to its roots, starting with the menu.
19:39If you don't get the food right, you shouldn't be in the restaurant places.
19:43I think the next two to three years, you're going to see a return immediately of the butter-based
19:47ingredients that make those chicken wings so famous.
19:50It's going to change the uniforms, make them more modest, repair the restaurants, and put better equipment in.
19:56It's easy to get complacent, and so we're going to clean up these stores, but then
20:02all of us need to up our game in getting our message out.
20:09For it to rise again, Hooters will also have to repair its reputation.
20:14It's really hard to turn a sinking ship.
20:18I think that they just need to focus on the quality of the food and the quality of the Hooter Girl.
20:23I think that that could save the business.
20:26After four decades, the question now is whether Hooters can rebrand to appeal to a new generation
20:32and whether it can sell itself all over again.
20:36They heard me preach marketing because we're a brand that was known for its marketing,
20:41and when you do it right, we're always known for it.
20:43We all believe this brand is so resilient and we're all ready to roll up our sleeves and do whatever we can.
20:50We wear it proudly. I mean, I think you bleed orange.
20:56Ed made me believe all of this.
20:58He just has that way of making you believe it's going to work out.
21:01That's his thing. We're going to be world famous. You're going to be world famous.
21:05It was hard to buy back then, but damn if he wasn't right.
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