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Hooters of America filed for bankruptcy at the end of March.
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The chain has struggled with debt and closed some restaurants last year.
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I went to a Hooters restaurant in Virginia to see what dining at the restaurant is like.
Your local Hooters could see some big changes soon.
The restaurant chain is famous for its waitstaff, who wear short shorts and tight tank tops. Starting in the early 1980s, it went from a single restaurant in Florida to hundreds across the US. Hooters even briefly operated an airline in the early 2000s.
But at the end of March, Hooters of America, one of two companies that operates Hooters restaurants in the US, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company is owned by the private equity firms Nord Bay Capital and TriArtisan Capital Advisors.
Hooters of America’s restaurants are still open during the bankruptcy process. The company plans to sell some of its locations to franchisees who opened the first locations back in the ’80s.
Neil Kiefer, the chief executive of Hooters’ founding group, HMC Hospitality Group, told Bloomberg last month that post-bankruptcy, he wants to make Hooters more family-friendly. That would include getting rid of “Bikini Nights” and changing the menu to include better-quality ingredients, he said.
I wanted to see what Kiefer and Hooters have to work with to make that transition. Hooters has a specific reputation — some call it a “breastaurant,” after all — so rebranding as a family-friendly establishment would be quite a pivot.
I headed to a Hooters a short drive from my home in Washington, DC, for lunch to see what it’s like. Here’s what I found:
I visited this Hooters restaurant in Chantilly, Virginia, on a Thursday.
Located about 40 minutes by car outside Washington, DC, this Hooters is near Dulles International Airport and several major highways and freeways, including Route 66.
The parking spaces immediately around the restaurant were full, which I found surprising given that it was 11:20 a.m. on a Thursday. This Hooters had opened just 20 minutes earlier.
The entryway looked exactly like I expected.
These photos of women in bikinis and Hooters outfits were in a vestibule as I walked into Hooters. Once I entered the dining room, the hostess seated me right away.
I was surprised by how busy Hooters was in the late morning on a weekday.
While there were plenty of empty tables, the bar was packed, mostly with what appeared to be middle-aged or older men. One person was even dressed in business casual and looking at spreadsheets on a laptop.
Overall, the restaurant was just under half full less than 20 minutes after it had opened.
This Hooters location was a lot more lively than other challenged restaurant chains I’ve visited.
When I visited a Red Lobster this past September at a similar time on a weekday, it was nearly empty.
And a Cracker Barrel I went to during the summer was about half-full during prime breakfast time.
The Hooters in Chantilly, by contrast, was a little busier than I expected. My server told me that many people there were regulars who work at office parks nearby and like to stop by for lunch.
My server left me this personalized napkin with her name on it.
Right after the hostess showed me to my table, a server came over and introduced herself. She also brought over this napkin, on which she had hand-written her name.
All the waitstaff were wearing the same short shorts and tank tops that I’d seen in ads for Hooters.
My server was very attentive to me, a guy dining alone, stopping by every five to 10 minutes to make sure I had everything I needed or just chat.
If you’re a lonely single heterosexual man, that might constitute great service, but it might not appeal to others.
Hiring only “attractive servers that suit the male gaze is really alienating at least 50% of your dining population,” Lilly Jan, a lecturer at the Nolan School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University, said in an interview.
My server was great, and at no point did I feel uncomfortable, nor was my wife bothered about me visiting Hooters. My (female) editor, however, was very keen to make sure I was OK dining there.
I picked up the menu to decide what to order for lunch.
The menu had a decent selection of drinks and food, though I’d read that the chicken wings were one of the most popular dishes here.
The menu seemed like standard bar food, from three-patty burgers …
The Hooters menu included beef burgers as well as a fried chicken sandwich.
… to chicken wings that come in a variety of sauces.
I ended up ordering 10 breaded wings, half in the honey Sriracha sauce and half with Hooters’ Daytona Beach sauce, as well as some curly fries and and a peach lemonade.
The server brought me my peach lemonade after a few minutes.
The peach lemonade was served in a plastic orange cup.
As I waited for my food, I noticed the TVs all around me.
I counted 26 televisions around this Hooters restaurant. I don’t spend much time in sports bars, but it seemed like it would be a decent place to catch a game or a UFC fight.
Big TVs, or a lot of them, aren’t as big a draw for restaurants as they used to be.
A few decades ago, having a huge, flat-screen TV at home was a luxury. Now, it’s pretty common. And many sports are now broadcast on streaming services or other easily available channels that people can watch from their living rooms.
That has limited the appeal of bars like Hooters that cater to sports fans, Jan said.
One exception is UFC fights, which still charge pay-per-view fees. Fans might be more tempted to go to a sports bar if they can watch the fight there and spend the money on drinks and food instead, Jan said.
“They’re paying for the rights to broadcast that in their places so that people don’t have to spend the money to buy the game,” she said.
After about 10 minutes, my food arrived.
My server brought an extra plate for the bones, which I appreciated.
Of the two sauces I tried on the wings, I preferred the honey Sriracha.
I liked the slight sweetness of the honey Sriracha wings more than the Daytona Beach sauce. A bit of ranch on the side provided a nice contrast.
Hooters’ chicken wings were fine.
Reviews of Hooters’ food often mention the chicken wings as one of the best menu items. I thought that the wings were good, though they weren’t quite as crispy as ones I’ve had elsewhere, such as at Buffalo Wild Wings.
Many restaurants, from Raising Cane’s to Dave’s Hot Chicken, have stepped up their fried chicken offerings over the past several years. That makes it difficult for a chain like Hooters to stand out, Jan said.
“The whole category of chicken-heavy menus has just been blowing up a whole lot,” she said.
The fries were perfectly average.
I would have preferred them fried a little longer.
My meal at Hooters was fine, but not game-changing.
The wings were not great but also not terrible, and the fries were slightly underdone. The peach lemonade was a little too sweet.
With a 20% tip, I paid just over $34 for my meal.
On my way out, I noticed this selection of Hooters-themed merchandise.
As I walked by the display, I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I saw anyone wearing a Hooters T-shirt or baseball cap. I have, however, seen people out in public wearing apparel promoting other brands, from the convenience store chain Buc-ee’s to the burger chain In-N-Out.
Jan said she never sees Hooters apparel when she steps into lecture halls filled with Gen Z students. It’s rare to see Hooters merch even at vintage or thrift stores, she said.
“There’s just not an interest in sustaining that brand,” she said. “And this is a generation that has their pretty ironic sense of humor, so that’s pretty significant.”
This poster near the entrance promoted Hooters’ catering service.
Hooters offers catering as well as pick-up and delivery service.
The restaurant’s focus seems narrow for a modern audience.
Many millennial and Gen Z consumers gravitate toward brands that match their own values, including social inclusion across genders and sexualities, Jan said.
“This slightly dated idea of hot women serving you food is not necessarily part of that more inclusive generational narrative,” she said.
Overall, I wouldn’t rush back to Hooters anytime soon.
The food at Hooters was all right and the service was friendly.
But once you looked past the scantily clad waitresses, Hooters felt just like other fast-casual dining chains that had their heyday decades ago. Kiefer, the restaurant group’s CEO, had a point: Whether it’s better food or something else, Hooters needs to give customers a better reason to stop by.
Big turnarounds in the restaurant world aren’t unheard of. Chili’s, for example, has spent the past few years remaking itself via value deals and a cheeky social media presence to win over younger diners even as inflation made eating out less affordable.
And over a decade ago, Domino’s improved sales by revamping its pizza and admitting in ads that its food wasn’t so great.
Those are the kinds of moves that Hooters should be considering as it emerges from bankruptcy, Jan said.
“I think that they really need to make some very strategic and decisive actions to modernize the brand,” she said.
Do you work in the restaurant industry and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected].
Read the original article on Business Insider
The post I visited Hooters and saw why the chain is facing bankruptcy appeared first on Yahoo Finance.
