Bpin shorts and entirely American wings: the rise and the fall of the hooters

Hooters opened its first point of sale on October 4, 1983 in Clearwater, Florida.

It was founded by six men without experience in catering.

“In 1983, in Clearwater, Florida, six businessmen without catering experience who met to open a place from which they could not be expelled. True history,” said the Hooters website.

According to its website, the company now operates more than 420 Hooters restaurants, belonging to the company and franchisees, in 42 states in the United States and 29 countries abroad.

Hooters opened its first international store outside North America in Singapore in 1996, and it continues to work today.

Besides Singapore, it is also present in Thailand, China, Brazil and the United Kingdom, among others.

On his website, Hooters describes himself as “deliciously sticky, but unrefined”.

The chain may be better known for the uniforms of its staff. His largely feminine servers’ workforce is dressed in a tight white tank top with divers diver associated with bright orange boot shorts.

“Serious food, cold beer and all the sports that you could possibly watch on televisions on the big wall screen on wall,” proclaims Hooters on its website.

“And let’s not forget the hooked girls,” he adds.

Its offerings are distinctly American – chicken wings, burgers, sandwiches, tacos and cakes.

He has published his Hooters calendar every year since 1986, filled with photos of swimsuit models. The 2025 calendar, sold on the company’s website, was at a price of $ 19.95.

In 2003, Hooters launched a low-cost air service that operated at the national level in the United States. Two Hooters waitresses were on board each flight to take care and entertain the passengers.

The airline planes were wooded by the brand’s signature owner logo and painted in its distinctive orange shade.

Hooters Air stopped three years later in 2006, citing a loss of $ 40 million.

However, the CEO of Hooters, Sal Melili, said in 2020 that customers had a “repressed request” during the pandemic, and the company saw them back when he started his restaurants again.

Melili said that the chain had reversed its sales down and made flat-comparable sales after reopening Hooters restaurants in 2020. The restaurant reopened in mid-2020.

Hooters contracted a loan of $ 70 million over five years in 2022 for working fund and general companies, “said a press release.

The bankruptcy deposit said on Monday that the hooters had suffered from a “drop in profitability and substantial payment from the claim service”.

The bankruptcy plan, if it was approved, would give Hooters $ 40 million in debtor funding in possession.

In a March interview with Bloomberg, Neil Kiefer, the director general of the founding group of Hooters, HMC Hospitality Group, said that the chain had suffered when it has deviated from its roots as a family restaurant.

“You are going to some parts of the country and people say:” Oh, I could never go to Hooters, my wife would kill me “, Kiefer told Bloomberg. “It’s depressing for us. We want to change this.”