Hoo knew?

Somehow I missed last year's news that Hooters of America (the company in charge of the restaurant chain's franchising) has gone bankrupt. And the follow-on news that, as of June 2026, all of their Massachusetts outlets have closed.

Not that I've ever been in a Hooters. I am not exactly their core demographic, and, when it comes to nachos, burgers, and wings, there are plenty of options here in the land-of-the-ubiquitous-sports-bar. But I was aware that there was a Hooters on Route 1 in Saugus, as I'd passed by it (and passed it by) plenty of times.

Massachusetts, given its liberal bent and Puritan roots, was not big Hooters territory to begin with. At its peak, when there were over 400 Hooters nationwide, there were never more than a handful here. 

Anyway, if I wanted to dine at a Hooters, I'd have to wander pretty afar. There are none in New England. None in New York. So I'd have to go to Atlantic City, New Jersey if I wanted to see men ogling pretty girls in bright orange short-shorts and skin-tight tees, while waiting for my burger to be delivered.

Hooters is just one of the "middle-class chain restaurant" brands that have been going extinct. Like my beloved Friendly's, which used to have shops everywhere - shops that are now few and far between. (Just the thought of Friendly's and I'm hankering for a Big Beef - hamburger on white toast - and the long-gone Swiss Chocolate Almond Sundae.)

And if Friendly's is faltering, why wouldn't Hooter's be faltering as well, given its value proposition, which no longer has as much force in this day and age as it did when Hooter's was founded over 40 years ago? After all:

In the age of ubiquitous internet porn, the idea of going to a chicken-wing restaurant to see some cleavage sounded almost quaint. (Source: New Yorker)

Well, yes and no. Even in the world of all virtual, all the time, there are still some things that work better up close and personal. Sometimes folks just don't want to accept no substitutes.  

And Hooters, it seems, is on the remake. The founders of the original location in Florida (surprise, surprise!) have "acquired more than a hundred additional stores, as well as control of the brand."

The plan, according to Neil Kiefer, Hooters Inc.’s C.E.O. since 1992, was for the chain to remarket itself as a family-friendly neighborhood restaurant: there would still be short shorts and snug tops, but no more bikini nights. In the New York Times, Kiefer insisted that this effort—to “re-Hooterize,” as he put it—was simply a return to form.“We’re getting back to what makes us a beach-themed restaurant as opposed to a girlie bar,” he said.

This was "a claim that struck [writer Hannah Goldfield] as both disingenuous and self-sabotaging. Wasn’t the girlie stuff the whole point?"

Pretty much. And why not have a girlie restaurant if there are customers to eat there, and waitresses who don't mind wearing skimpy uninforms in order to work there. As long as there's not gross sexual harrassment and exploitation going on. Or at least no sexual harrassment and exploitation going on that's any worse than any place staffed by young attractive women. 

I was an off-and-on waitress from my late teens to my early twenties. God knows, I was no Hooters-worthy girlie, but waitresses back in my day took plenty of guff from men. Even when I was wearing a frumpy white nylon dress and orthopedic white nurse's shoes, there was always some guy who wanted to grab your ass. When I was a Big Boy's waitress, we were instructed to wear our name tags well above the breast to keep some wag from asking us "what's the other one named." 

For her article, Goldfield interviewed two company execs, Becky Moore and Andrea Hill, who had both started out as Hooters Girls. 

I asked Moore and Hill, tentatively, what they might say to someone who characterizes Hooters as exploitative of women. Neither of them flinched. “I believe, personally, that people just don’t know,” Hill said. “I don’t know many companies that—I was a Hooters Girl eleven years ago, and I’m the executive vice-president now. I don’t have conventional management experience, I don’t have an M.B.A., but they invested in me.” The uniform, she said, wasn’t so different from the one she’d worn as a cheerleader. “And anything that I felt about it, I would turn around, and everybody else had it on, too.”

“There was always a girl there that would have your back,” Moore added. 

Good for them.  Hoo knew that Hooters could be a good place for a girlie to work?

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Image Source: Wikipedia