Signs Hooters Might Not Be Around Much Longer

When a restaurant is in decline, there are generally signs, and we're seeing a lot of indications that Hooters might not be around much longer. While we applaud the fact that it's been making a lot of changes to try to stay ahead in the changing restaurant landscape, the changes don't all seem to have worked the way the chain planned.

What we're seeing as we look more closely is a restaurant chain that is declining in numbers and seems to be having money struggles. It's lagging behind its competition, and customers aren't as happy. Plus, it's had a few lawsuit issues to bring it down, among other problems. The company may make all the right moves it needs to thrive again, but when you look at the picture as a whole, Hooters is not doing well, and we may see more and more "closed" signs on its doors in the future.

The number of locations Hooters has been closing doesn't bode well. By the middle of 2024, at least 44 locations in 14 states that had been open earlier that year were listed as being permanently closed. We counted only 253 open locations on its website in July of 2024.

The company told USA Today that the closings are related to "pressure from current market conditions." As of July 2024, the closures have happened so far in 14 different states. In Illinois, Maryland, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, just one has closed. Alabama, Indiana, and Kentucky have all experienced two closures. There are three closures each in Missouri and North Carolina. Florida has four closures, and Georgia has five. Meanwhile, Texas has the most closures with 17.

The number of open Hooters locations have been shrinking over time. In 2018, there were 333 Hooters locations. In mid 2023, Hooters seemed to be doing well because it was opening restaurants rather than closing them, with three new ones opening in Las Vegas and three more opening in The Villages, Florida communities for people 55 or older. However, by the end of the year, Hooters' numbers had shrunk by 1.3%, leaving only 293. While Hooters had 12% fewer restaurants open at the end of 2023 than in 2018, its biggest competitor, Twin Peaks, grew by 12% in 2023 alone.

As you can imagine, a restaurant with a big in-person draw from its buxom servers had some challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. With people ordering carryout and delivery more often, places like Hooters seemed to be less on their minds. Plus, the dining rooms were temporarily closed.

Many locations that had been open for decades couldn't survive the restrictions on normal business practices. While some were able to open back up at limited capacity, temporary closures turned into permanent closures for many locations by July of 2020 and beyond. One franchise owner in West Ocean City, Maryland, who decided to close down permanently in July of 2020, told Delmarva Now that Hooters "wasn't set up to survive with 50% seating restrictions, and without larger crowds and bar business, it wasn't going to work out." The pandemic-related closures continued into 2021 and 2022.

The year before the pandemic, in 2019, there were 341 locations. The location numbers only reduced by one the first year of the pandemic, 2020. By the end of the second year of the pandemic, 2021, it had lost a whopping 37 locations. It lost seven more in 2022, bringing its numbers to 296. The restaurant world was starting to recover from the pandemic by 2023, but it still lost three restaurants that year. The closure of at least 44 locations in 2024 was bigger than any one pandemic year, bringing the number of locations down to 253.

After having closed so many physical restaurants, the chain decided to try operating virtual ghost kitchen locations for Chase Elliott's Chicken Tenders out of 196 Hooters' kitchens in 2022. The idea was to gain virtual customers who were fans of racing superstar Chase Elliott or who were looking for chicken tenders. Hooters said, "Incorporating Chase into this virtual concept will help us create greater awareness, attract a new audience, and grow our business with racing aficionados who can share in food and fandom." Scantily-clad waitresses didn't deliver the food. Instead, it was your average food delivery driver from places like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub.

Hooters actually got ahead of the game by offering virtual locations starting in 2019, a year before other places jumped on the bandwagon during the COVID-19 pandemic. So it wasn't a stranger to the virtual restaurant concept, but it wasn't planning to have to depend on it during a business downturn.

In 2022, Hooters collected data that indicated that 75% of its virtual orders from its delivery-only brands — like Hootie's Burger Bar, Hootie's Bait & Tackle, and Chase Elliott's Chicken Tenders — were coming from people who had never set foot inside a real Hooters before (via Pymnts). So while its virtual orders were thriving, people weren't necessarily ordering food off the actual Hooters menu.

In 2012, Hooters already knew it needed to update its brand to try to get more women and the next generation of adults, the Millennials, to start visiting. So it set out to update its menu and remodel several of its stores. The youngest Millennials were born in 1996, so the company now has to appeal to new generations of adults like Generation Z.

Back in 2017, Pornhub (an online porn video site) posted some demographic results for its customers, indicating that its users between the ages of 18 and 44 (born between 1999 and 1973) were less likely to search for breast-related terms than older users. It makes sense that the spin-off fast-casual restaurant that the company launched in 2017, Hoots Wings, doesn't even have a revealing dress code for its employees. It opts instead for modest Hoots Wings-branded shirts and regular pants. While the new chain is Hooters-adjacent, Hoots Wings is a completely different restaurant from Hooters.

Suddenly, those three 55+ community locations where Hooters opened locations in 2023 make a little more sense. Whether those locations are profitable in the end or not, only time will tell. However, it's an interesting experiment since the median age in those communities is 67, representing a demographic that seems to be more interested in breasts than younger ones.

The first Hooters opened on April Fools Day in 1983 in a Clearwater, Florida, location known for failed restaurants. The friends assumed it would last and sold it to Hugh Connerty in 1984. Connerty's company was called Neighborhood Restaurants (later, Hooters of America). That same year, Connerty sold the company to Robert H. Brooks and a group of investors called Eastern Foods.

The company stayed with Brooks until he died in 2006, which started a trend of buying and selling Hooters of America. Brooks' son, Coby Brooks, took over the chain after his father died, and the ownership got murky for a while. Chanticleer, a company that had invested in Hooters, tried to buy it in 2010. A year later in 2011, Chanticleer helped a collection of private equity investors acquire it, including H.I.G Capital and KarpReilly. However, Chanticleer was the owner in 2012.

By 2015, there were plans to auction off Hooters of America, but the owners decided to sell it instead. Even though Restaurant Business shows that the company's sales declined by 1.7% between 2017 and 2018, Nord Bay Capital and TriArtisan Capital Advisors decided to give Hooters a chance by buying it in 2019. Its previous owners, Chanticleer Holdings and H.I.G. Capital didn't completely let go of the company, wanting to keep their fingers in the pie with a level of partnership with the new owners.

Hooters has been dreaming up spin-offs since the early 2000s. However, they haven't worked out as well as hoped.

A Hooters airline and casino were among the first ideas. In 2003, when Bob Brooks owned Hooters, he started an airline called Hooters Air. The planes shuttled customers between Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and 15 different cities, starting at $99. There were two Hooters servers onboard each flight for brief in-flight games, trivia, and entertainment (however, there were no chicken wings). The airline only lasted three years, closing the year Brooks died in 2006. While it boosted tourism to Myrtle Beach, the venture lost $40 million for Hooters. That year, 2006, was also the year that the company opened up a Hooters resort-casino in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, it had to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2011. It had $162 million in debt but not nearly enough assets to cover it all. After its initial failure, the business was auctioned off; it has changed hands a few times since then, but still exists.

Hooters' latest spin-off is Hoots Wings, which started out in 2021. It's too soon to know the fate of this fast-casual version of Hooters yet, but it can't be a good sign that some locations permanently closed within two to three years. The last Google reviews for the closed one in Jersey City, New Jersey, were in 2023, and the one in Atlanta, Georgia, closed in 2024.

Hooters started sponsoring NASCAR races in 1991, when Bob Brooks owned the company. It's a tradition that has continued through the decades. However, its NASCAR-related partnerships came to a screeching halt in the summer of 2024 when Hooters stopped paying bills related to its sponsorship deals. The fact that Hooters wasn't able to honor its financial sponsorship commitments at the same time it decided to close the doors of over 40 restaurants doesn't bode well for the company, especially since the company also took out a $70 million term loan in March of 2024.

The sponsorship between Hendrick Motorsports and Hooters began in 2017. One part of the partnership included sponsoring Chase Elliott's car number nine. Even if you're not a race fan, you might recognize Chase Elliott as having his name on the virtual ghost restaurant that started operating out of Hooters' kitchens in 2022, Chase Elliott's Chicken Tenders.

When Hendrick Motorsports decided a breakup was necessary in July of 2024, the team removed its Hooters advertising decals from the racing car. It also took down mention of the partnership on its website. We found a virtual Chase Elliott's Chicken Tenders restaurant still taking orders a few days after the breakup, but it's probably not long before this brand dissolves, too.

Hooters has been making the headlines recently for racist employment practices, which have led to lawsuits against the chain. Hooters is no stranger to employment-related lawsuits. Men sued to gain Hooters employment opportunities in 1997, and Hooters was granted an exception to Title VII so that they could hire only female servers. Employees have also filed weight-discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits, among others. Now, racial discrimination is coming to the forefront.

The race-related employment-based lawsuits started cropping up in 2015. The first one happened when a black waitress' manager told her she couldn't wear blonde highlights because they wouldn't look natural. Hooters lost the case, with Hooters forking over $250,000 after the judge determined that the chain was in violation of civil rights laws.

More recently, the Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has filed a couple of race-related lawsuits against Hooters in two states. Hooters settled one in Louisiana in 2023 related to not rehiring any of its black employees after pandemic-related layoffs in 2020. There was also a long history of racially discriminatory comments from management. The settlement came to $650,000. The EEOC also filed a similar lawsuit for North Carolina employees in 2023. The racial makeup of the crew hired back in 2020 after pandemic-related layoffs changed from 51% dark-skinned waitresses to only 8%. Like in Louisiana, this situation came on the heels of several racist comments from the management about how darker-skinned employees looked.

For years, we've heard people excusing their trips to Hooters by saying that they were going there for the chain's good wings rather than the revealing waitress uniforms. Customers found the wings both tasty and unique, since the breading helped to keep the sauce on the wings. However, the tides have changed, and customers are starting to express their disappointment with the wings.

When we looked at the Google reviews for Hooters' wings, we mainly found lackluster and negative comments. Customers clearly aren't as impressed with the wings as they used to be. Customers find them closer to the average range, and we found complaints of them being soggy and small in some locations. One Redditor said that they were "legitimately disappointed" last time they had Hooters' wings. "I try to not be the 'this was better back in the day!' guy, but this is one I feel confident about saying." Now there are plenty of chain restaurants selling good chicken wings so that those customers who used to go to Hooters for the wings have better choices.

The breastaurant concept isn't dead, and Hooters' competitors are still doing well with the model. For example, Twin Peaks is growing instead of shrinking its location numbers, and is projected to have $1 billion in yearly sales by 2027. And even though the Tilted Kilt has fewer locations and is bringing in less money overall, it's making more money per employee than Hooters. While Hooters has made some changes, they're still not exactly the ones the chain needs.

Vigor restaurant branding expert Joseph Szala told Vox that Hooters needed an image overhaul. He said that the Tilted Kilt has "a rather modern interpretation of a sexualized woman, whereas Hooters maintains a 1990s Florida beach look." With breasts becoming less of a focus for younger generations, Hooters did change its visual strategy in 2021 to focus its new uniforms on derriere curves as well as chest curves, switching to uniform bottoms that were more like thong-style panties than short shorts. However, it doesn't seem like the change the brand needed.

Szala pointed out that the Hooters concept of skimpy waitress uniforms is "a service we can get elsewhere, and at restaurants that serve more interesting food." Its competitors are pulling customers in not only for their eye candy, but for their menu offerings as well. Twin Peaks attracts customers who are interested in its tasty from-scratch menu, while the Tilted Kilt gets customers in with its pub-style menu.

Customers don't seem to have views of Hooters that are as high as they should be. To determine how the Hooters brand is ranking with its customers, we looked at data from Comparably.

In 2023, the data shows that customers weren't feeling that faithful to Hooters, with only 69% feeling a sense of loyalty to the brand. And an even smaller number of customers, 51%, were satisfied with the service they received at the restaurant. Comparably gives the chain a Net Promoters Score (NPS) of -11, based on the fact that only 40% of customers are likely to promote the chain. Meanwhile, 51% are more likely to recommend against others visiting the restaurant (40% minus 51% equals -11).

Good customer experiences lead to customer loyalty. It's loyal customers who form the core of a restaurant's business by being repeat customers and suggesting that their friends visit, too. Loyal customers who have good experiences come back and spend more money than new customers. They also spend more than loyal customers who had previous bad experiences. Meanwhile, customers who have negative experiences tend to tell more people about their negative experiences than those who have good experiences. So, the fact that Hooters is lacking in loyalty and is top-heavy with more detractors than promoters isn't working in its favor.

Something else that we've noticed is that Hooters rankings are falling lower lately, too. Every year, Restaurant Business Online puts out a list of the Technomic Top 500 chain restaurants in the U.S. While Hooters is still in the top 100, its ranking has dropped within the last decade. The data comes from a variety of sources, and some of the data it looks at includes sales, restaurant numbers, and how those stats have changed from year to year.

We could find data going back to 2014, when Hooters was ranked number 51 on the list. In the years after 2014, it never managed to move closer to number one than 51. During the rest of the 2010s, the rank stayed in the 50s, going as low as number 58 in 2018. It moved from number 56 to number 64 in 2020. While the number improved in 2021 a little, it declined back to number 64 again in 2023. Keep in mind that number 64 was Hooters' ranking back in 2020 when it was struggling through keeping a breastaurant afloat during restaurant closedowns in the middle of a pandemic.

Interestingly, its main competitor, Twin Peaks was only ranked 101 in 2023. However, Twin Peaks only had 103 locations and thus made less profit. So it makes sense for its rank to be lower. However, when you compare Hooters to itself, the rankings show a steady decline rather than a thriving restaurant.