Hooters

Hooters

Type	Private
Industry	Food Service
Founded	Clearwater, Florida, U.S. (1983)
Headquarters	Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Clearwater, Florida, U.S.
Number of locations	"over 455"
Key people	Coby G. Brooks, President & CEO
Products	Burgers, Chicken Wings, Seafood, Alcohol
Parent	Hooters of America, Inc. Hooters, Incorporated
Website	http://www.hooters.com/

Hooters in Morrisville, North Carolina in February 2009.

The interior of a Hooters Restaurant in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 2006.

Hooters is the trade name of two privately held American restaurant chains: Hooters of America, Incorporated, based in Atlanta, Georgia, and Hooters, Incorporated, based in Clearwater, Florida.

Hooters is a restaurant with a waitstaff primarily made up of attractive waitresses, though the company also employs other males/females as cooks, hosts (at some franchises), busboys, and managers. The sex appeal of the waitresses is a primary part of the company's image^[1]. The menu includes hamburgers and other sandwiches, steaks, seafood entrees, appetizers, and the restaurant's specialty, chicken wings. Almost all Hooters restaurants hold alcoholic beverage licenses to sell beer and wine, and, where local permits allow, a full liquor bar. Other offerings for sale include Hooters T-shirts, sweatshirts, and various souvenirs and curios.

Between company owned locations and franchises, there are now more than 435 Hooters throughout the United States. The company has restaurants in 44 U.S. states, the US Virgin Islands, and Guam. In addition, Hooters operates restaurants in 24 other countries.^[2] The company's first overseas location was in Singapore, and other Hooters restaurants are now located in Argentina, Aruba, Austria, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom (only in Nottingham), and in Venezuela.

In February 2010, it was revealed that the chain was for sale and that it could sell for $250 million.^[3]

History

Hooters, Inc. began operations on October 4, 1983, with a restaurant in Clearwater, Florida, founded by six Clearwater Businessmen (Lynn Stewart, Gil DiGiannantonio, Ed Droste, Billy Raneiri, Ken Wimmer, Dennis Johnson) and built on the site of a former shoddy and rundown nightclub that had been purchased at a low price. The store actually opened on April 1, 1983, as an "April Fools Day" joke, because the original six owners believed that their prospect was going to fail. Indeed, so many businesses had folded in that particular location that the Hooters founders built a small "graveyard" at the front door for each that had come and gone before them.^[4]

In 1984, Robert H. Brooks and a group of Atlanta investors (operators of Hooters of America, Inc.) bought expansion and franchise rights for the Hooters chain. In 2002, Brooks bought majority control and became chairman.^[5] The Clearwater-based company retained control over restaurants in the Tampa Bay Area, Chicago metropolitan area, and one in Manhattan, New York,^[6] while all other locations were under the aegis of Hooters of America, which sold franchising rights to the rest of the United States and international locations.^[7] Under Brooks's leadership, the collective Hooters brand expanded from one restaurant to more than 425 stores worldwide. Brooks died in July 2006 of a heart attack.^[8]

The Hooters Casino Hotel was opened February 2, 2006, off the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, United States. This hotel has 696 rooms with a 35,000-square-foot (3,300 m²) casino. The hotel is owned and operated by 155 East Tropicana, LLC (Florida Hooters, LLC 66.67% & EW Common, LLC 33.33%). It is located next to the Tropicana and across the street from the MGM Grand Las Vegas. At this time it is the only Hooters facility offering overnight accommodations since a Hooters Inn motel located along Interstate 4 in Lakeland, Florida was demolished in 2007.

As part of their 25th anniversary, Hooters Magazine released its list of top Hooters Girls of all time. Among the best-known were Lynne Austin (the original Hooters Girl), the late Kelly Jo Dowd (the mother of the golfer Dakoda Dowd), Bonnie-Jill Laflin, Leeann Tweeden, and Holly Madison.^[9][10]

The whole operation in Hooters are based on these three principles: wings, beer, and beautiful women.

Hooters Girls

Hooters Calendar Girl Melissa Poe in 2004

A Hooters Girl at their Singapore restaurant in 2008.

The looks of the waitresses are a main selling feature of the restaurant. A Hooters Girl is a waitress employed by the Hooters restaurant chain. The girls are recognizable by their uniform of a white tank top with the "Hootie the Owl" logo and the location name on the front paired with the famously short nylon orange runner's shorts. Originally, the shirts were white cotton, pulled tight and knotted in the back to emphasize the breasts. "Hooters" is slang for "breasts" in some American parlance.

Later, Hooters changed to a tight white spandex shirt that eliminated the knot-tying. The company also began using other colors and designs for their tops such as a camouflage theme on Monday ("Military Mondays"), black on Friday ("Formal Fridays"), some Sundays, for special occasions, and for important local football and basketball games, and the football uniforms of local National Football League teams during the NFL season, although this varies from state to state and by location. The remainder of the Hooters Girls uniform consists of the restaurant's brown ticket pouch (or a black one with the black uniform), pantyhose, white loose socks, and clean white shoes. Men who work at Hooters wear Hooters hats, t-shirts with long pants, Bermuda shorts, or attire more suitable for kitchen use.

Legal issues

Legal history

• In 1997, three men from the Chicago area sued Hooters after being denied employment at an Orland Park, Illinois, restaurant. Each of them was awarded $19,100. Four men who filed a similar lawsuit in Maryland received $10,350 each. The settlement allows Hooters to continue luring customers with a female staff of Hooters Girls. But the chain also agreed to create a few other support jobs, like bartenders and hosts, that must be filled without regard to sex.^[11]
• In 2001, a jury determined Hooters of Augusta Inc. willfully violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by sending unsolicited advertising faxes. The class-action lawsuit, brought in June 1995 by Sam Nicholson, included 1,320 others who said they received the advertising faxes from Hooters. Atlanta-based Hooters of America Inc., the local restaurant's parent company, paid out $11 million.^[12] The jury determined that six faxes were sent to each plaintiff. With a $500 fine for each, that amounts to a $3,000 award per plaintiff.^[13]
• In 2004 it was found job applicants to a Hooters in West Covina, California were secretly filmed while undressing, prompting a civil suit filed against the national restaurant chain in Los Angeles Superior Court.^[14] The company intends to address the incident with additional employee training.
• In 2009, Nikolai Grushevski, a man from Corpus Christi, Texas, filed a lawsuit because Hooters would not hire him as a waiter. Grushevski and Hooters reached a confidential settlement on April 13.^[15]
• In September 2009, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against a North Carolina charter airline (formerly Hooters Air) on behalf of Chau Nguyen, an Asian flight attendant fired three years prior after complaining only white workers were being promoted.^[16]
• In May 2010, a lawsuit was filed against Hooters in Michigan after an employee was given a job performance review and was told "that her shirt and short size could use some improvement" by 2 women who held positions at the headquarters in Atlanta. Michigan is the only state that includes height and weight as bounds for non-discrimination in hiring. The plaintiff alleges that the women made the offer of a free gym membership and that if she did not improve in 30 days, would be terminated.^[17]

Legal status

In employment discrimination law in the United States, employers are generally allowed to consider characteristics that would otherwise be discriminatory if they are bona fide occupational qualifications (BFOQ). For example, a manufacturer of men's clothing may lawfully advertise for male models. Hooters has argued a BFOQ defense, which applies when the “essence of the business operation would be undermined if the business eliminated its discriminatory policy”.^[15]

Employee handbook requirements

An older version of the Hooters Employee Handbook (prior to October 2006), published in The Smoking Gun reads:^[18] which notes that:

Customers can go to many places for wings and beer, but it is our Hooters Girls who make our concept unique. Hooters offers its customers the look of the "All American Cheerleader, Surfer, Girl Next Door."

Female employees are required to sign that they "acknowledge and affirm" the following:

1. My job duties require I wear the designated Hooters Girl uniform.
2. My job duties require that I interact with and entertain the customers.
3. The Hooters concept is based on female sex appeal and the work environment is one in which joking and entertaining conversations are commonplace.
4. I do not find my job duties, uniform requirements, or work environment to be offensive, intimidating, hostile, or unwelcome.

Public perception

Public relations

Ericka Whittaker of the Hooters in downtown Atlanta signing her June 2010 calendar entry at the McDonough, Georgia Hooters on November 14, 2009.

Hooters has an extensive public relations campaign and has actively supported charities through its Hooters Community Endowment Fund, also known as HOO.C.E.F., a play on UNICEF. It has provided money and/or volunteers to charities such as Habitat for Humanity, The V Foundation for Cancer Research, Operation Homefront, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Special Olympics, Muscular Dystrophy Association and Stop Hunger Now.^[19][20] In addition, after the death of Kelly Jo Dowd, a former Hooters Girl on the cover of the Hooters calendar in 1995, and later a restaurant general manager, Hooters began a campaign against breast cancer, with awareness of the issue being spread through the Kelly Jo Dowd Fund. Last year the restaurants reached the $2 Million goal and continue to raise money for the cause. Local restaurants will often select their own local charities.

Hooters has been active in supporting the military through various efforts. Since 2006, Hooters runs an annual national promotion dubbed "Operation: Calendar Drop" and has collectively sent over 100,000 Hooters Calendars, with a personal note of appreciation from customers, to service men and women that are spending their holidays overseas. Hooters also launched what it calls "Operation Let Freedom Wing," which involves sending its celebrities, such as Hooters Calendar Girls, UC3 and singer Angela Lanza, to visit U.S. troops overseas, including to Afghanistan. Hooters most recently participated in two morale and welfare tours visiting the troops in Kuwait and Iraq in 2009 and 2010.

In 2009 Hooters partnered with Operation Homefront to establish The Valentine Fund in honor of fallen hero SOCS Thomas J. Valentine. The fund supports the families of Special Forces service members and other military families. Thomas J. Valentine, a Navy SEAL troop chief, was killed during a training exercise Feb. 13, 2008. He left behind his wife, Christina, a 15-year member of the Hooters family, and two young children. In honor of his sacrifice, Hooters established a fund in Valentine’s name through Operation Homefront.

On February 14, 2010 Hooters President & CEO Coby G. Brooks appeared on an episode of the CBS reality TV show Undercover Boss.

Athletics & promotions

Hooters is involved in the sports world. Previous sponsorships include the Miami Hooters, a now defunct Arena Football League team. Hooters currently sponsors the USAR Hooters Pro Cup, an automobile racing series, and the NGA Hooters Tour, a minor league golf tour. In 1992 Hooters sponsored NASCAR driver Alan Kulwicki as he won the Winston Cup Championship, beating Bill Elliott by ten points, the closest margin in NASCAR prior to The Chase era. On April 1, 1993 Kulwicki, along with several others including Hooters Chairman Bob Brooks' son Mark were killed in a plane crash near Bristol, Tennessee. They were flying back to the track for Sunday's race after making a sponsor appearance at a Hooters in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Hooters has also licensed its name for the Hooters Road Trip PlayStation racing game as well as a Hooters Calendar mobile wallpaper application. Oasys Mobile will also be putting out several other games for mobile consumption based on the Hooters Calendar license in 2008.^[21]

Professional golfer John Daly is sponsored by Hooters on the PGA Tour, a deal potentially in jeopardy given his recent issues with alcohol. He also serves as a corporate spokesman. Dick Vitale, a college basketball analyst, is also a spokesman for Hooters.

Since 1986, the restaurant has issued a calendar of their girls, with signings taking place in some of their restaurants. Since 1996, Hooters has held Miss Hooters International, a pageant of Hooters Girls from around the world; in 2010, this event will take place in Hollywood, Florida.

See also

• Hooters Air (ceased operations April 2006)
• Hooters Casino Hotel
• Miami Hooters (a defunct Arena Football team)
• USAR Hooters Pro Cup - racing series
• NGA Hooters Tour - golf tour
• Hooters Road Trip - PlayStation racing game based on the franchise

References

External links

• Official website
• About Hooters - the Atlanta-based chain's information page
• Original Hooters - the non-Atlanta-based founders sub-chain
• Transfer of "Hooters" brand from Clearwater to Atlanta, a March 2001 article from Atlanta Business Chronicle
• Sexual Harassment Retaliation Lawsuit, from The Smoking Gun
• Fortune Magazine feature on Hooters