Hooters, the restaurant chain recognized for its rooster wings, its all-female serving employees in revealing outfits and its slogan — “delightfully cheesy, but unrefined” — has filed for chapter in a Texas court docket, the corporate introduced on Monday.
Underneath the chapter settlement, a gaggle that features the corporate’s founders — who independently run a couple of third of the franchised areas in the USA — will purchase the company-owned eating places in the USA from the personal fairness agency that owns the chain.
The difficult chapter submitting is a method to hold lots of the eating places open.
“Our famend Hooters eating places are right here to remain,” the corporate mentioned in its announcement. In the course of the chapter proceedings, Hooters eating places will proceed working — as the corporate mentioned on a site explaining the transaction, “It’s at all times grasp time at Hooters.”
Hooters, pleased with its Buffalo rooster wings however well-known for the low-cut tops and vivid orange scorching pants worn by its waitresses, has greater than 400 areas throughout 42 states and 29 international locations. A few of these eating places, together with the worldwide areas, are run as franchises and won’t be affected by the chapter course of, the corporate mentioned.
After the method is accomplished, the entire chain’s areas will probably be franchises.
Reviews that Hooters was contemplating submitting for chapter have been swirling for weeks, and first appeared in Bloomberg News. Final summer time, Hooters closed dozens of eating places.
This week, Neil Kiefer, the chief government of an impartial firm that runs a gaggle of unique Hooters eating places, instructed Bloomberg that he was planning what he known as a “re-Hooterization,” or rebrand, which would come with ending the chain’s “bikini nights.”
Mr. Kiefer is among the many proposed patrons of Hooters areas from their personal fairness house owners. “As we glance towards the longer term, we’re dedicated to restoring the Hooters model again to its roots,” he mentioned in a press release saying the chapter course of.
The rebrand will goal to offer Hooters a extra healthful picture. In 2021, the corporate confronted backlash after altering its uniforms to incorporate shorts that have been so tiny that they resembled underwear. Hooters shortly reverted its coverage, giving employees members a alternative of what shorts to put on.
Hooters will not be the one well-known eating chain to battle over the previous few years, partly due to fallout from pandemic closures and inflation squeezing customers’ budgets. In November, TGI Friday’s filed for bankruptcy protection, and final Might, Purple Lobster, the American seafood staple, did the same.
Hooters began 42 years in the past, when “six businessmen with completely no earlier restaurant expertise bought collectively and determined to open a spot they couldn’t get kicked out of,” based on the chain’s web site. The primary location opened in Clearwater, Fla., in October 1983.
The chain grew steadily, and its wide-eyed owl emblem and orange lettering grew to become ubiquitous within the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s, each on its many eating places and in common tradition. In its heyday, Hooters’ branding could possibly be seen at shovel racing competitions, on an area soccer staff and at a professional golf tour, to call a couple of. It even appeared on an airline, Hooters Air, which operated for 3 years, from 2003 to 2006.
