The post-COVID era has been tough for all restaurant chains, but for some more than others. In February we learned that Hooter’s was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. To avoid that, the company’s corporate owners are attempting to refurbish the brand with a more-family friendly image. They are calling this, whimsically, the “re-Hooterization”.
Hooters was founded in April 1983. The business model was simple: somewhat overpriced, okay food, served by winsome young ladies in short-shorts and form-fitting tops.
The clientele in 1983 would have been mostly Boomer men, who were then entering early middle age. The early 1980s was an era of socially conservative backlash. The Moral Majority was campaigning to ban girly magazines from convenience stores—often with success. There was no internet. In that environment, the bar for titillation was set decidedly low.
I was a freshman in high school in April 1983. As a 14-year-old boy, I would have been all over the idea of going to Hooters; but there was even less titillation in my part of the world, the conservative suburbs of Cincinnati.
About 20 years later, circa 2003, I did have lunch at a Hooters with a group of [male] work colleagues. I recall the waitress doing her best to get with the program: she made a point of sitting down beside each of us as we selected an item from the limited and overpriced menu. I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich. It came out dry and rubbery, as if it had been microwaved. That was my first and last experience with Hooters as an adult.
Regular readers of this blog will know that political correctness for the sake of political correctness is not my thing. Nevertheless, even I can recognize that a business model based on young women in skimpy attire has its limits. I like attractive women as much as the next guy, but when it comes to lunch, I’m much more easily sold on the quality of the steak, and the size and savoriness of the baked potatoes.
But what about this plan to rebrand Hooters as “family friendly”? I’ve heard reports (no doubt fed to the media by the company’s corporate owners) about an increase in Hooters diners with children. Coloring books available for the kids! (Yes, really.) Is Hooters now trying to compete with Chuck E. Cheese?
Here’s the question: once you take away the mildly prurient appeal of Hooters, what does the chain really have going for it? A family-friendly version of Hooters strikes me as an oxymoron, the equivalent of a vegetarian steakhouse, or a fast food restaurant with the motto, “We take our time while preparing your meal!”
We could have a spirited debate about whether or not Hooters was ever such a great idea to begin with, or whether such a concept has a place in the twenty-first century, which is simultaneously uptight about everything, and saturated with porn.
But who is the target market of a “family-friendly” version of Hooters? And why should anyone not take their family to Texas Roadhouse or Applebees instead?
-ET