Hooters Says Bring the Kids

It’s a crisp spring night time, and the 25 televisions at Hooters are exhibiting baseball, hockey and basketball. For many years, the chain has supplied a haven for males who prefer to congregate over chilly beer, sizzling rooster wings and warmer waitresses. On an evening like this, the Hooters in East Brunswick, NJ, needs to be packed. And it’s. But along with the guys watching sports activities, the place is crammed with youngsters and their mother and father.

Beneath an indication that reads “Caution: Blondes Thinking,” a 6-year-old woman sips soda by means of a flexible straw. Nearby, members of a center college baseball group wolf down funnel fries at a desk printed with Hooters swimsuit calendar ladies. In a nook, a server sporting sizzling pants arms balloons and crayons to younger ladies contemporary off a dance efficiency.

Three 26-year-old males, who’ve stopped in after a day of golf, are surveying the scene from a high-top desk. “We’re surprised there are so many kids here,” says Robbie Holmes, who works in building. “We weren’t expecting baseball teams and families. It’s crazy.”

Hooters was based in 1983 by six Florida businessmen who “got together to open a place they couldn’t get kicked out of,” in line with the firm web site. At the first Hooters, in Clearwater, Fla., an all-female waitstaff in revealing outfits served the wings, burgers and beer.

The founders quickly opened extra areas and licensed the Hooters identify to entrepreneurs. At its peak, the chain had greater than 420 eating places throughout 42 states and 29 international locations — and, for 3 years, a Hooters airline. Private fairness corporations ultimately took management of the areas that weren’t run by the males who had began all of it.

After a sequence of possession modifications, the firm was kind of break up into two: Hooters, Inc., the department managed by the founders, and Hooters of America, which was run by the franchisers. As the waitstaff uniforms grew skimpier at many areas, Hooters, Inc. and Hooters of America had disagreements over the firm’s model identification.

Business suffered due to the 2008 recession and modifications in eating habits. The pandemic dealt one other blow. Weighed down by debt and declining gross sales, Hooters of America closed dozens of areas earlier than submitting for Chapter 11 chapter safety in March 2025.

In latest months, the unique homeowners have moved to reclaim a lot of the enterprise, buying roughly 140 areas with a plan to “re-Hooterize” the model. The effort is led by Neil Kiefer, who was as soon as the founders’ lawyer and is now the chief govt. He goals to return Hooters to what he described as its core identification — an informal place with a family-friendly vibe.

“There’s a lot to clean up,” Kiefer, 74, stated in an interview.

Under personal fairness management, Kiefer argued, the franchise operators leaned into extra overtly sexual advertising and marketing, notably a 2021 choice to introduce uniforms that resembled underwear.

“We’re getting back to what makes us a beach-themed restaurant as opposed to a girlie bar,” Kiefer stated.

To peg Hooters as a “beach-themed restaurant” overlooks the aesthetic that was there from the begin, when the chain promoted its servers as “Hooters Girls.” It additionally had a profitable aspect enterprise publishing a calendar that includes its staff in bikinis.

Although the Hooters in East Brunswick just isn’t amongst the eating places managed by Kiefer, it’s taking a web page from the family-friendly method now endorsed by the unique group. There’s a “Kids Eat Free” promotion on Saturdays, and Hooters-branded child onesies are on the market at the merchandise counter. Yet it nonetheless holds the occasional “bikini night,” with servers doing their jobs in swimwear.

“It’s a current topic of debate,” Kiefer stated of the bikini nights. “You’ll never see one of those in one of our stores and, hopefully, we’ll get everybody in line with that, too.”

The décor of the East Brunswick location reveals that the makeover is way from full, with framed images of servers in racy costumes on the partitions and a TV taking part in a slide present of the bikini nights on a loop. The waitstaff uniforms have extra materials than they as soon as did, however the servers are nonetheless outfitted in low-cut V-necks and tight orange shorts.

Amid the new family-friendly pushon-line boards have crammed with mother and father debating whether or not Hooters is an applicable place for kids, with commenters arguing every thing from “bodies aren’t inherently sexual — let the kids eat wings” to calling the chain “sleazy and gross.”

Dave Ockrim, 39, and his spouse, Lisa Ockrim, 43, stated they had been stunned to see so many different mother and father with youngsters after they walked in with their two sons, ages 2 and 12.

“I don’t think it’s too risky or perverse,” Dave Ockrim stated. “Besides, the food is genuinely good.”

Another buyer, Lexy Pogoda, 38, a stay-at-home mom, agreed. “I’m pretty conservative with this kind of stuff,” she stated, “but I don’t think it’s vulgar, if that’s what people say.”

Five youngsters, ages 1 to fifteen, sat close by, a part of a household group at a protracted desk. Elsewhere in the room, Lesly Dagdag, 41, stated she usually dined right here along with her household. “I’ve asked my friends, ‘Is it weird we take our kids to Hooters?’” she stated. “They’re like, ‘Yeah.’”

Alan Renaut, 44, stated his 9-year-old daughter had gained a purple unicorn from the claw machine. “It’s just a good vibe,” he stated.

Kitschy décor and upbeat music — from Taylor Swift to Guns N’ Roses — maintain the place loud and unfastened. The servers are expert in making a manufacturing out of birthdays, standing children on chairs and giving them menus to flap like wings, stated Anna Petrillo, a 23-year-old Hooters waitress. For grownup males, the servers take a unique method, stuffing their shirts with paper towels to simulate breasts, Petrillo added.

Over the years, Hooters has confronted its share of authorized challenges. In 1997, the firm reached a settlement with a gaggle of males who filed a discrimination lawsuit alleging that they’d been denied jobs at the chain due to their intercourse. As a part of the deal, Hooters agreed to make use of males in help roles, together with hosts and bartenders. In 2011, the National Organization for Women sued to bar minors from Hooters eating places in California, an effort that proved unsuccessful.

Amour Henry, 23, a bartender at the East Brunswick location, stated she tried to place each buyer comfortable, particularly those that do not match the regular demographic. “Women might feel uncomfortable here,” she stated, “so we pay special attention to them. We’re immediately complimenting her, like, ‘Oh, you’re so pretty!'”

Although the Hooters Girls set the tone in an area constructed round the efficiency of feminine friendliness and flirtation, the mother and father tended to not point out them when requested about their choice to dine at Hooters.

For Holmes, the man who works in building, the waitresses had been nonetheless the major draw. “The wings are good,” he stated, “but the big selling point is that there’s girls here.”

No More Bikini Nights?

Hasn’t it at all times been about the girls? The restaurant’s identify was apparently impressed by a Steve Martin comedy routine, during which he made the facetious case for “hooters” as the correct identify for ladies’s breasts. The owl emblem is a cheeky double entendre, its gaping “O” eyes reinforcing the joke.

The first Hooters Girl, Lynne Austin, was recruited from a bikini contest sponsored by the tequila model Jose Cuervo in 1983 and posed for Playboy three years later. The archetype caught. at present job listing for Hooters requires an “all-American, cheerleader, surfer, girl next door,” including, “sexy yet wholesome.”

Hooters additionally been the place for a cultural ceremony of passage: Some fathers have taken their sons to the restaurant as a type of initiation into heterosexual masculinity.

On a latest night time in East Brunswick, Arian Lapa, 47, was perched at a high-top desk together with his son, his brother and a nephew. It was his son’s twelfth birthday, and he had pushed right here from Staten Island to rejoice.

“It was a family decision,” Lapa stated. “We brought the wives together to discuss.”

In a again room, a youth baseball group, together with coaches and oldsters, mingled after a recreation. Asked his favourite half about Hooters, Billy, 12, could not include his laughter.

“The wings,” he stated, lastly, to laughs from his mates.

Kiefer, the govt who’s making an attempt to vary Hooters’ picture, stated the major problem for the chain is a “preconception” of the model — and possibly the bikini nights.

If bikini nights disappear, as Kiefer hopes they’ll, the regulars will not be happy, in line with Jeff Berniker, a Walgreens worker in his 60s who stated he has photographed the occasions at the Hooters in East Brunswick. “If you’re a parent and don’t want your kids to see it, there’s 300 other nights a year you can come in,” he added.

Charles Wilson, a truck driver seated in the bar space, was additionally in opposition to ending bikini nights. “That’s sacrilegious,” he stated. “What the heck made you money?”

Hooters could now discover itself in limbo — too dangerous for younger households and never horny sufficient for sure prospects.

On a latest night time, households crowded into the eating room, youngsters scribbled on Hooters coloring pages and the Hooters Girls, as soon as the major attraction, appeared to work together extra with the children than the adults.

At Lesly Dagdag’s desk, the temper was heat. Her prolonged household had negotiated clashing work schedules, little one care and college pickups to make the night time occur.

“It’s important for us to come together like this,” she stated. “We do feel weird bringing our kids here, but we do it anyway.”