Is Hooters going out of business? A false rumor circulated on social media. It claims that Hooters, the restaurant well known for its scantily clad waitresses, is closing and revamping due to changing millennial views.
According to a spokesman for the restaurant chain, this claim is false, and the idea behind it will stay. The posts misled a 2017 article about U.S. sites closing between 2012 and 2016. It also misled about the improvements the business made to its food and decor more than ten years ago and a spinoff idea that debuted in 2017.
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Is Hooters still going?
The chicken wings at Hooters are famous. Also, those women serving them are dressed in T-shirts and bright nylon shorts. The menus of both restaurants offer seafood, tacos, burgers, sandwiches, and many Hooters originals, like bacon-wrapped chicken wings.
Hooters prospered in the 1980s and 1990s due to a solid client base. In 2006, Hooters even rolled out the orange carpet for the opening of a 696-room casino off the Las Vegas Strip. In the year 2019, the company was sold.
For many years, Hooters has been a staple of American life. Has the chain, however, reached its end? No, there won’t be a Hooters closure for fans worldwide.
Hooters, the restaurant famous for its vast servings of chicken wings and beer, will celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2023. Since its inception in October 1983, this restaurant chain has become an American icon.
Hooters is now regarded as an almost all-encompassing chain with branches in all of America’s major cities. However, Hooters is a failing business, and its outlets are steadily going out of business.
The chain has recently been steadily declining from a peak of about 430 units less than ten years ago. In 2021, there were 311 Hooters restaurants in America, based on the data company Smart Scrapers. By the fall of 2022, only 304 Hooters restaurants remained. Hooters also had a significant international footprint in Europe, Asia, Central America, and Africa. However, a lot of these remote locations have also closed.
The COVID-19 epidemic had a severe impact on the whole food sector. Hooters was no exception. Lockdowns, capacity limitations, and employee health and safety protocols made the situation extremely unstable for Hooters and restaurants nationwide. Some stores were forced to permanently close their doors.
Hooters in Texas and Florida are prospering. They are among the 106 of the 311 US sites, or one-third of all Hooters restaurants, located in those two states. Hooters are currently found in 251 cities spread throughout 37 states and territories.
Later, the firm was split into two team owners: Hooters of America, Inc., in Atlanta, Georgia, and Hooters, Inc., situated in Clearwater, Florida. The six friends who founded the first Hooters were purchased in 1984.
Despite all the difficulties, Hooters has remained a top choice for sports bars and fine dining for over three decades. Hooters made it through the pandemic. Not all restaurants were as fortunate.
Why did Hooters go out of business?
During the epidemic, thousands of restaurants permanently closed their doors throughout America. According to the New York State Restaurant Association, up to one in six American restaurants closed their doors. This includes standalone restaurants, complete chains like Souplantation, and several branches of other companies.
Hooters lost millions of dollars in revenue during the initial days of lockdowns. At that time, many of its locations would never reopen. According to The Mercury News, it included Hooters stores in many cities, such as the Bay Area of California and Phoenix, Arizona, where one facility closed after 32 years in operation.
Many Hooters stores were shut down by the pandemic. But the business had already been declining even before SARS-CoV-2 was discovered. According to a 2017 Business Insider story, Hooters had been unable to win over Millennials because they weren’t interested in their concept. In fact, it turns off many young people who are just starting to become regular customers.
Any business that wants to succeed over the long term or survive should be stable. However, Hooters has yet to have stable owners or top executives in the twenty-first century. For instance, there have been four CEOs since 2003.
As per The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a team of private investors purchased the company in 2011. Then, as per Restaurant Business Online, it was put up for sale again four years later, in 2015. However, no deal could be completed. Hooters was eventually resold in 2019.
In the past, customers might have stated that they came to Hooters for the cuisine and not to look over the servers. However, Mashed claims that because Hooters’ food has stayed the same over time, this claim rarely applies today.
The Hooters menu has remained unchanged. But other rival companies, such as Buffalo Wild Wings, have grown and now provide the same cuisine without the discomfort.
The restaurant oddly operated its own plane between 2003 and 2006. Hooters Air was an unsuccessful venture that cost the business about $40 million. And from 2006 until 2019, Hooters managed and owned the Hooters Casino Hotel in Las Vegas. This is a business that.
Suffered losses every year and was on the verge of bankruptcy several times before being sold. This is according to the Las Vegas Sun.
How many Hooters locations have closed?
To attract customers to get meals on the go, Hooters launched a quick spinoff chain named Hoots in 2017. According to Restaurant Business Online, employees at Hoots “dress more conservatively” than at typical Hooters locations.
Hooters was sold to TriArtisan Capital Advisors and Nord Bay Capital in 2019. At the time, Terry Marks, the previous CEO of Hooters, stated the acquisition “arises at a great time for the firm.” Thus, it involves bringing in fresh partners with similar talents and expertise to support their next growth phase for the good of their workers, franchisees, and customers.
Since then, Hooters has had a hard time gaining strength. The pandemic had a very negative impact on the company. They had to deal with the situation through slow sales and changes in executive leadership. According to industry reports, Hooters of America closed 37 locations between 2022 and 2021, bringing its total in the United States to 303.
The company gained attention in 2021 after several workers protested the introduction of new, exposed uniforms that included shorts. They were compared to “underwear.” After several of its employees’ popular TikTok videos, Hooters changed its policy to make new outfits optional.
According to a news statement, the business closed for $70 million in March 2022. It is a five-year loan that would be used “for working capital and overall company purposes.”
Hooters’ capacity to change with the times indicates that it has no immediate plans to go out of business. Over the next five years, the business hopes to build on its success by opening more than 50 Hoots outlets in Pennsylvania and another 60 in Texas. There may be future closures and further operational restructuring at the original Hooters locations. However, the brand is still strong.
Conclusion
It seems like Hooters will be around for a while. Despite decreasing revenues and the loss of multiple locations throughout its history, Hooters continues to be successful in several markets. Many restaurant chains experience a boom before either leveling out or going out of business. Hooters has been in business for almost 40 years, making adjustments to the restaurant industry’s shifting environment.
Therefore, if we have heard rumors that Hooters is permanently closing its doors, we can be reassured that they are false. One of the most popular venues in America to get chicken wings that are cheerfully presented will always be Hooters.
