![hooters girls waitresses]()
Hooters is the American 'breastaurant' that has turned beer and babes into big business. As the chain celebrates its 30th birthday, Sam Rowe asks whether London knows what it's letting itself in for.
It is the infamous American brand that has done for tight orange hotpants what Playboy did for bunny tails.
Proudly labelling itself "Delightfully tacky, yet unrefined" it has split opinion for decades with its cathedrals of masculinity, offering a unique blend of beer, sports and fried food, delivered by attractive girls in push-up bras and short shorts. It’s Marmite. It’s Miley Cyrus. It’s Hooters – and today it blows out the candles for its 30th birthday.
What started life as the pipedream of six Florida businessmen with no catering experience between them, Hooters has since become a bona fide business juggernaut. It has spawned a raft of imitators, its own casino, airline and even a video game, not to mention over 450 Hooters branches in 28 countries – including four in China and five in South Africa. A flagship Hooters will open in London next year (currently Nottingham boasts the chain's sole UK outlet).
Borrowing its name from a Steve Martin monologue on Saturday Night Live, Hooters turned its buxom waitresses into big business. Lynne Austin was a telephone operator in Florida when owner Ed Droste spotted her at a bikini competition in 1983 and subsequently begged her to become the company's "billboard girl". Thirty years, countless calendars and a Playboy centrefold later, she remembers the day she became "the original Hooters girl".
“They convinced me I would be world famous, that I should quit my job and come to work for them,” says Austin, now 52. “So I took a leap of faith and started working there.” Yet, despite promises of international fame as a model, Lynne spent her first few months cleaning kitchen equipment for $5 an hour, until the business got off the ground. Lucky for her, it didn’t take long.
“We went from making nothing, maybe 20 dollars a night, to three-hour waits for chicken wings and beer. I was bringing in $300 a night, it blew my mind.”
But as business boomed in the US, attempts to bring the divisive "breastaurant" to the UK have been somewhat stunted. Hooters Nottingham opened its doors in 1996 and is said to be in the brand’s top 15 most profitable, yet while 36 new UK Hooters were announced in 2008, only Bristol and Cardiff ever opened. Both are now closed.
As for the two-tonne elephant in the room, Hooters has spent three decades rejecting claims that it is a sexist organisation that degrades its 300,000 strong roster of immodestly-dressed female staff. The company does not objectify women, it claims, but celebrates them. The distinctive uniform not gratuitous, it says. Besides, Lynne Austin adds, “You see more on the beach than you do at a Hooters”.
Hooters vigorously disputes accusations that it is a sleazy dive bar packed with lager-swilling letches. Why, earlier this year it introduced fresh food and salad to its menus, in hope of attracting more women and families and expanding still further.
Its plans to expand in Britain are certainly brave, given the backlash against the ill-fated Bristol and Cardiff restaurants, and highly vocal grassroots initiatives such as No More Page 3 and Lose the Lads’ Mags.
“Maybe British people just don’t want boobs with their food,” says Caroline Criado-Perez, founder of The Women’s Room, an online database of influential women. “It seems to me that Hooters are essentially, alongside food, selling a vision of women’s bodies, and really it’s just another form of objectification – here’s your food, here’s your beer, here’s your hot chick.”
Criado-Perez received rape and death threats after campaigning for women to appear on British banknotes. Those threats will have been familiar to Sian Norris of the Bristol Feminist Network who suffered similar abuse in 2012 when the Bristol branch of Hooters closed down.
“It was open for just over a year, and I think the reason it closed down was because they just weren’t making a success of it,” says Norris, who campaigned against the restaurant prior to its opening in 2010. “When it did close down I started getting an awful lot of abusive messages. Someone threatened to find out where I lived … other men said they wanted to kick me in the vagina and generally people [were] saying very sexist insults. Eventually I had to go to the police.”
Both Norris and Criado-Perez claim that the portrayal of Hooters girls as mere decoration, an accompaniment to a cold beer and plate of nachos, can breed such vile behaviour. However, Mike Pruitt, CEO of Chanticleer Holdings, which heads the investment group that bought Hooters in 2011, says he has no reason to fear any protests against the forthcoming London restaurant.
“I don’t [see there being a problem],” says Pruitt. “[Late owner] Robert Brooks used to say that all those potential women who have an issue with the Hooters girls outfit would let their daughters go to a football game with less clothes on, so I don’t foresee it being an issue.
“Mr Brooks’ famous saying is, ‘Good food, cold beer, sports and pretty girls will never go out of style’. I can tell you, we've had no opposition in the places in the world that I’m involved in, at all.”
Turning 30 is difficult for anyone. But Hooters shows no sign of growing out of its booze and babes phase as it enters its fourth decade. Whether its arrival in London will herald an early-onset mid-life crisis remains to be seen.
![]()
Join the conversation about this story »
Her 
NFL analyst and former coach Jon Gruden puts a Hooters waitress through her paces 
Hooters is the American 'breastaurant' that has turned beer and babes into big business. As the chain celebrates its 30th birthday, Sam Rowe asks whether London knows what it's letting itself in for.
