1 day Ago By Bryan Chai
Reports of Hooters’ demise may have been greatly exaggerated — and that’s a great shame. While this writer is loath to celebrate losing their job (especially in the wake of the Joe Biden presidency), it’s also inarguable that some things contribute more to cultural rot than they take away from it. Hooters very much fits that description.
The restaurant chain best known for its tightly clothed female servers and wings (in that order) has filed for bankruptcy protection, according to the . “HOA Restaurant Group filed the motion for Chapter 11 protection Monday in the North Texas Bankruptcy Court in Dallas,” the outlet reported. While “ ” sounds scary and is certainly not a good financial development for anyone, Hooters’ bankruptcy plan will actually see the parent company selling 100 restaurants to individual franchisees.
Those restaurants will still exist, allowing men with wives (some even at the table, no less) to leer at buxom servers in tight clothing. Or will it? One curious move that Hooters is making in light of these financial hardships appears to be moving to be more “family-friendly,” a tacit admission of guilt if there ever was one. The “family friendly” phrase was used multiple times in a glowing Bloomberg chronicling Hooters’ new direction.
“I’m calling it a re-Hooterization,” Neil Kiefer, one of the executives who helped co-found Hooters and is now looking to own the chain again following this bankruptcy plan, told the outlet. “What hurt the brand,” Bloomberg explained, “as the founders see it, were decisions by its private equity overlords that took it away from its roots as a beachy destination offering good food and good service that was also family-friendly.” Ah, there’s that word again.
Pray tell, what exactly is family-friendly about Hooters? The entire thing is built on sexuality. For crying out loud, the name of the whole thing is a double entendre! Look, this writer is well aware of how prudish he comes off writing some of this, but as someone who is now a father, but used to be the prime clientele for a place like Hooters, he’s well aware that this stuff matters. Lust is sin, no matter how sanitized it may be in a “family-friendly” restaurant.
There’s also the more practical issue that Hooters’ prospective new owners face: Fair or not, the reputation of the place is anything but “family-friendly.” Whether or not that’s true is almost immaterial to the judgment that the court of public opinion has already rendered. Can a public relations blitz and spamming the phrase “family-friendly” undo years of building up a reputation? Again, with all due respect to anyone this would unduly burden financially, hopefully not.
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