do you like what you see here on the outside you're going to love what you'll see on the inside why do I like Hooters well I will give you two reasons the boobs and the hot [Music] wings Hooter pioneered the concept of a breastaurant and the idea is pretty simple they only hire attractive women and then make them wear short tight uniforms while serving food but this raises some questions how Hooters managed to succeed despite Decades of criticism controversy and lawsuits how do they get away with violating employment and discrimination laws and is it true
that Hooters could now be facing Mass closures and that the end of Hooters is near or perhaps most interestingly of all why did Hooters start an airline yes seriously in this video all of these questions and more will be answered as we take a journey through the bizarre history of Hooters one of the most controversial restaurants ever oh let me see yeah how much tips did you make uh 31 32 uh $36,000 [Music] Hooters was incorporated on April Fall's day in 1983 and even the founders didn't think their idea was going to work they were
six friends with no experience in the restaurant industry who wanted a place that they couldn't get kicked out of the plan was simple put all the things they liked together in one place cheap beer hot wings big screen TVs with sports on and girls and that would be their unique selling point they'd only hire Young attra women and make them wear tight revealing outfits while serving the food employees were required to sign a contract stating they agreed to wear the Hooters girl uniform and that their responsibility was to interact with and entertain the customers as
for the company name HOAs claim it's a reference to the sound an owl makes as they have an owl in their logo but it's obviously a double on Tandra and it said they got the name from an old SNL sketch and I believe it's derogatory to refer to a woman's breasts as boobs jugs winnebagos or golden Boos and you should only refer to them as Hooters the location of the first Hooter's restaurant was clear water in Florida and on October 4th 1983 Hooters officially opened its doors for business however their chances of success looked slim
every recent business in in the area seemed to have failed and the founders were so unprepared they had to beg a friend to drive down and show them how to turn on their industrial kitchen equipment to make matters worse on their very first day the founders thought they were going to get shut down you see even though they had applied for their alcohol license the paperwork hadn't come through by their launch day and that first day two police officers showed up asking to see their alcohol license it turns out though they weren't real police offic
officers one of the founders just thought it would be funny to prank the other guys but when they weren't busy pranking each other the founders worked on Advertising their new restaurant since they had a limited budget they had to get creative in fact one of their very first marketing attempts was literally to rent a chicken suit and run around nearby streets trying to get attention as silly as that sounds a local newspaper wrote about it so it actually did help introduce a few new people to Hooters but their first Big Break was during the 1984
Super Bowl between the Raiders and Redskins a star player for the Redskins John Riggins came to Hooters before the game for lunch and then it returned with his teammates after the game photographs of them at Hooters circulated in the papers and Hooters doubled their sales almost immediately that same year the original owners sold expansion and franchise rights to a group of investors who created Hooters of America this new Corporation was in charge of franchising and over the the next few years they opened dozens more Hooters locations Hooters then got another big breakthrough in July 1986
the first Hooters girl then Austin became Playboy Magazine's Playmate of the month and Playboy included an article all about Hooters which was the perfect free promotion for them so by 1991 Hooters had reached more than 50 restaurants and a 100 million in Revenue some people clearly loved the concept but others absolutely hated it and this would lead to all kinds of legal [Music] issues in 1997 three men from Chicago sued Hooters after being denied employment based on their gender and Hooter settled so they ended up getting $19,100 each in response Hooters agreed to create other
jobs in their business that were open to everyone but Hooters said they would not change their rules about only hiring women for their weight staff after all they literally called them Hooters girls as a result the equal employment opportunity commission launched an investigation into the company and their conclusion was that since Hooters clearly was discriminating based on gender they should pay millions to all the men who'd been rejected for jobs but here the thing even though normally restaurants wouldn't be able to stop someone getting a job because of their gender Hooters argued that the Hooters
girls are there to provide entertainment and there are different rules when it comes to hiring entertainers for example gender discrimination is allowed when hiring an actor for a specifically male or female role and Hooters basically said they're auditioning for the role of Hooters girl and by hiring waitresses as entertainers it also means the company can make strict rules about how they look and what they wear so Hooters can specify in the contract that their hair must always be down and that makeup is required every day Hooters also had another defense in employment law there is
something called a Bonafide occupational qualification exception which recognizes that in some rare instances it may be necessary to only hire a specific gender and Hooters argued that hiring attractive women is a necessary aspect of their business model they said the essence of our business is the Hooters girl and the experience she provides to her customers so that's how they're able to only hire female weight staff and Hooters actually used these discrimination lawsuits to their advantage they released a big ad campaign with a hairy guy called Vince in a Hooter's uniform the idea was to show
how ridiculous it would be if they did have to hire men for that role they spent a lot of money putting him in newspapers and billboards and so they managed to turn the lawsuits into a great Market marketing campaign however they would soon be facing a whole new [Music] controversy in April 2001 Hooter announced a contest for its employees whoever sold the most beer could win a brand new Toyota it wasn't specified which Toyota but either way it sounded like a great prize so all the Hooters girls got to work selling as much beer as
they possibly could the eventual winner was Jodie Barry and she was thrilled imagine working a low paid job and then winning a brand new car her manager told her the good news and then blindfolded her and led her out to the Hooter parking lot to reveal her prize however when Jodi's blindfold was removed in front of her was not a Toyota car instead on the round was a toy Yoda a small figurine of the popular Star Wars character her manager started laughing but jod did not laugh she began to realize what had happened you see
the contest had started April 1st or in other words April Fall's day and her manager now explained all she'd won was a toy Yoda not a car jod didn't see the funny side of it though she' worked hard in the the contest and so she was angry in fact she decided to sue Hooters the story did end up having a happy ending for jod though as they reached a settlement the exact amount she was paid wasn't specified but her attorney said jod would have enough to go to a local car dealership and pick out whatever
type of Toyota she wants as for Hooters despite paying out money in these various lawsuits it wasn't a huge deal for them overall their business was thriving and they were expanding into even more International markets and so with their chicken wings selling so well hoo just did what any logical restaurant would do start an airline wait what before we get to the next chapter I have a question for you after hearing about other entrepreneurs building their businesses have you ever thought about starting your own if so you're going to want to know about today's sponsor
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and manage vital aspects of their business so they can focus on serving their customers I also like that byy is made for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs the guys behind byy bootstrapped it without any investors literally starting in a spare bedroom fast forward to today and they're still founder Leed with over 20 years of experience and have helped over 1 million entrepreneurs so if you want to start your own company busy makes it easier just use my link in the description to get started today [Music] in 2003 Hooters had lots of cash and wanted to use that
to expand their brand so they purchased a small Airline called Pace Airlines and rebranded it to Hooter's air they decorated the planes with their orange Hooters branding and they announced that on every flight there would be two local Hooters girls plucked straight out of their restaurants what would you tell people out there watching the show about flying Hooters a you should definitely do it it's the experience like no other by yourself it's going to be the most exciting time of your life contrary to what you might think these were not the flight attendant and they
had no Airline training instead the Hooter girl's job on the plane was just to entertain passengers so basically Midway through every flight two Hooters girls dressed in the distinctive skimpy Hooters uniform would get up to sing songs host trivia games and sell Hooter's merchandise amazingly this actually worked quite well at first customers perhaps wanted to try hooa a just for the novelty plus they also offered pretty cheap flights typically a flat rate of $129 each way however hudas a did not have a happy ending after just 3 years they ended up with a $40 million
loss and there were several reasons HOAs a didn't work out firstly at the time many people were still wary of getting on flights after 9/11 so there was less demand secondly more lowcost Airlines had been popping up meaning more competition and thirdly fuel prices had been rising substantially which meant higher costs this was a massive problem as the airline industry is known for narrow profit margins in fact there's a running joke that if you want to be a millionaire step one is to be a billionaire and step two is to start an airline congratulations you're
now a millionaire so basically all of this together meant that eventually Hooter's air just wasn't economically viable it also didn't help that Hooters had a bit of a stigma of being SD so even if Hooters could match the other lowcost airlines a family is more likely to choose the airline that doesn't feature the Hooters girls so faced with all of these challenges in 2006 Hooters Airline officially shut down and Hooters would soon have an even bigger [Music] problem Hooter today has more than 420 stores in 29 countries around the world but their success has motivated
more competition like Twin Peaks and Tilted Kilt which basically offer the same premise but with different uniforms in in fact there was a lot of controversy when a former CEO of Hooters went to start a franchise at Twin Peaks and Hooters then sued the company for stealing Trade Secrets however some people would say the Hooters concept is dying out an article from Business Insider noted that Hooter has been on the decline for a while and they suggested that could be because Millennials are less interested in breasts than their Elders now I'll be honest I'm not
sure that's true but either way in response to the declining sales in 2017 Hooters launched a spin-off called Hoots with more reserved outfits designed to be more familyfriendly they also started focusing more on delivery for people embarrassed to go to their stores Hooters acknowledged many people wouldn't step foot in our restaurants but they want our product and a Hooters consultant added now if your partner sees a charge for Hooters you can just say it was delivered the problem for Hooters is that many would say their food was never their real selling point in fact a
lot of people think the food is overrated to make matters worse a study by the University of Tennessee found that working at restaurants and yes that really is what they call restaurants like Hooters was damaging to women's mental health they also found these employees experienced higher levels of anxiety and disorder eating there have also been some serious accusations and lawsuits from hoter staff themselves including numerous cases of unwanted sex ual advances from managers and claims of it being a toxic workplace for example one Hooter's girl said she was told if she didn't lose weight within
30 days she'd be fired Hooters then faced even more backlash in 2021 when they made a change to their uniform and made it even smaller and skimpier it went viral as Hooters girls posted it on social media complaining it was so revealing although the company then backtracked saying the employees could choose to still wear the old design if they preferred but either way clearly opinion on Hooters is going to be divided on the one hand you could argue the concept is outdated and times have moved on as many would say it's objectifying women and just
kind of sleazy but on the other hand you could argue that if adults are choosing to work there and many say they've had a very positive experience and made great tips what's the harm you can simply choose not to work there or eat there if you don't like it so let me know in the comments which side you fall on but either way whil HOAs has been successful it's certainly not as successful as Sony so if you want to learn the insane truth about how Sony built their empire just click here to watch that business
story next I hope you enjoyed this history of Hooters and I'll see you in the next video in just a second
