By Dawn Szymanski
In 1983, six businessmen got together and opened the first Hooters restaurant in Clearwater, Florida. Hooters of America LLC quickly became a restaurant chain success story.
With its scantily clad servers and signature breaded wings, the chain sells sex appeal in addition to food – or as one of the company’s mottos puts it: “You can sell the sizzle, but you have to deliver the steak.” It inspired a niche restaurant genre called “breastaurants,” with eateries such as the Tilted Kilt Pub & Eatery and Twin Peaks replicating Hooters’ busty business model.
A decade ago, business was booming for breastaurant chains, with these companies experiencing record sales growth.
Today it’s a different story. Declining sales, rising costs and a large debt burden of approximately US$300 million have threatened Hooters’ long-term outlook. In summer 2024, the chain closed over 40 of its restaurants across the U.S. In February 2025, Bloomberg reported that the company was on the verge of filing for bankruptcy.
Hooters isn’t necessarily going away for good. But it’s certainly looking like there will be fewer opportunities for women to work as “Hooters Girls” – and for customers to ogle at them.
As a psychologist, I was originally interested in studying servers at breastaurants because I could sense an interesting dynamic at play. On the one hand, it can feel good to be complimented for your looks. On the other hand, I also wondered whether constantly being critiqued might eventually wear these servers down.
So my research team and I decided to study what it was like to work in places like Hooters.
In a series of studies, here’s what we found.
Concocting a male fantasyland
More so than most restaurants, managers at breastaurants like Hooters seek to strictly regulate how their employees look and act.
For one of our studies, we interviewed 11 women who worked in breastaurants.
Several of them said that they were told to be “camera ready” at all times.
One described being given a booklet with exacting standards outlining her expected appearance, down to “nails, hair, makeup, brushing your teeth, wearing deodorant.” She had to promise to stay the same weight and height, wear makeup every shift and not change her hairstyle.
Beyond a carefully constructed physical appearance, the servers relayed that they were also expected to be confident, cheerful, charming, outgoing and emotionally steeled. They were instructed to make male customers feel special, to be their “personal cheerleaders,” as one interviewee put it, and to never challenge them.
Suffice it say, these demands can be unrealistic – and many of the servers we interviewed described becoming emotionally drained and eventually souring on the role.
‘The girls are a dime a dozen’
It probably won’t come as a surprise that Hooters servers often encounter lewd remarks, sexual advances and other forms of sexual harassment from customers.
But because their managers often tolerate this behavior from customers, it created the added burden of what psychologists call “double-binds” – situations where contradictory messages make it impossible to respond properly.
For example, say a regular customer who’s a generous tipper decides to proposition a server. Now she’s in a predicament. She’s been instructed to make customers feel special. And he’s already left a big tip, in addition to being a regular. But she also feels creeped out, and his advances make her feel worthless. Should she push back?
J. David Ake/AFP via Getty Images
You might assume that managers, aware that their scantily clad employees would be more likely to face harassment, would try to set boundaries and throw out customers who treated servers poorly. But we found that waitresses at breastaurants have less support from both management and their co-workers than servers at other restaurants.
“Unfortunately, the girls are a dime a dozen, and that’s how they’re treated,” a former server and corporate trainer at a breastaurant explained.
The lack of co-worker support might also come as a surprise. Rather than standing in solidarity, the servers tended to compete for favoritism, better shifts and raises from their bosses. Gossiping, name-calling and scapegoating were commonplace.
The psychological toll
My research team also wanted to learn more about the specific emotional and psychological costs of working in these types of environments.
Psychologists Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Robert have found that mental health problems that disproportionately affect women often coincide with sexual objectification.
So we weren’t surprised to find that servers working in sexually objectifying restaurant environments, such as Hooters and Twin Peaks, reported more symptoms of depression, anxiety and disordered eating than those working in other restaurants. In addition, they wanted to be thinner, were more likely to monitor their weight and appearance, and were more dissatisfied with their bodies. Hooters didn’t reply to a request for comment on this story.
Why are women drawn to the job?
Given our findings, you might wonder why any women would choose to work in places like Hooters in the first place.
The women we interviewed said that they sought work in breastaurants to make more money and have more flexibility.
A number of servers in one of our studies noted that they could make more money this way than waitressing at a regular restaurant or in other “real” jobs.
For example, one of the servers we interviewed used to work at a more run-of-the-mill restaurant.
“It was OK, I made OK money,” she told us. “But working at Hooters … I’ve walked out with hundreds of dollars in one shift.”
All the women we interviewed were in college or were mothers. So they enjoyed the high degree of flexibility in their work schedule that breastaurants provided.
Finally, several of them had previously experienced objectification while growing up, or they’d participated in activities centered on physical appearance, such as beauty pageants and cheerleading. This likely contributed to their decision to work at a Hooters or one of its competitors: They’d been objectified as adolescents, and so they found themselves drawn to these kinds of setting as adults.
Even so, our research suggests that the financial rewards and flexibility of working in breastaurants probably aren’t worth the potential psychological costs.
Dawn Szymanski is Professor of Psychology at the University of Tennessee.
JimboXYZ says
Purely from a food perspective their menu was too limited. Initially the wings were breaded & overpriced. If anyone has ever been a wing eating machine, deep fried as “naked” has always been > deep fried & “breaded”. As I recall, the children’s menu was hot dogs as the only other menu item. Why go to a bar that didn’t even have a bad pulled pork sandwich and be so severely limited for a menu. It’s bar food really. Hooters for me the one on ISB in Daytona, I went to that one twice, maybe 3 times in a lifetime of living in Volusia county from the 1980’s-present. Never went to one, until the one in Doral, FL (Miami). Have lived in Orlando, Jacksonville & Miami, only going once or twice to the one in Doral, FL.
Preface all of this with first Buffalo Wing exposure for me was college years at FSU in the earliest of 1980’s. I learned to make the sauce & cook them at a small family owned chain of bars/restaurants. The Phyrst, Longbranch/Crazy Horse Saloon & their other retail endeavor called the Sweet Shoppe. The sauce is nothing more than Louisiana Hot Sauce with butter. As for cooking the perfect wing. that’s a McDonald’s French Fry station for deep frying a wing for 10-12 minutes in regularly changed oil. It’s not rocket science. Anyone with a $ 30 Fry Daddy and a bottle of what is Sweet Baby Ray’s Wing sauce can manufacture a wing > Hooter’s wings with the Family pack of wings from Publix, Winn Dixie or Walmart groceries. Wings have become more expensive over the past few decades for price per lb. One can get thighs in a Family pack cheaper than the wing parts. Homemade vs Restaurant is another thing altogether. Wings for me was a where to go for the best wing after a weekend round of golf. Any golf course’s eatery was making a better wing than Hooters. Even for sauces, Publix carries Hooter’s brand Wing Sauce, it was oilier than Sweet Baby Ray’s, more expensive too. On the grocery store shelf. Hooter’s never had the best sauce even.
What killed the Hooters experience were several things consumers compare. Wings being their staple, Crawford Kerr’s Wing House came along, better & more affordable wings. Every bar serves wings & does wings better than Hooters ever made wings. For the very product anyone was there for, the better wings in town were everywhere but at Hooters. That search for the perfect Wings & beer just in Daytona alone. I could get more affordable wings randomly at Hampton’s, The First Turn bars , Boston Pizza, the Oyster Pub, Flannigan’s, Kerr’s Wong House & Booth’s Bowery in Port Orange, FL. Hooters ranking for the perfect Buffalo Wing was so far back in a Top 20, they wouldn’t even make it into a NCAA College Football Playoffs for a Wing competition. I guess they flourished in Tampa, FL because that was home field for where they were founded.
That was Volusia county, I didn’t even mention the Jacksonville, FL chains of Dick’s Wings that were more prevalent and served better wings than the Hooter’s at Jacksonville’s Landing. Location, location, location always for restaurant convenience. Daytona had ISB, but if one lived elsewhere in greater DB area alone not having to drive to ISB from Port Orange for a better Buffalo Wing factors into the equation of being fed. Today, one can go to 1 of the 2 most recent restaurants to open where the BJ’s is on SR-100 (Palm Coast Miller’s Ale House for better Zingers & Wings than Hooters).
As for the girl’s ? Hooter’s has always hired the cuter waitresses. They were the only one’s with a calendar & beauty pageant. But when every stripper bar in town now has a kitchen that makes “bar food”, one could frequent those clubs for a 1 stop shopping location for entertainment & bar food. The hooter’s formula for watching football & other sporting events was flawed. How Hooters survived this long is astonishing. I presume they flourished as the relative overpriced McDonald’s of chain Wing Restaurants.
It’s easy to see why Hooter’s has fallen in competition in their genre of bar food. And they can’t reverse that trend. I never could understand the lawsuits of sexual harassment from Hooter’s staff. It’s comical that any employee would complain of that. If one had eye’s they could see that applying for the job. And not one of those “victims” complained about being over tipped ? What did they think the tip was for, certainly wasn’t from the food coming out of the kitchen area or even the service of the artificially endowed waitress that was well on her way to working a strip club when the money was better over at any of those clubs. Go to any larger city, the Hooter’s girl would have better exposure to professional athletes or any clientelle of wealth at a strip club than they would at Hooter’s serving a lower tier top 20 Buffalo Wing with an over priced beer. Any bar with cheap draft or daily Happy Hour specials on beer was going to beat out Hooter’s on pricing alone. They simply don’t compete anymore, never really did. Hooter’s today is like a TGIFridays or any other chain restuarant like Ouback and whatever other places that seemed to have waned. A Hooter’s for that wayward traveler is a safe eatery when there aren’t any other options that are known to be better. I can guarantee that any local, given the option to name their best Wing House for watching Monday Night football, can rattle off half a dozen places they’d rather hang out with their friends over a Hooter’s. Last comment on it, the last Hooter’s I went to was Pooler/Savannah, GA about 8 years back. It was a next to the off ramp Hooters on I-95 there. A final family trek to the Mighty Eight Museum with Dad before he passed away, he was a WW2 veteran. That was the only time in his 96+ years of a lifetime that he ever ate at a Hooter’s. If there was an Applebees at that same off ramp, he would’ve never eaten at a Hooter’s in his lifetime. He wasn’t really impressed for the last & only visit pretty much. Dad seemed to prefer the BBQ chain places pretty much, We have them here, Sonny’s or Woody’s. The theme, better & more affordable food, better dining atmosphere too. Open minded tries, plenty of restaurants to give a shot of a try that do Hooter’s niche and do it better than Hooter’s does it.
Laurel says
For the very reasons mentioned here, I have never stepped foot in a Hooters, and never plan to.
When I was about 21, I worked at a popular restaurant in Ft. Lauderdale called The Batchelors III. It was owned by Joe Namath, and apparently, two other guys. It was a great venue for fantastic performances. I saw the Supremes (we would stop serving during the shows), Jerry Lee Lewis, the Temptations, and many others. Very cool!
We wore low cut mini dresses, with tights, but the only rule I remember was coming to, and leaving the restaurant, we were required to wear a coat. Even so, the dresses were not that revealing at all. I don’t recall any sort of harassment. That’s something I would never put up with. The people came to have a good dinner, and see a good show. Joe Namath did come up behind me and sheepishly asked me where the men’s room was. I was very busy, looked at him (he had a really big face!), and said “You own the restaurant and you don’t know where the men’s room is?” That was the end of that! Funny, now. It was a good experience, and it was good money.
Gossip and backstabbing does happen, but mostly bartenders and servers are so busy that they just don’t have the time or patience. I find office work worse that way. I’ve had several good experiences in the business, but it was hard work. The servers today definitely do not work as hard. They hand you the plates, and stand with their hands out expecting you to hand your empty plate back to them. We would NEVER do that! Oh well, that’s how it goes. Things change.