In 1983, six businessmen were given in combination and opened the primary Hooters eating place in Clearwater, Florida. Hooters of The us LLC briefly was a cafe chain luck tale.
With its scantily clad servers and signature breaded wings, the chain sells intercourse attraction along with meals – or as probably the most corporate’s mottos places it: “You can sell the sizzle, but you have to deliver the steak.” It impressed a distinct segment eating place style referred to as “breastaurants,” with eateries such because the Tilted Kilt Pub & Eatery and Dual Peaks replicating Hooters’ busty trade fashion.
A decade in the past, trade was once booming for breastaurant chains, with those corporations experiencing document gross sales enlargement.
These days it’s a unique tale. Declining gross sales, emerging prices and a big debt burden of roughly US$300 million have threatened Hooters’ long-term outlook. In summer time 2024, the chain closed over 40 of its eating places around the U.S. In February 2025, Bloomberg reported that the corporate was once at the verge of submitting for chapter.
Hooters isn’t essentially going away for just right. However it’s undoubtedly having a look like there can be fewer alternatives for girls to paintings as “Hooters Girls” – and for purchasers to ogle at them.
As a psychologist, I used to be in the beginning considering learning servers at breastaurants as a result of I may just sense a fascinating dynamic at play. At the one hand, it may really feel just right to be complimented in your seems. However, I additionally questioned whether or not repeatedly being critiqued would possibly in the end put on those servers down.
So my analysis staff and I made up our minds to check what it was once love to paintings in puts like Hooters.
In a sequence of research, right here’s what we discovered.
Concocting a male fantasyland
Extra so than maximum eating places, managers at breastaurants like Hooters search to strictly control how their staff glance and act.
For considered one of our research, we interviewed 11 ladies who labored in breastaurants.
A number of of them mentioned that they had been instructed to be “camera ready” all the time.
One described being given a booklet with exacting requirements outlining her anticipated look, all the way down to “nails, hair, makeup, brushing your teeth, wearing deodorant.” She needed to promise to stick the similar weight and peak, put on make-up each shift and now not exchange her coiffure.
Past a in moderation built bodily look, the servers relayed that they had been additionally anticipated to be assured, cheerful, fascinating, outgoing and emotionally steeled. They had been prompt to make male shoppers really feel particular, to be their “personal cheerleaders,” as one interviewee put it, and to by no means problem them.
Suffice it say, those calls for will also be unrealistic – and lots of the servers we interviewed described turning into emotionally tired and in the end souring at the function.
‘The girls are a dime a dozen’
It almost certainly received’t come as a wonder that Hooters servers regularly stumble upon lewd remarks, sexual advances and different types of sexual harassment from shoppers.
However as a result of their managers regularly tolerate this conduct from shoppers, it created the added burden of what psychologists name “double-binds” – eventualities the place contradictory messages make it unimaginable to reply correctly.
For instance, say a normal buyer who’s a beneficiant tipper makes a decision to proposition a server. Now she’s in a catch 22 situation. She’s been prompt to make shoppers really feel particular. And he’s already left a large tip, along with being a normal. However she additionally feels creeped out, and his advances make her really feel nugatory. Will have to she ward off?
GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole shakes palms with Hooters staff after a marketing campaign rally in Jacksonville, Fla., in 1996.
J. David Ake/AFP by means of Getty Pictures
You may suppose that managers, conscious that their scantily clad staff could be much more likely to stand harassment, would attempt to set obstacles and throw out shoppers who handled servers poorly. However we discovered that waitresses at breastaurants have much less strengthen from each control and their co-workers than servers at different eating places.
“Unfortunately, the girls are a dime a dozen, and that’s how they’re treated,” a former server and company instructor at a breastaurant defined.
The loss of co-worker strengthen may additionally come as a wonder. Reasonably than status in harmony, the servers tended to compete for favoritism, higher shifts and raises from their bosses. Gossiping, name-calling and scapegoating had been not unusual.
The mental toll
My analysis staff additionally sought after to be informed extra in regards to the explicit emotional and mental prices of running in some of these environments.
Psychologists Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Robert have discovered that psychological well being issues that disproportionately impact ladies regularly coincide with sexual objectification.
So we weren’t stunned to seek out that servers running in sexually objectifying eating place environments, akin to Hooters and Dual Peaks, reported extra signs of melancholy, nervousness and disordered consuming than the ones running in different eating places. As well as, they sought after to be thinner, had been much more likely to observe their weight and look, and had been extra disillusioned with their our bodies. Hooters didn’t respond to a request for remark in this tale.
Why are ladies attracted to the task?
Given our findings, you may marvel why any ladies would select to paintings in puts like Hooters within the first position.
The ladies we interviewed mentioned that they sought paintings in breastaurants to make more cash and feature extra flexibility.
A variety of servers in considered one of our research famous that they might make more cash this manner than waitressing at a normal eating place or in different “real” jobs.
For instance, probably the most servers we interviewed used to paintings at a extra run-of-the-mill eating place.
“It was OK, I made OK money,” she instructed us. “But working at Hooters … I’ve walked out with hundreds of dollars in one shift.”
All of the ladies we interviewed had been in school or had been moms. So that they loved the prime level of flexibleness of their paintings agenda that breastaurants supplied.
After all, a number of of them had in the past skilled objectification whilst rising up, or they’d participated in actions targeted on bodily look, akin to attractiveness pageants and cheerleading. This most probably contributed to their choice to paintings at a Hooters or considered one of its competition: They’d been objectified as kids, they usually discovered themselves attracted to a lot of these environment as adults.
Even so, our analysis means that the monetary rewards and versatility of running in breastaurants almost certainly aren’t well worth the attainable mental prices.
