Hooters closes Corpus Christi restaurant amid bankruptcy-driven franchise overhaul

The Hooters on South Padre Island Drive in Corpus Christi locked up after the dinner rush on April 12, leaving another company-run location behind as the chain keeps cutting through its bankruptcy overhaul. A sign on the door said the move was part of efforts to focus, revitalize and strengthen the Original Hooters brand across America.

The closure lands as Hooters of America, LLC works through a Chapter 11 case filed March 31 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas. At the filing, the company said it carried about $376 million in debt and operated 151 company-owned restaurants alongside 154 franchised units. Hooters said the restructuring had near-unanimous support from key stakeholders, but the practical result for hourly workers has been a shrinking company footprint and a long trail of store-level shutdowns.

For Corpus Christi, the latest closure hits a site that already had a disrupted run. A fire broke out just after 2 a.m. on November 14, 2021, in an employee break room, and Corpus Christi fire officials later classified the cause as undetermined. Hooters promoted the restaurant’s reopening for June 10, 2024, after the long repair and restart process. Less than two years later, the location was closed again, underscoring how quickly a reopened dining room can turn back into a dead shift board for servers, bartenders and cooks.

That is the reality of a restructuring that has moved Hooters toward a pure franchise model. In June 2025, the company said it had closed more than 30 company-owned locations across at least 14 states. Later in 2025, Hooters said the founders’ group and Hoot Owl Restaurants LLC would own about 140 of 198 domestic Hooters restaurants, alongside 60 international locations, with the system representing about $700 million in sales. The company also said that shift would leave the domestic business fully franchised.

The Corpus Christi shutdown shows how that transition lands at store level. A unit can reopen, trade on brand recognition and still disappear once the balance sheet changes. For workers, that can mean lost hours, short-notice layoffs and a familiar restaurant trade lesson: a busy dining room is not the same thing as a stable employer.