Hooters founders regain control, push quality-driven turnaround in tough market

At Hooters, the turnaround is starting with the basics that diners notice first: fresher wings, in-house dressings, a slimmer menu and updated equipment. After years of shrinking sales, the brand’s original founders are betting that better food quality and tighter execution can do what branding gimmicks and private-equity ownership could not.

Hooters of America filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 31, 2025, with about $376 million in debt. The restructuring pushed the chain toward a pure-franchise model, and the founders’ group, through Hooters Inc. and Hoot Owl Restaurants LLC, took control of about 140 domestic restaurants and roughly 60 international locations, representing about $700 million in systemwide sales when the deal closed in October 2025. Depending on how the transaction is described, the founders acquired roughly 111 to 151 company-owned U.S. locations.

The case for the reset is in the numbers. Founder-led stores in Clearwater, Florida, and other original markets such as Chicago, Texas, Northern Indiana, Georgia and parts of Florida had been outperforming the rest of the chain for years, with average unit volumes around $4.6 million to $5 million a year. HOA-owned restaurants were averaging about $2.3 million. That gap gave the founders a live example of what the chain had lost and what still worked when Hooters stayed close to its original formula.

The brand had been sliding for years under the weight of inflation, weak traffic and changing tastes. Technomic data cited by Restaurant Business showed Hooters sales fell more than 30% from 2019 to 2024. Nearly a quarter of the company’s restaurants closed over that stretch, including 48 closures in 2024 alone. Hooters ended 2024 with 251 domestic locations, down 16.1% from the year before, and it later closed about 30 more restaurants in June 2025.

The founders’ answer is to strip the concept back to what regulars expect from a beach-themed chain: hand-breaded wings, wing sauces made with Grade AA butter, wild-caught fish, fresh-cut salads, ranch and blue cheese dressings made in house daily, and the return of the original uniforms. Neil Kiefer, the Hooters Inc. chief executive and one of the chain’s original founders, has argued that the brand’s earlier problem was oversexualizing the concept instead of treating it like a neighborhood beach hangout.

For workers, the reset is not abstract. A streamlined menu, fresher prep and better equipment change how fast tickets move, how often product gets tossed, and how much strain falls on cooks and servers during a rush. In a casual-dining market where traffic is softer and costs are higher, Hooters is now testing whether better ingredients and cleaner operations can stabilize a legacy brand one shift at a time.