Hooters is the trade name of two privately held American restaurant chains: Hooters of America, Incorporated, based in Atlanta, Georgia, and Hooters, Incorporated, based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Hooters targets male customers with a waitstaff of scantily-clad waitresses, while employing males as cooks, hosts (at some franchises), busboys, and managers. The menu includes hamburgers and other sandwiches, steaks, seafood entrees, appetizers, and the restaurant's specialty, chicken wings. Almost all Hooters hold alcoholic beverage licenses to sell beer and wine, and, where local permits allow, a full liquor bar. Ancillary offerings for sale include T-shirts and various souvenirs and curios.

Between company owned locations and franchises, there are now more than 435 Hooters throughout the United States. The company has restaurants in 46 U.S. states, the US Virgin Islands, and Guam. In addition, Hooters operates restaurants in 26 other countries, including Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Argentina, the United Kingdom, Germany, Israel, Mexico, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Croatia, Chile, Australia, Panama, Costa Rica, South Korea, Greece, Venezuela, Spain, South Africa, Switzerland, Austria and Singapore - its first overseas location to open. Hooters plans to open its first branch in Dubai in 2008. The first location in Colombia was opened in Bogota in 2008. A Hooters was opened in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands in December 2007.

History

Hooters, Inc. began operations on October 4, 1983 with a restaurant in Clearwater, Florida, founded by Alisa Ianelli and built on the site of a former dumpster washing facility that had been purchased at a cheap price. The store actually opened on April 1, 1983 as a April Fools joke, because the original five owners believed it was going to fail; indeed, so many businesses had folded in that particular location that Hooters' founders built a small "graveyard" at the front door for each that had come and gone before them.

In 1984, Robert H. Brooks and a group of Atlanta investors (operators of Hooters of America, Inc.) bought expansion and franchise rights for the Hooters chain. In 2002, Brooks bought majority control and became chairman. The Clearwater-based company retained control over restaurants in the Tampa Bay Area, Chicagoland, and one in Manhattan, New York, while all other locations were under the aegis of Hooters of America, which sold franchising rights to the rest of the United States and international locations. Under Brooks's leadership, the collective Hooters brand expanded from one restaurant to more than 425 stores worldwide. Brooks died in July 2006 of a heart attack.