The (in)famous orange signage is up. Work is apace to be open in a fortnight. The job ad has gone out. Fifty “girls” wanted and they are “hiring in all positions”.
Hooters, the American “breastaurant”, known for its chicken wings and female waiting staff in skimpy nylon shorts and tight vests, is launching in the city centre of Newcastle upon Tyne. The experiment in the north-east of England may well prove to be the decisive test of the brand’s reach in Britain.
“For over 40 years, Hooters has built a reputation across the globe for making people happy, and we are excited to bring our one-of-a-kind guest experience to Newcastle in the iconic Bigg Market within the city centre, with an official opening expected this month,” the company said in a statement to the Guardian.
“It’s horrible,” responded Jen Bagelman, 41, a professor of geography at Newcastle University who lives close by in the city centre. “We can do better than this.”
The Newcastle franchise will be the third in the UK, after Nottingham and Liverpool, but the arrival of the “Hooters girls” on Tyneside can be fairly said to have a wider significance.
It is an attempt to buck a trend, in Britain and abroad.
The company, founded on April Fools’ Day 1983 (the founders never expected their joke to last), has hundreds of restaurants in the US but it has undergone a period of retrenchment in recent years.
Many restaurants mothballed during the Covid crisis failed to reopen or struggled thereafter amid changes in eating habits and tastes.
The introduction of shorter shorts for the waiting staff in 2021 proved insufficient to stir interest among the younger generations in America. Last September the company, which has been owned by private equity since 2019, announced the closure of 40 of its outlets.
Meanwhile, the story in Britain has been an almost entirely troubled one since the restaurant franchise arrived in Birmingham in 1998 to great fanfare, only to promptly shut less than 18 months later.
A host of excuses were given for that closure, including soaring rent rates, but the background noise was that of war veterans complaining that the restaurant was disrespectfully close to the Hall of Memory memorial, while campaigners accused the company of objectifying women.
In the 2000s, there was another push to expand into the UK, with the goal of opening in 36 locations by 2012. It didn’t happen.
Franchises that opened in Bristol and Cardiff in 2010 closed in 2012. The fate of the outlet in Bristol may have been sealed after claims that staff had given a cake to a 12-year-old boy and his friends in the shape of naked breasts.
A licence was granted in 2022 to open in Salford despite the opposition of the city mayor, Paul Dennett, the Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham, and local MPs, but the project came to nothing after “complex” negotiations with a landlord.
An earlier plan to open in Newcastle in 2015 was foiled after opposition from Northumbria police who claimed it would attract more stag and hen parties, which could lead to a rise in crime.
Liverpool’s Hooters opened in 2022 despite the protestations of the then mayor of Liverpool, Joanne Anderson, who claimed the chain had an “infamously sexually objectifying and misogynistic environment”.
Its owners found themselves bogged down in legal disputes over the restaurant’s signage and the company behind it went into liquidation in December. A new franchisee has taken over.
The only proven success in the UK has been the Nottingham franchise, run since 1998 by Julian Mills and his Canadian business partner, Johnny Goard, who owns five Hooters in his home country. They are behind the launch in Newcastle.
A potentially difficult public consultation over a licence and planning application has been avoided after transferring existing permissions from previous leaseholders.
But familiar opposition has been roused in recent days. It is understood that concerns have been raised by councillors internally after lobbying from local residents.
Kruti Walsh, the policy director at the feminist charity FiLiA, said: “Violence against women and girls is an epidemic so we firmly oppose plans to expand a chain that treats women as objects to be served up alongside chicken wings and fries.” Walsh argued that an establishment focused on the sexual desirability of its all-female waiting staff should face the same more stringent licensing demands as sexual entertainment venues.
Goard, talking amid the debris in the half-finished restaurant, confirmed that all his serving staff would be female and that the Hooters uniform was mandatory, but rejected claims that he was objectifying women.
“Have you looked outside on a Friday night?” he said. “What else can I say about that? We raise millions and millions of dollars for [breast cancer] charities … If you want to go to TGI Friday, some people are saying it’s offensive because they’re dressed with [braces]. We’re not offensive in any way. It’s been [going] 41 years, we have hundreds of restaurants in 17 or 18 countries. But everyone’s got an opinion, everyone is entitled to an opinion as well.”
The Newcastle Hooters will have a capacity for 200 people, but Goard suggested the brand would raise the standard of outlet on the Bigg Market, perhaps Newcastle’s rowdiest street. The council has been seeking to regenerate the area after years of decline.
He said: “It’s a restaurant. We don’t want to be here as a bar … We do kids eat for free on Sundays. Hooters isn’t what you think it is, what you perceive it to be, until you come in the door.”
Goard has hired 45 of the 50 “Hooters girls” he wants to hire, some of whom are as young as 17. They would be paid the national minimum wage or living wage, depending on their age, plus tips, he said, with “flexible” hours.
Margins were tight in the restaurant business, Goard said. “Make money, you expand,” he added. “But it’s still dangerous, you know. People lose their livelihoods opening up restaurants.”
A Newcastle city council spokesperson said: “We are aware of residents’ concerns about this development. Our licensing officers will be engaging with the current licence holder to determine their intentions for the property. We will also establish if further permissions are required to ensure compliance with the authority’s licensing objectives.
“As a White Ribbon City, Newcastle stands against all harassment, abuse and violence against women and girls. All businesses in our city are encouraged to show their commitment to tackling these important issues and we will be raising it with the licence holder at these premises to ensure they understand our clear position.”
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