5 Things You Didn't Know: Hooters

By Ross Bonander

Entertainment Correspondent - Every Thursday

Here are 5 things you didn't know about Hooters
There’s an old saying that reminds us how times change, but people don’t. What’s also true is that times change, but hooters don’t -- except that they’ve gotten much bigger over the last 25 years. This is also true about the restaurant.

With locations on five of the world’s six habitable continents (Africa is the lone holdout), Hooters has come a long way since its inception in October of 1983, in Clearwater, Florida. As the chain celebrates its 25th anniversary, we present 5 things you didn’t know about Hooters, the restaurant. (For 5 things you didn’t know about those other hooters, click here).

1- Hooters Girls have to sign a sexual innuendo consent form

The first thing you didn’t know about Hooters is that the company’s non-harassment policy evidently doesn’t apply to you, the customer, since as a condition of employment the girls are required to sign a form that, among other things, they “expressly acknowledge… the Hooter concept is based on female sex appeal and the work environment is one in which joking and innuendo based on female sex appeal is commonplace.”

2- Hooters didn't serve liquor until 2006

Chicks in hot outfits, fried food, and liquor -- we might have figured this trifecta to be a safe business model from the outset, but for their own reasons, Hooters spent their first 23 years on the wagon. In 2006 the company evidently decided that a big change was in order, so they introduced that fresh new concept into the restaurants. Now, liquor sales represent 28% of its revenue.

Liquor licenses aren’t cheap, but they tend to pay for themselves rather quickly, so we can only speculate on why it took them so long: sober guys don’t make enough jokes and innuendo based on female sex appeal?

3- Hooters Girls can't wear their hair in ponytails

Another thing you didn’t know about Hooters is that someone high up at that company is a follicle fascist.

Hooters Girls are meant to represent, in the words of the company, the “All-American Cheerleader, Surfer, Girl Next Door,” but there’s something fascist afoot at Hooters, something decidedly un-American -- a real rigidity and demand for conformity when it comes to hair. The employee manual is clear: “No bizarre hair cuts or hair colors, no hats, headbands, hair clips or scrunchies,” and no ponytails -- the sine qua non of every cheerleader, second only to school spirit.

4- The Hooters name was inspired by Steve Martin

On May 17, 1980, three years before Hooters opened its doors, Steve Martin hosted Saturday Night Live and in his monologue he unknowingly provided the future restaurant with its name, saying, “I believe it's derogatory to refer to a woman's breasts as ‘boobs,’ ‘jugs,’ ‘winnebagos’ or ‘golden bozos’ -- you should only refer to them as ‘hooters.’”

Martin’s next line was, “And I believe you should put a woman on a pedestal -- high enough so you can look up her dress,” possibly providing the founders with the motivation needed to launch a restaurant in such a competitive industry.

5- One ex-Hooters Girl is now a company VP

Before anyone thinks that former Hooters Girl Kat Cole, who now serves as Vice President of Training and Development, is a token hire put in place to appease their critics, think again. It took the Katie Holmes look-alike almost a decade to make VP, and by all accounts her rise up the ranks has been on merit.

Still, Cole hasn’t forgotten her blue-collar roots, boasting that “the skills I learned in the orange shorts still serve me today.” Nor has she forgotten her blond roots, remarking about her current work that she’s “improving the world one person at a time.”

She really did say that. Seriously.