Year: 2025

The restaurant chain known only as ‘Hooters’, famous for its chicken wings and nothing else, has declared: BANKRUPTCY!

But don’t worry! They’re not getting rid of your favorite orange thing, this is merely a scaling back, a reduction if you will. Hooters plans to sell off all 100 restaurants to two separate franchisee groups based in Florida and Chicago. So really this is just a change in management and idk why this is even news.

“We believe that by shifting from a D-grade company to a C or B, we may lighten the load on our workers and our shareholders,” explained Neville Carson, who, I guess, works there. “Hopefully, the Hooters brand will now be able to fit through doors and not have quite as much back pain.”

Confusingly, the sale of Hooters is from Hooters of America Inc. to Hooters Inc., which is a completely different Hooters. Hooters Inc. (not Hooters of America Inc.) is owned by the original Hooters founders. Hooters of America Inc., however, is owned by private equity firms Nord Bay Capital and TriArtisan Capital Advisors, who are distinctly un-Hooters.

What A Hoot!

Hooters was originally founded on April 1st, 42 years ago as an April Fool’s Day joke, so it’s pretty apt this bankruptcy filing comes around now. I guess Hooters was a big joke all along.

Whilst many believe that Hooters is named after the big ol’ chonky honkers that were required dress code at the restaurants, this is in fact a myth. Hooters owes its name to a wise old owl called ‘Millicent’ who lived at the Cincinnati Zoo from 1867 to 1873. Millicent was a friend to all, but was particularly affectionate to small children and widowers.

Millicent became known throughout America as a mascot for the zoo and would occasionally tour as part of the regional world fairs. Here, visitors from far and wide would marvel at Millicent’s particular affection for small children and widowers.

Although owls are evolved to eat live animals such as rodents and small children, Milicent was fed a strict diet of spicy-spicy chicken wings (which was all the rage at the time). And so when Milicent died at the tender age of 6 (which is 6 in owl years), her diet of spicy-spicy chicken wings was not presumed to be the culprit (since it was all the rage at the time).

Modern owlologists now know that it probably was her subsistence on spicy-spicy chicken wings that caused Milicent’s death.

The restaurant chain Hooters was thus founded in Milicent’s honor so that all might remember that spicy-spicy chicken wings are meant for humans and not owls.

Also people like boobs.