The Power of Branding
September 2007
By Joni House
You’re turning 25. You’ve spent years carving out your place in the restaurant world. You really do have a fun casual dining menu, you insist, and aren’t just another pretty face. People titter (or try to run you out of town) when you tell them your name. What’s a chain to do?
Hooters’ answer is to celebrate: with a total of 445 stores (121 company-owned stores and 324 franchises) in 23 countries around the world, Hooters is a presence to be reckoned with. Hooters is “one of the best-recognized brands in the restaurant industry,” says Mike McNeil, Vice President Marketing. Kat Cole, Vice President of Training and Development, echoes that view adding: “We are fanatic about our brand.” Key to Hooters’ success is the focus and clarity on what the brand is-and is not.
What Makes the Brand?
The executive team agrees: Hooters is more than casual dining. “We target the sports crowd, and we add socially acceptable sex appeal,” Cole says. Hooters, is of course, known for its Hooters Girls. “We’re a casual setting where you have to have a sense of humor,” she continues. “We’re unconventional.”
The Hooters girl is a brand element-since 1997 gender selection is a legally protected part of the Hooters brand-and is the key component of the viewscape in every Hooters restaurant from South Bend to Seoul. The Hooters girl creates the Hooters atmosphere: she smiles; she sits at your table; she’s a conversationalist; she’s an oasis of orange. But she also sells: customers order another round because she is sooo nice and they don’t want to hurt her feelings by paying the tab and leaving just yet….
But to sustain success over 25 years requires more than feminine beauty and charm. Consistency is a considerable factor in Hooters’ branding strategy. Even internationally, Hooters insists on maintaining its unique flavor, including the wing sauce and the Hooters Girl uniforms. Internationally, “basically it’s the same as in the states,” John Weber, Executive Vice President of Franchise Operations observes. For example, “the Japanese know us from California. The interior, the building design, the uniforms-they’re all the same.”
To transplant the brand into different cultures, both domestic and international, requires a corporate team dedicated to delivering the Hooters experience. “The people are the best thing” about Hooters, says Coby Brooks, CEO. “It’s not a fraternity; I’d never call it a fraternity,” he laughs. “It’s a huge family.”
To that end, Hooters rewards store employees for delivering the Hooters brand experience. There’s the Hooters Girl of the Year, and the less photographed but equally important Kitchen Crew of the Year. “These are our best examples of what represents the essence of Hooters: sales, energy and interaction with the customers and other team members,” says Brooks.
Educating employees on the essence of the brand is important to maintaining its consistency worldwide. At Hooters University managers are trained in three phases corresponding with their career development and increasing responsibilities. Hooters University develops subject matter experts (SME’s) in what Kat Cole calls “the world’s oldest profession: hospitality.” Part of the training is how to give back to the community, an important element in the Hooters mission statement. By the time employees have completed Phase III at Hooters University, they’re part of the regional management team and ready for multi-unit leadership.
“Promoting from within is now by design, where at first it was by necessity,” says Kat Cole. So it makes sense that 59 percent of the corporate office employees are female, and two of ten Vice Presidents and above are female. Cole, herself a former Hooters Girl, recalls a peculiar alliance of N.O.W. and Mormon picketers demonstrating against Hooters’ presence in Salt Lake City: “We don’t exploit women; we employ them,” she says.
Eyes Wide Open
Hooters’ lighthearted and self-deprecating approach doesn’t hide the keen self-awareness behind the work that keeps the brand elevated. Hooters knows who its customers are, and just as important, who they aren’t.
For the Hooters brand loyalist, Coby Brooks observes, “it’s not a customer base; it’s a fan base.” However, certain demographic groups are outside the sweet spot for the brand. “We cater to our weaknesses and market to our strengths,” Cole says. For example Hooters has added products like fruit smoothies to its food and beverage lineup in an effort to make the stores a more comfortable place for women and families. Nevertheless, Hooters doesn’t market directly to those groups. “We want to be more inclusive,” Cole says, without losing focus on what the brand is.
Given the intentionally unique aspects of the Hooters brand, “the entire community is not our potential market,” Cole continues. Hooters has to have a larger population pool to generate the same number of customers as other casual dining chains. According to Cole, Hooters’ demographic market area (or DMA) is roughly twice the size of Chili’s to generate the same number of customers. “We’re just controversial enough for our own good,” laughs Mike McNeil. “If we don’t get a little controversy, I worry.”
The strength of the Hooters brand can sometimes complicate messaging on issues that are important to the company, however. Hooters’ charitable arm, Hooters Community Endowment Fund (or HOO.C.E.F.) supports local causes and initiatives developed by store managers in their own communities. In addition, Hooters supports charities nationally, but sometimes quietly. “Some [charities] have turned down money,” from Hooters, says Kat Cole. For years Hooters has privately supported breast cancer research and prevention, Cole says. This year, however, with the tragic death from breast cancer of Kelly Jo Dowd, who started her career as a Hooters Girl and moved into management, Hooters has found a platform for taking a more open role in advocating for breast cancer research and prevention. All employees, male and female alike, now see a video on breast cancer as part of the hiring process.
Teaching an Old Brand New Tricks
Approaching the age of 25 the Hooters brand is getting the all the attention such a milestone warrants. The executive team acknowledges challenges to the brand, but, as Joe Hummel, Vice President of Operations and Purchasing, observes, “The concept is not broken.”
Some of the challenges to the brand come from its huge success in its “delightfully tacky, yet unrefined” niche. Mike McNeil reflects that among the negatives is the “perception that food value and menu variety [are] not as great as [they] are.” Some, he says, are “dismissive of the brand” entirely due to the sex appeal. According to McNeil, a significant challenge facing Hooters is “trying to make sure we’re legitimizing the concept as a food brand within the restaurant industry.” John Weber expands on the thought: “Our biggest challenge is staying ahead of the brand. We have to be proactive in terms of staying ahead of it.”
For Hooters being proactive can take many forms. One example is product line diversification. In 2006, Hooters added hard liquor to its bar offerings. “We have a duty to our franchisees to test” new products and features, says Kat Cole. But the chain proceeded cautiously. The big concern with the addition of hard liquor was that customers would be “naked and hanging from the rafters,” Cole laughed.
To help implement the concept, Hooters partnered with ShowTenders, and elected to limit its liquor offering to 25 total bottles versus the almost 70+ varieties at a typical Outback store. “We had a six-month training period,” Cole recalls. “We were ready/set, ready/set” until the first 20 stores rolled out with liquor offerings in fall 2006. Now, all but 20 of 121 corporate locations are converted to liquor service, and 80 of 294 franchise locations have rolled out the new offering. “We’ve had zero alcohol issues from full spirits,” Cole reports, and “zero customer complaints, except for requests for more brands. Our Bloody Mary is made in-house from scratch and it’s awesome!”
Hooters is also celebrating its expansion internationally. “We continue to evolve the concept,” says Coby Brooks. Speaking of the legacy of his late father Robert Brooks, “ironically it got a little bigger than he could grasp. You’d think [the brand] would be the hardest concept to take international, but it’s been relatively easy.” John Weber adds: “Our greatest opportunity is international expansion.”
Hooters is franchised in 23 countries, from Asia to the Mediterranean. Weber identifies other targets of opportunity: a 20-store contract in France, a large deal in England, and additions in northern Germany. Discussions in Jordan are underway, and a franchise opportunity in Dubai is still in negotiation.
China loves the American novelty, and the Hooters Girls are the “stars of the show,” according to Cole. In some locations “the strong entertainment aspect of the Hooters concept sticks,” she says. In all of locations, Weber screens the franchisee candidates carefully. Generally, locations are targeted for “welcoming Americanism,” although Hooters makes small adjustments to accommodate local food preferences. For example, steak choices were added to the menu in Argentina and more elaborate desserts were introduced in Latin America. The core items-wings, burgers, and chicken sandwiches-stay the same. Another non-negotiable: the uniform. “It’s a condition of the deal,” says Brooks. “It’s part of our brand, our concept.”
Further solidifying the brand domestically presents its own challenges. “Hooters is a destination restaurant, as opposed to an impulse buy,” Joe Hummel observes. With domestic growth, the stores start to “cannibalize each other.”
Mike McNeil points out that licensing into other channels is a tactic Hooters is using to create brand extensions. In grocery stores, there are branded chips, wings, and energy drinks. Hooters also has a casino in Las Vegas, and a Hooters-branded MasterCard.
Facelift at 25 years old
If you were Hooters and had a magic wand, how would you use it?
“On our stores,” Brooks says without hesitation. We’re converting the locations and making them pretty again.” The new facilities prototype is “more comfortable and appealing,” says McNeil. The rollout for the corporate stores will take three more years, Brooks estimates. Each store is closed for six to twelve weeks during the renovation.
There’s also talk of modernizing the Hooters Girl uniform, which, with a minor modification here and there, is the original fashion statement from the 1980’s. When pressed for a sneak preview, Brooks demurs. “I can tell you,” he says, “orange is here to stay.”
Presumably the viewscape provided by the Hooters Girls will be unchanged as well. On a recent visit to a company-owned store, I observed an unconventional vending machine in the ladies’ room: a pantyhose dispenser. A closer look revealed that the garments were atypical: footless, and thicker than the average daysheer preferred by most working women. On the way out, I asked one of the Hooters Girls about the machine. “Oh yeah, it comes in handy for us if we run a pair while we’re working.” Then, ever the sales professional, she looked me over and without missing a beat chirped, “You want to buy a pair?”
Coby Brooks laughs. “Hooters,” he chuckled, “is the nexus of commerce.”
