"Most of the regulars are foreign men.
They come here to eat after work, and stay until
closing time," Hooters girl Lucky Zhou says with
her prize-winning smile. "My favourite is Mike.
He's American, in his forties - he comes here
nearly every day, drinking beer, playing with the
girls."
Lucky, aged 22, is studying law at
Shanghai's Fudan University, and she has just been
named Chinese Hooters Girl of the Year. Waiting to
start her shift, she has already changed into the
tight white T-shirt and orange hot-pants worn by
Hooters girls all over the world. They fit like a
glove. Chances are, Mike isn't coming for Hooters'
famous buffalo wings.
"Delightfully tacky
yet unrefined", as the American chain chirpily
styles
itself, Hooters Shanghai opened its doors in
October 2004. Dominating a strip of bars in the
expat enclave of Gubei, the first Hooters to open
in China now reportedly serves an average of
250-300 customers a day - and plans are now well
under way to open a second outlet in Shanghai and one in Beijing within the next
year. Lucky is one of 70 girls - many of them
students working part-time - employed in the Gubei
branch, and one of 15,000 Hooters girls
worldwide, now trading big smiles for big tips in
locations as diverse as Buenos Aires, Taipei and
Neunkirchen, Germany.
Hooters was not
initially conceived as an international megabrand.
The first branch opened its doors in Clearwater,
Florida in 1983, a beach bar run by six buddies
determined to have a good time and hoping to sell
some buffalo wings along the way. Yet Hooters
today counts as the tenth largest restaurant chain
in the United States, and this year food and
beverage sales will for the first time surpass
US$1 billion. And while the Florida company
Hooters Inc may retain the buccaneering
tongue-in-cheek of the early days, it now shares
the brand with a much slicker beast, the
Atlanta-based Hooters of America, formerly owned
by a friend of the original founders but later
taken over by seasoned F+B supplier Bob Brooks -
the man behind the Burger King milkshake, among
other claims to fame.
Under Brooks'
leadership, the brand has in recent years expanded
and diversified at a speed which might impress
Richard Branson. Hooters Air offers the brand's
trademark hospitality experience one mile high,
with five aircraft now serving 17 cities in the
United States. The brand has become a sponsor of
major sporting events and has lent its name to a
lifestyle magazine, a line of potato chips and a
credit card. February 2006 will see the opening of
the Hooters Casino Resort in Las Vegas, this time
managed by the original Florida company - once
again on friendly terms with Brooks after many
years of distrust.
And then there is
overseas expansion, including China. "We chose to
enter the Chinese market in Shanghai," says Misia
Jin, the 29-year-old branch manager at the Gubei
outlet, and a veteran of Shanghai's hotel
management scene. "Shanghai is the most commercial
city in China, and also the most open-minded. Many
foreigners here are already familiar with our
brand, and white-collar locals are keen to try new
things. You can't say this about the second-level
Chinese cities."
Hooters is not the only
major Western restaurant brand with an eye on a
Chinese market already well-served by a range of
independent imitators, all hoping to offer
homesick expats and aspiring white-collar locals a
taste of US-style sports bar culture. "Locally our
major competitors include TGI Fridays, Malone's
and the Hard Rock Cafe," Misia told Asia Times
Online (although the Shanghai Hard Rock is
temporarily closed during relocation). Friday's
and Hard Rock can be found in most international
cities; Malone's, on the other hand is a Shanghai
one-off - now 11 years old, the foreign-owned
sports bar was one of the earliest major venues to
appear outside of a five star hotel, and is the
only one of that first generation still going
strong today.
What distinguishes Hooters
from the rest, of course, is the small matter of
70 Chinese girls dressed as Daisy Duke. "Hooters
girls are special," says Misia. "They are
university students who speak good English - fun,
open-minded girls. The guests won't get bored."
No doubt. But what does the Chinese public
make of it all? Certainly in America there are
people who have serious problems with the
fundamental Hooters philosophy - with the result
that the brand spent much of the 1990s fighting
for its life. Particularly menacing was the
unsuccessful 1994 lawsuit by the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission, arguing that the company
violated anti-discrimination laws by only
employing attractive women.
Hooters China,
at least, one year after opening, claims that it
has yet to receive a single complaint. This could
well be true. Attitudes to commercial sex in China
are ambiguous to say the least - while officially
the public presentation of sex and sexuality
remains strictly controlled (in the pages of state
media, for example), the reality is that sex in
China today is widely commercialized, sometimes
with a surprising degree of official acquiescence.
Hostessing, a largely East Asian phenomenon in
which a woman drinks and flirts with a guest in
return for a fee, is extremely widespread -
provincial capitals invariably offer a wide
variety of options, and far from the neon glow of
Shanghai or Beijing even the smallest county town
will support a dingy KTV lounge or two, offering
an hour's privacy behind a dirty curtain in a
secluded booth.
The Hooters management are
understandably keen to distance themselves from
such shenanigans, stressing instead the "good
clean fun" aspects of the Hooters experience. "Our
philosophy at Hooters is about being healthy and
having fun - Hooters girls are like cheerleaders,"
says manager Misia Jin. "The atmosphere here is
very different from what you get in the dice bars
on Hengshan Road [a popular strip of identikit
bars in Shanghai's Old French Concession, where
bored hostesses play dice and, with varying
degrees of enthusiasm, attempt to sell customers
brand-name whisky]. Everything is bright here; we
have large windows to let the sunlight in. The
Hengshan Road bars are all very dark."
For
their part, the Hooters girls echo the company
line; carefully worded suggestions of exploitation
are met with blank looks. Instead, the girls bring
their families to the restaurant to visit and join
in the fun - and overwhelmingly they see the
experience as an empowering one. "I'm gaining work
experience here which will help me with my future
career," says Kitty Ye, a real estate major who
plans to study abroad. "My spoken English has
improved enormously. Also, I've made friends with
customers from all over the world, which has been
very educational; it's corrected some of my
misconceptions about the outside world."
"You'll see more skin and booty shaking at
your average half-time at a high school football
game than you will at Hooters," concurs Mike
McNeil, vice president of marketing at the Atlanta
head office. In truth Hooters has always known
where to draw the line. Witness for instance the
contents of the chain's employees handbook,
recently acquired by the Smoking Gun website,
which may insist on tight T-shirts, but also
sternly notes that shorts "should NOT BE SO TIGHT
THAT THE BUTTOCKS SHOW".
The real
controversy in the United States has in any case
not been about the selling of sex; rather it has
been about the use of female sexuality as a
marketing tool - and this sort of issue is much
less contentious in China, where it's widely
accepted that employers will consider appearance
when recruiting staff, at least for jobs that
involve dealing with the public.
All of
which suggests that China can cope with the
Hooters girls - and as it stands the company's
prospects in China look good. As manager of
Malone's Sports Bar, Shawn Doyle has been serving
burgers to foreign Shanghai for over a decade. "If
they are really attracting 250 or 300 customers a
day at this stage, I would say they are doing a
good job at building an increasing guest base," he
told Asia Times Online. "Talking to customers at
Malone's, some of them are also going to Hooters.
But I don't see them as a competitor - maybe we
offer the same beer and sports on the TVs, but the
concepts are very different in terms of food,
environment and entertainment."
At present
the brand's key strength in China is its
high-level of recognition among foreign visitors
and residents - and of course, not only do the
girls speak good English, they also have lots of
experience talking to foreigners; and for Ron from
Detroit who's only in town for four days, a few
beers at Hooters probably offers more fun than an
evening with the local business partner, no matter
who wears the hot-pants. As such Hooters seems to
be avoiding the fate of many "theme" restaurants,
which often find interest dropping off once the
initial buzz dies down - such as the now bankrupt
"Planet Hollywood" chain.
And the Chinese
customers? "We are gradually seeing more local
customers - including some who are visiting
Shanghai from small towns but know us from our website," says branch
manager Misia Jin. But with 85% of customers
currently foreigners, it will be a long time
before we see Hooters China attempting to emulate
the sort of state-by-state ubiquity that the brand
enjoys in the United States. The girls in the KTV
dens of small-town China probably won't be hanging
up their miniskirts any time soon.
Hooters girls
worldwide, now trading big smiles for big tips in
locations as diverse as Buenos Aires, Taipei and
Neunkirchen, Germany. 
