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Home / Lifestyle / What happens after your Hooters shuts down? Ask these Hooters Girls.

What happens after your Hooters shuts down? Ask these Hooters Girls.

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It’s been a rough year for fans (and employees) of Hooters, the restaurant chain known for chicken wings and the revealing orange-and-white uniforms worn by the women who work there. In early June, more than two dozen of its company-owned locations across the U.S. closed their doors for good. It wasn’t exactly surprising, given the struggles casual dining restaurants nationwide are facing. Still, the shutdowns put people out of work, including many oft-mythologized Hooters Girls.

Drea Rutledge, who worked at the now-shuttered Rockford, Ill., Hooters, is one of them.

“We all knew that Hooters filed for bankruptcy back in March, but we just didn’t think it would happen to our store,” Rutledge tells Yahoo. “My general manager kept telling us that we were fine. Our sales were good. Everything was good, so we thought we had nothing to worry about.”

Rutledge took to social media to mourn the loss of her job. “My Hooters location shut down but at least these photos look good,” she captioned a TikTok of herself taking selfies in a red bikini.

Other Hooters Girls affected by the closures have been following suit. “I’m in shambles,” one posted, showing off her low-cut black work top. Some said goodbye through dance routines — spinning around in empty dining rooms or gathering their girlfriends to bust a move outside their old workplace.

What’s next for these women who are not only out of a job but also the cache that comes with being a Hooters Girl (one of the few food service industry jobs with its own Halloween costume)? Yahoo spoke with a few to find out.

What it’s like to work at Hooters

Rutledge, who is in her early 20s, started working at the sports bar in 2020. She loved it.

“I was always excited to go to work, and I always upheld the Hooters standards and what it meant to be a Hooters Girl,” she says, adding that “being a Hooters Girl was different from being a server.” That’s because Hooters Girls are actually hired as entertainers, a loophole allowing them to strictly hire young, attractive women. (Per the Hooters website, getting hired as a Hooters Girl “is an honor bestowed upon only the most entertaining, goal-oriented, glamorous and charismatic women. Hooters Girls have that special gift for making every guest feel welcome. She’ll have all kinds of opportunities — like appearing in the annual Hooters Swimsuit Calendar. She is an American icon the world over. A waitress she is not.”)

Whitney Lamb was 18 when she applied to work at the Fort Smith, Ark., location on a whim after getting sucked into the corner of the internet that is Hooters Girls’ “Get Ready With Me” videos (think: young women in curve-hugging orange shorts applying makeup). “It looked like a lot of fun,” Lamb, now 22, says. “And I am not cut out for a job with no fun.”

Mya Machelle, a 21-year-old Hooters Girl in the Nashville area, liked the social aspect of the job — namely, swapping stories with customers and coworkers alike. “This is the first job where I actually had coworkers that I hang out with outside [of work] and really created a bond,” she says.

All three women also enjoyed the work opportunities they had outside of the restaurant, including doing promotions and photo shoots, like posing for the Hooters Swimsuit Calendar.

And despite making regular What I Make in a Day TikToks during a Hooters shift, Rutledge insists she wasn’t really in it for money alone. “Everybody would always ask me, ‘What did you like about working there?’” she says. “And every single time, I would always say the experience, the opportunities and everybody you meet, because the right person you meet could change your life.”

But like any job, it had its downsides. Lamb says some days just felt extra long, especially when she wasn’t feeling particularly peppy but had to remain cheerful and talkative for her customers. “In the long run, though, it forced me into a better headspace,” she adds.

The party’s over

On June 4, Rutledge was planning to come in to cover a friend’s bartending shift when she got a phone call from her manager.

“She said, ‘Our store is shutting down. Come to the store to get your things. We’re cleaning everything out,’” Rutledge recalls. She immediately texted her friend who worked at the Hooters in Madison, Wis., only to find out her location was also shut down.

“Everybody was trying to call me, text me. It didn’t really hit me yet until I got on the phone and I let everybody know. I started crying. I just broke down,” Rutledge says. “We all loved working there. It was just a really fun job.”

Lamb found out about the store closings by reading a post in their staff Facebook group that said: “Store is closing permanently. If you have any questions, reach out to our GM.”

“It made me feel sad, but I did see it coming,” says Lamb, who had been taking note of the closures that had already been happening since 2024.

Machelle has worked at two Hooters locations that have closed. She got a call from her manager letting her know about the first closure, a Hooters in Hermitage, Tenn. She then transferred to the Harding Place location, also in the greater Nashville area, but was only there two months when she learned, via a group chat with her coworkers, that it too was going out of business.

“I woke up in the morning to everybody saying, ‘Bye, it was nice knowing y’all.’ I’m like, ‘What happened?’ And they said that the store’s closed permanently,” says Machelle. While her coworkers got a call from their manager breaking the news, she maintains she heard nothing despite having a shift to work that evening. Her calls to her manager were never answered, she says.

Is there life after Hooters?

In a statement on the heels of the June store closures, Hooters Inc. CEO Neil Kiefer maintained that all parties are completely aligned in bringing the necessary resources required to make the remaining 200 domestic Hooters locations as successful as possible.” There are also about 60 international locations.

For Rutledge, the future is not quite so certain. “I know that working at Hooters isn’t a ‘forever’ job,” she says. But “I didn’t plan on leaving so abruptly, either.” She’s currently filling out applications and looking at other job opportunities. “I am just at home for the time being.”

Machelle considered cutting ties completely with the chain but decided to transfer to her third Hooters, this time in a nearby town outside of Nashville. She says she’s also been told she’s eligible to appear in the next calendar.

“I’m also in college right now for biology and a minor in psychology, so hopefully I graduate with my degree and move forward with that,” she says. “That’s my goal.”

As for Lamb, she got her real estate license in Arkansas and Oklahoma and hopes to turn it into a lifelong career.

“Hooters helped me a lot while I was studying to take my test to get licensed, letting me study in between tables. My GM was actually one of my first closings,” she says. “While I am excited to move on to the next chapter completely, I will miss Hooters.”



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