The popular hot wings (served, of course, with a side of scrumptious waitress eye-candy) restaurant and bar chain is having financial troubles galore and is aggressively looking for prospective buyers.
And that’s not the half of it: In February, a Las Vegas man confessed to a kidnapping in the Hooters parking lot and later trying to burn the body, according to a Las Vegas Metro police report. The report said the victim, Prisma Contreras, had gotten off work early at the Mad Onion restaurant at the Hooters Hotel and Casino and was abducted from the parking lot in her jeep.
Police said suspect Richard Freeman Jr. confessed to the murder and that he and suspect Gregory Lee Hover were trying to find a prostitute when they spotted Contreras and used a gun to kidnap her. The report said Hover sexually assaulted the victim and tried to strangle her with twine. But when that didn’t work, he stabbed her repeatedly and then cut her throat, police said. The pair then tried to burn the body and the jeep in the desert near Boulder City, but was unsuccessful. Both suspects have been charged with murder.
Adding insult to the gorey death, their sales have continued to sag due to the recession and in the past usually NOTHING was sagging at good old Hooters. Now, analysts say the huge chain is actively shopping around and trying to sell the conglomerate for at least $250 million.
Likewise, the Hooters Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas isn’t doing at all well either, to which the Hooters restaurant chain receives a royalty fee for the use of the name. In fact, the New York Post recently claimed the Hooters Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas is the primary culprit to blame for the company’s financial woes. According to the newspaper, the Las Vegas businesss was recently in default on $144.5 million in long-term debt.
This isn’t the first time Hooters has faced financial troubles. Hooters Air, their passenger airline, was only flying high for about three years, from 2003 to mid 2006, before going belly up.
Las Vegas Backstage Access has learned from inside sources the chain will shutter its doors by the end of March and very soon someone will snap up the Hooters chain before it further goes tits up — after all, it’s an American institution.
Hooters of America, Inc. is the Atlanta-based operator and franchiser of over 450 Hooters restaurant and bar locations in 43 states in the United States and more than two dozen countries. The restaurant chain, which trades on female sex appeal, owns 122 units.
Vegas Backstage Access (VBA) 