‘The Hooters concept is based on female sex appeal and the work environment is one in which joking and innuendo based on female sex appeal is commonplace.’
_Hooters employment disclaimerBoobies have been known to make men trip over their words, but the doublespeak over Mike Harris’s plan for a Hooters on Free Street has reached eye-popping proportions. Last week, Harris sent an e-mail to Jan Beitzer, head of Portland’s Downtown District, and to Portland city councilors announcing that the sports bar now known as “the Stadium will be the location of the newest Hooters Restaurant in the country” (see “Hooters comes to Portland,” on the About Town blog, August 23). This was news to many of the Stadium’s downtown neighbors, news to the e-mail’s many recipients, and news to Hooters of America’s corporate office in Atlanta, Georgia.
Harry Grindrod, director of international franchise relations at Hooters for America, supervises the small Atlanta office that approves all Hooters franchise restaurant locations. Hooters of America runs an international chain of over 435 restaurants known for their busty “Hooters Girls” waitresses in tight tank tops and short shorts. Reached by phone Monday, Grindrod said he hadn’t heard about a Hooters at the Stadium until he was interviewed by another local reporter about it last week.
“Not one of us has been up there to see [Harris],” Grindrod said. “And not one of us has approved it. We have a group of people who are interested in doing a franchise in Maine. This guy Mr. Harris who’s been representing himself as a possible franchisee, he is not part of that group.” (He says there are “three or four” groups seeking to bring Hooters to Maine, from which he expects proposals this week. Typically, only one would be approved, but Grindrod would not rule out approving more than one.)
That doesn’t match Harris’s account, in which Hooters has flown “several of their corporate officers to Portland to look at the city and the surrounding businesses,” Harris and Grindrod have spoken on the phone, and Harris is working on the final stages of an agreement with New England Wings, a Vermont-based Hooters franchisee, to open the first Maine Hooters restaurant in the middle of Portland’s arts district.
Harris, who stressed he did not intend for last week’s e-mail to the PDD to leak to the press before he could “discuss everything with the city” and “everything is finalized,” says corporate confidentiality about an unfinished deal may be the reason for the contradiction.
He plans to lease 8000 square feet of the 31,000 square-foot Stadium Restaurant and Sports Bar to Hooters, which he will jointly operate with New England Wings. Harris manages the enormous bar, located at 304 Congress Street, with entrances around the block on Free and Brown streets. It does not currently use space along Congress Street. According to Harris’s plan, Hooters will face Free and Brown streets, and the Stadium will move to the Congress Street side of the building.
“It’s just a neighborhood restaurant, everyone’s been to one,” says Harris. “Your friends and family have been to it.”
