Hooters To Open First N.W. Outlet -- Manager: Controversy Is Just Good Marketing

Hooters, the politically incorrect restaurant chain that features burgers, beer, chicken wings and buxom Hooters Girls, is planning to open its first Northwest outlet in Lynnwood.

Let's just say some people aren't taking hooter as an old British term for nose.

"Geez," said Jan Osborn, past state president of the National Organization for Women (NOW). "There is no accounting for taste."

Hooters, in American slang, are women's breasts, but Fred Glick, restaurant operations manager for Washington, said the term has multiple meanings. The restaurant's logo includes an owl, also a hooter.

"We appreciate that the founders of the (restaurant's) concept were aware of the dual meaning. We allow a debate to occur over the intent of the name's meaning. We enjoy and benefit from the debate."

"If this place was called Fred's, not Hooters," he added, "I'd be begging you to do an article on the opening."

The Lynnwood outlet is at 19800 44th Ave. W. Glick said he and Larry Klinghoffer, owner of Omaha-based Heartland Wings, the franchisee, hope to have the restaurant open on Dec. 17. They are also looking for locations in downtown Seattle, the Eastside and south of Seattle.

Last year the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission asserted Hooters' policy of only hiring waitresses was sex discrimination. Restaurant officials countered federal law allows gender-based hiring, such as Playboy employing only female bunnies. The EEOC backed off its probe in May, saying it had other cases it needed to devote its limited resources to.

Glick said the women servers, bartenders and hostesses the chain employs are like "All-American cheerleaders. . . . We sell sex appeal, not sleaze."

Men and women are hired for management and cooking positions, he said.

Hooters waitresses dress in orange running shorts, short or long-sleeve tops and sneakers, he said.

"They have more clothes on than the cheerleader down at the Sonics basketball game or in any health club in the city or at any beach you walk on," Glick said. "They will have less clothes than if you walked into a bank."

Glick described Hooters as a sports-theme restaurant in a beach-scene environment, with '50s and '60s music ranging from the Beach Boys to the Beatles and Chuck Berry.

"It sounds like a fun place. It's unfortunate the name and perhaps the way the women are dressed take away from the atmosphere," said Pam Whittington, Seattle NOW president.

Tad Dixon, spokesman for Hooters of America in Atlanta, said the chain has 189 restaurants in 37 states, serving 500,000 customers a week and bringing in $300 million a year.