Cheryl Whiting-Kish hopes to shift the popular narrative on what it means to wear the little orange shorts—AKA, be a female server at the iconic Hooters restaurant franchise.
After it first opened in April 1983 in Clearwater, Florida, Hooters was quickly branded as a “breastaurant,” which is loosely defined as a restaurant that requires female waiting staff to wear revealing clothing, historically for the enjoyment of a majority male customer base.
Indeed, the chicken restaurant’s founding story involves six businessmen with apparently no restaurant experience who banded together to “open a place they couldn’t get kicked out of,” according to the brand’s website. A year later, franchise rights were sold to Atlanta investors, who formed Hooters of America and bought the trademark in 2001.
Now with more than 420 restaurants in 42 states and 29 countries, Hooters’ claim to fame rests not on its cold beer, chicken wings or even its wall-to-wall big screen TVs playing endless sports, but in the Hooters Girls who provide the one-of-a-kind hospitality that “rescue millions from the ordinary” dining experience.
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As HOA Brands’ first chief people officer as of July, Whiting-Kish is shining a spotlight on the “amazing stories of these powerful women that have worn the orange shorts,” which she estimates totals about 400,000 women in nearly four decades. And Whiting-Kish would know, because she started out as a Hooters Girl herself.
A few of the company’s founders and early leaders recruited Whiting-Kish from another restaurant, where she worked as a manager. She agreed to join as a Hooters Girl in 1987 with the promise she would be put into a leadership role.
“It was really fun to get to engage as a Hooters Girl, and I did that for a couple of years before I went back into management,” she said. After working her way up to a training general manager in the early 1990s, Whiting-Kish was asked to join the corporate team in Atlanta as director of training and help formalize the brand’s training processes and department.
Within four years, she was promoted to vice president of human resources and training. Asked how it felt to be the organization’s first woman in a vice president role, Whiting-Kish noted it felt both empowering and validating.
“I feel some of that emotion coming up,” she said. “The other part, it was very exciting to represent the powerful women of the brand in that way, because we are a female-based brand, and to be able to have that role, it really meant a lot for me to get to sort of lead and pave the way.”
One of Cheryl Whiting-Kish’s proudest milestones includes serving as company spokesperson, leading the March of Washington and addressing journalists at the D.C. Press Club about the legal “bona fide occupational qualification” precedent protecting Hooters Girls as a central concept of the business in 1995.
After leaving to create an executive coaching and leadership business, where she did consulting work for HOA Brands CEO Sal Melilli, Whiting-Kish returned to the brand in October 2019 as senior vice president of organizational development before she was promoted again in July.
“I could see there was shared vision around people and culture, and that really excited me,” she said, noting that about 75 percent of Hooters’ leadership team came up through the ranks of the organization, including Melilli himself who started as a dishwasher in college.
Now, Whiting-Kish is bringing the opportunity to other former Hooters Girls to share their stories.
“We have 100 percent brand recognition. We know that from data research, that people know the name Hooters, know of the Hooters Girl. She’s an icon,” Whiting-Kish added. “It’s a passion project of mine and my mission…to honor our history through what I call ‘Her Story,’ emphasizing her, because we’re built on her story.”
Whiting-Kish recently launched a mini documentary project called “I Am” that showcases 11 former Hooters Girls who share their career journeys after wearing the orange shorts. One is now a vice president at Focus Brands, one was the first-ever deputy secretary of cyber security in the U.S Marine Corps, while another is a real estate investor and developer who owns more than 50 properties.
And this is just the beginning. Whiting-Kish plans to collect stories of Hooters Girls, past and present, and share them to both honor the women and humanize the Hooters Girl narrative in society.
“Being able to hear these women tell their stories and the skills they’re learning by working as a Hooters Girl, people might be surprised,” Whiting-Kish said. “It’s, ‘wow, I learned to be confident, learned communication and networking skills, conflict resolution.’”
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