For Hooters’ Original Founders, Saving The Chain Is A Higher Calling: “America Needs Us.”

ByChloe Sorvino,

Forbes Staff.

L

ast winter, Neil Kiefer, CEO of the Original Hooters Founders Group, heard that the franchisor and operator of the Florida-based restaurant chain, known as Hooters of America, was about to go bankrupt. So the 73-year-old Kiefer, a longtime friend of the three living cofounders of the chicken wing empire, called them up and laid their options on the table.

The group’s 22 locations in Florida and Chicago were averaging $4.7 million in annual sales per location, Kiefer explained, while Hooters of America’s 150 locations were bringing in less than half that—$2.3 million each. Kiefer believed they could turn around the failing restaurants and made a bold proposal: “I can drop this whole thing and we'll just exist as we have in the territories we have,” he told them, “or we can take a bigger risk.”