Hooters rejuvenates original restaurant

At 28 years old, the original Hooters restaurant on Gulf to Bay Boulevard was looking a bit rough.

The Mecca of man caves was in need of more than just a nip and a tuck.

So 11 weeks ago, Hooters Management Corp. gutted 80 percent of the original structure and spent $1.8 million to freshen its makeup. The remodeled restaurant reopens at 11 a.m. Monday.

A portion of the former bar remains, and some of the old flooring is there. It still has that delightfully-tacky-yet-unrefined quality. But the rest was modernized with an eye toward the location's storied history.

There are 35 new flat-panel HD televisions in the 7,000-square-foot restaurant. There's a new air-conditioning system and a garage door that opens to patio seating. More than 6 miles of wiring leads to 150 energy-efficient lamps. Where the open kitchen used to be the focus of the dining room, the bar now draws the eye.

"We had a lot of difficult decisions, because there is a lot of melancholy and moments in the past that we were hesitant to get rid of," Neil Keifer, Hooters president and CEO, said Friday. "There were 28 years of memories. We tried to put them back in here."

To do so, the restaurant is featuring a Hooters "MuSEEum," a shrine of sorts to the early days. In one glass case, you can see the original mocha-brown uniform briefly worn by the first Hooters waitresses before the iconic orange shorts, white T-shirts, socks and shoes became the norm.

Another case holds a model jet plane from the now-defunct Hooters Air, which flew commercial flights from 2003 to 2006, and a helmet from the Miami Hooters arena football team. There's also a chicken suit worn by co-founder Ed Droste, who stood along Gulf to Bay Boulevard to drum up business. That was long before Hooters grew to 470 restaurants in 28 countries, and way before the casino in Las Vegas and championship NASCAR race team.

Lynne Austin, the original Hooters girl who became a spokesmodel and later a calendar girl and centerfold, remembered on Friday the days before the concept caught fire.

"There were days when the original six owners would come in, buy a beer and leave a $20 tip so we could make some money," Austin said.

Keifer said it was difficult to balance the new technology with the familiar visual formula. The memorabilia museum will help customers enjoy the company's quirky history.

"We think it's going to be pretty funny as well as interesting," he said. "There were things we found that even made us say, 'Wow.' "