CLEARWATER — At the world’s first “breastaurant” one recent Saturday, kids played with Hooters Frisbees next to frat bros arguing about college football. One patron shuffled to the bathroom wearing a “Hooters Dubai” T-shirt. Others browsed merchandise, from hot sauce to Hooters bibs.

Love it or hate it, this restaurant at 2800 Gulf-to-Bay Blvd. is where it all began.

These days, Hooters is synonymous with hot wings, beer and the babes who serve both. But four decades ago, the six men behind the restaurant didn’t expect the concept to last. They incorporated on April 1, 1983, knowing they might be pulling an April Fools’ Day joke on themselves.

On the 40th anniversary of the “delightfully tacky, yet unrefined” chain’s opening on Oct. 4, 1983, let’s take a look back.

HMC Hospitality Group (formerly Hooters Management Corp.), still runs over 20 Hooters in Tampa Bay and the Chicago metro area, including its original Hooters in Clearwater. Hooters of America LLC operates over 420 Hooters in 42 states and 29 countries.

Before that, there was the Hooters Six: Liquor salesperson Gil DiGiannantonio, painting contractor Lynn “L.D.” Stewart and partner Ken Wimmer, retired service station owner “Uncle Billy” Ranieri, brick mason Dennis Johnson and real estate exec Ed Droste.

There was not much of a restaurant background among them.

“I’d been a head waiter at a Tri Delta sorority house for four years,” Droste said. “So I had experience with a lot of young, wild college girls.”

Their goal was to open “a place we couldn’t get kicked out of,” Droste said.

The mostly Midwestern founders longed for the neighborhood bars they missed back home. They wanted a menu of their favorite meals, from a St. Petersburg restaurant’s steak sandwich to Buffalo chicken wings and Myrtle Beach oyster roasts.

Plus, the flirty, beach town vibe they loved about Clearwater. The name came from a popular Steve Martin comedy sketch. To match the innuendo, Stewart’s wife, Juanita, sketched out an owl logo.

They found a building about 15 minutes from Clearwater Beach. Never mind that a string of other businesses, ranging from a pizza joint to a biker bar, had already flopped in that same spot.

Droste put on a rented chicken costume and ran around in traffic to attract customers. When a boat sank near the causeway, he swam to it and painted, “HOOTERS” on the side.

But his most famous idea — the one you know even if you’ve never stepped foot inside — was what catapulted the restaurant to stardom.

The first Hooters Girl

Over 300,000 Hooters Girls, past and present, have donned skimpy tank tops and nylons in the last four decades. It started with Plant City native Lynne Austin.

The summer before Hooters opened, Droste discovered Austin at a Jose Cuervo bikini contest on Clearwater Beach.

Then 22, Austin had a degree from Hillsborough Community College and a job working at a telephone company in Tampa. At the suggestion of her mom, she’d recently started competing in — and winning — local bikini contests.

“(Droste) convinced me that (Hooters) was going to be world-famous,” Austin said. “You know, I was going to be world-famous. We were going to make a lot of money.”

Austin quit the phone company and agreed to model for the first billboard but also requested a job. She started at $5 an hour, cleaning used fridges and waiting tables. Her uniform was a cream top and brown Dolfin athletic shorts — the same kind some of the founders wore while running or playing softball.

The opening weeks were a bust. Waitresses started walking out. Management swapped brown shorts for orange ones. Droste was sure Hooters was doomed.

Super Bowl 1984, featuring the Los Angeles Raiders and the Washington Redskins at Tampa Stadium, saved the restaurant. John Riggins, Washington’s star fullback, stopped by for a bite. Word of mouth spread after he returned with limos full of teammates. Wait times soared as high as three hours.

During the rare slow moments, the Hooters Girls would hula hoop and dance. Austin and her friends often arrived straight from the beach, smelling of sunscreen.

“Try to pull on pantyhose with sand all over you,” Austin said. “It was everything you would think of in, like, a 1980s movie with a Jimmy Buffett soundtrack.”

By the end of 1984, the Hooters Six sold the rights to Hugh Connerty, who expanded the concept under the name Neighborhood Restaurants (later Hooters of America).

Austin’s fame exploded, too. She starred in the first Hooters calendar, the 1986 edition. Then Droste mailed her photo to Playboy. She was the July 1986 Playmate of the Month, with numerous videos to follow.

“I did travel the world with Playboy,” Austin said. “When I was in town, I would pick up a few shifts.”

A  breastaurant brawl

The term “breastaurant” emerged in the early 1990s, a few years after Hooters imitators started to pop up around Tampa Bay.

“It wasn’t one we used. We kept it lighthearted,” said Droste, still not a fan of the word. “Our first menu was more about making fun of ourselves.”

There was competitor Melons, whose bombshell waitresses served meals garnished with the titular fruit. Mugs ‘N Jugs, whose hiring ads sought “foxy servers with smiling faces.” And Knockers, whose logo was a pair of breasts bursting from a bikini.

By 1990, the Times reported, “The Tampa Bay Area could almost be named Hooterville.”

The biggest threat to Hooters was not other breastaurants but the government.

The national breastaurant scene got raunchier through the early 2000s, thanks to spots like Twin Peaks and the Tilted Kilt. Their waitresses wore less clothing than Hooters Girls: microscopic shorts or miniskirts with bare midriffs and push-up bras.

The competition did not deter Hooters from taking risks.

Hooters Girls became in-flight entertainment for the short-lived airline Hooters Air from 2003 to 2006. A Hooters Casino Hotel hosted gamblers near the Las Vegas Strip for over a decade. In 2017, fast-casual concept Hoots featured a to-go menu, scrapping the Hooters Girls completely. All the Tampa Bay Hoots closed after the pandemic, Kiefer said, due to rising real estate costs.

Hooters Girls brought calendars to troops in the Middle East, volunteered for Habitat for Humanity and raised millions of dollars for causes like breast cancer research.

“We got America through 9/11,” said Droste. “All of the first responders, they flocked to our stores to watch with jaws dropped.”

Austin, who resides in Palm Harbor, channeled her legendary status into a modeling and radio career. She praised the chain’s job perks, such as volunteer opportunities and tuition reimbursement. Though it’s been years since she’s waited tables, she still is involved, doing radio spots and judging the Miss Hooters International Pageant.

The backlash

She knows part of the chain’s legacy includes criticism. Hooters has been accused of objectifying its employees since the beginning. In 2021, thong-cut uniforms from Hooters of America made a splash on TikTok. The backlash was so strong that the company reversed its stance: The new version of the shorts became optional, rather than mandatory.

“There’s going to be some women that don’t have the experience as the other women, for whatever reason … because we’re franchised,” Austin said. “But these women choose to do this because it’s a great opportunity.”

At work, Austin always felt like she was in on the joke.

“I never felt harassed, and if I went to my manager and said, ‘This guy is being a complete jerk,’ that guy would be gone,” she said. “I think you can get catcalled or harassed when you’re ordering a burger at Wendy’s. It’s not exclusive to Hooters.”

Above all, the last 40 years have given her a community.

“There are women that have watched me give birth — and that is not a lie – that were my sisters in orange shorts.”