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Hooters, the chain born in Clearwater that's best known for its chicken wings and its female servers in tight T-shirts, aims to carve out a place in the supermarket freezer case.
"When I saw T.G.I. Friday's go from nothing to $52-million in annual sales doing this mostly on brand recognition, I figured we just had to try," said Lee Usilton, executive vice president of Hooters Foods Inc. and one of the six founders of the chain.
The founders sold the franchise rights to an Atlanta company long ago, but they still own 20 Hooters restaurants in Florida, Chicago and Manhattan. They also claim the right to make spinoff food products.
Hooters Buffalo Shrimp, the second biggest seller at the restaurants, is now stocked at Albertsons. The Delhaize chain's Food Lion stores carry the product in other states, but not yet in its Kash n' Karry stores in the Tampa Bay area. Hooters is working on other chains in the Southeast such as Winn-Dixie.
Priced at $6.99 for 14 frozen shrimp and a two-ounce container of medium spicy sauce, Hooters Bake 'R Fry Buffalo Shrimp are priced a few dollars cheaper than the same dish at the restaurants. It's packaged by a Tampa seafood company to be deep-fat fried or heated for 10 minutes in a toaster oven.
After a decade on the shelves, Hooters wing sauce and breading turned into niche products that generate about $3.5-million in sales at grocery stores.
But Usilton thinks the frozen food category holds much bigger promise. He's looking for manufacturers to package frozen Hooters wings next.
At a Food Marketing Institute trade show in Chicago last week, two Hooters models signed 250 souvenir calendars at the company's booth. They drew a longer line of food executives than did retired NASCAR star Richard Petty at another booth. They did not, however, generate larger crowds than the models who staged the mud fight in the Miller Lite beer commercials for the Super Bowl.
"We challenged them to a fight," Usilton said, "but they wanted nothing to do with it."