Comfort food is king in 2020 and more and more people are turning to chicken wings to find that comfort. According to Grubhub, chicken wings are 287 percent more popular this year than last year. And they are the third most popular delivery order amid the pandemic.
With chicken wings ever more popular, the parent company of Hooters, HOA Brands, is doubling down on its wing business. The company's fast-casual restaurant, Hoots Wings, will be franchising with 17 new locations planned for 2021 and another 35 for 2022. Hoots is focused on takeout and delivery to cater to the stay-at-home economy.
Despite the struggles in the restaurant industry, CEO Sal Melilli said that now is the perfect time for Hoots Wings to … take flight.
"At the end of the day we face the same challenges with closures and sales and restaurants being limited," said Melilli. "But based on this model and based on demand for the product and the phenomenal wings, we came back very quickly."
The wing-focused restaurant was not only able to bring sales back to life but open new units during the pandemic. The company has partnered with all major delivery services to get wings to customers faster. And while the menu is limited to only a few food items — mainly wings — the order options are pretty endless, having more than 10,000 different wing combinations.
"When you look at all of our combinations of the wings, the bone-in the boneless, with all the different sauces, dips, and rubs it can be a little bit of a challenge but it makes it exciting when you're a customer trying to make a decision of which one you want," he said.
The secret to good wings? The HOA CEO said that it's about experience. The first Hoots Wings location opened four years ago in Chicago but chicken wings have been this company's specialty for much longer.
"We realized that with 37 years of being in the chicken wing business with Hooters, that our consumer really wanted the product," Melilli explained. "And we saw demand back in 2015 and '16 begin to really skyrocket for taking the product home and consuming it off-premise so this was just a natural fit."
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
Jeff Benedict, author of 'The Dynasty,' weighs in on the Kansas City Chiefs being the next big dynasty, who he thinks will win Super Bowl LIX and more. Watch!
