Hooters sponsoring kids football team slammed by expert
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Women who worked at Hooters Liverpool have spoken out about the alleged bullying and mistreatment of staff working at the first UK branch. Hooters – which originated in America – is known for their controversial uniform and choice of staff. Workers are required to wear bright orange hot pants when serving customers, with the restaurant’s slogan reading “Hooters makes you happy”.
Ex-employees have claimed they were left in tears at the end of their shifts thanks to their bosses.
And the problems didn’t end there – as staff, who were sometimes under the age of 18, were allegedly underpaid, fat-shamed and harassed by creepy customers.
Liverpool Hooters opened last year and is often marketed as the “world’s biggest Hooters” as it can serve around 300 guests.
Rachael Moss is managing director of the restaurant, which she told LiverpoolEcho was a decades-long ambition of hers.
The mum-of-three, a barrister, first stepped foot in a Hooters in 2002 and was instantly “obsessed” with the concept.
But according to a few of her former employees, Rachael’s dream isn’t what it was all cracked up to be.
Nina Stoddart is a law student and model who worked for the chain from November 2022 to January 2023 – and she accused the manager of workplace bullying.
And the 20-year-old’s account is very similar to former waitresses Taylor Hubbard, 19, and Faith Crowby, 18.
All three employees claim they walked out after being mistreated by management.
Faith recalled: “On my final shift, Rachael turned around to me and was like, ‘Are you having an ugly day because I can tell.’ Obviously, you don’t say that to a girl in the first place and then she just kept going on and on and I started crying. Then she screamed at me in front of customers and pulled me by my shoulder and dragged me down the stairs in front of customers, which was obviously embarrassing, and then she grabbed my name badge and threw it at my eye.”
Taylor, who claims to have witnessed the incident, also had her own issues on shift.
She said: “[One shift] I started crying because [Rachael] told me off three times in front of customers for something that I hadn’t even done wrong, I had done nothing wrong. And I don’t even cry, my mum even said ‘You don’t cry over nothing’. I ran off the floor because I actually just can’t get spoken to like that.”
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Faith claims she was “scared to go into work” after being shouted at – and the girls say they were fearful of customers too.
Nina alleges staff were promised that if customers harassed them they’d be asked to leave and banned – but apparently this didn’t always happen.
“There was one time a man was being really inappropriate with me and I went and told [Rachael] that he wouldn’t stop touching me and grabbing me,” Nina shared. “There were times people were taking photos of girls bending over, they were taking photos of 16-year-old girls, I went over and told Rachael and she didn’t kick the group of men out.”
Nina claims Rachael, as well as the Hooters brand, have a toxic approach to their waitresses’ appearance. The “Hooters girl image booklet”, seen by Daily Star, said “no rolls” or “lumpiness” were permitted to be visible when the uniform was worn.
Nina claims this was their “holy scripture” and they had to follow it to a T.
Hooters has been contacted for comment.
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