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Bruh, do you miss going down to Hooters with the boys for some beer, wings, and casual sexism? Well, you’re in luck: it seems like Hooters may be returning to Montreal.
The American “breastaurant” chain has filed for a new liquor license at — get this — the exact same location where it went out of business less than a year ago.
Hooters departed Montreal and the entire province of Quebec in mid-2019, when the remaining two locations (on Crescent and another on the South Shore) closed abruptly, with staff showing up to work to find themselves locked out with no notice. The Crescent location was open for just a couple of years, while the other had been in business for over a decade.
However, it looks like things will be different this time around — Quebec government listings indicate that the reborn chain will be under the same ownership as a group of Hooters restaurants in southern Ontario. The previous owner of the two Montreal-area Hooters, Shah Mohammad Niziri, does not appear to be involved.
The ownership switch means that Hooters Crescent 2.0 could have a better chance at being a viable business — putting aside the question of whether or not Hooters is any good, the former Crescent Street Hooters was criticized for being particularly bad even in comparison to other Hooters locations. The new franchisee (listed as Torontonian John Goard) already runs several other locations of the same chain that seem to have staying power. And while “running a successful Hooters” may not be a skill that some people would want to list on their CV, it is, nonetheless, a skill of sorts.
Of course, it still does seem at least a little questionable to try to reopen the chain in the exact same location where it basically tanked in the very recent past. There’s probably even an argument that as an overwrought, weirdly-sexualized nugget of suburban Americana, Hooters is not even particularly compatible with Quebec culture (although the fact that the Hooters on the South Shore stuck around for so long would seem to contradict that).
That said, if Hooters is going to succeed anywhere in Quebec, it’s Crescent Street — let’s see how this goes. Eater has reached out to the company to find out when it should open.