Hooters has permanently closed its restaurants on Old 41 Highway in Kennesaw and Iris Drive in Conyers, shrinking the metro Atlanta footprint of the once-ubiquitous wing chain down to just two locations. The Kennesaw restaurant occupied a standalone building at 2102 Old 41 Highway off Cobb Parkway, while the Conyers spot sat at 1099 Iris Drive just off Interstate 20. Both have already vanished from the company's website.
A Hooters spokesperson confirmed to WSB-TV that the closures are permanent. Hooters CEO Neil Kiefer told the station that the shutdowns trace back to Hooters of America filing for bankruptcy in 2025 and the brand's original founders reclaiming control, a transition that left the company absorbing stores in various stages of need. According to the Associated Press, Hooters of America, LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas on March 31, 2025, carrying roughly $376 million in debt.
Kiefer insisted the closures do not reflect poorly on the staff, the community, or what he called the orange shorts sisterhood, and said they are not a signal of profit loss or brand decline. He added that the number of stores will keep fluctuating as the company works through the transition, even as it stays committed to the brand long term. Hooters was founded in 1983, and the two remaining metro Atlanta locations now sit in Cartersville on Joe Frank Harris Parkway and in Buford on Mall of Georgia Boulevard.
A Corporate Homecoming Reshapes the Chain
The bankruptcy led to a major ownership shake-up. In November 2025, the original founding group Hooters Inc. and franchisee Hoot Owl Restaurants completed a buyback of more than 100 corporate-owned stores out of bankruptcy, according to the Tampa Bay Business Journal. The move effectively handed the brand back to the people who started it in Clearwater, Florida, decades earlier.
As part of a turnaround effort the founders have dubbed re-Hooterization, Restaurant Business reports the new ownership plans to return restaurants to a beach-themed look, revert to a butter-based wing sauce, simplify menus, and restore the classic server uniforms. Restaurant Business also notes that the founder-led locations in Florida and Illinois posted record average unit volumes of about $4.6 million per store in 2024, a figure that helped convince the founders their operational model could fix the wider chain.
A Shrinking Footprint
Hooters once operated more than 430 restaurants worldwide, but its footprint has since contracted. The Kennesaw and Conyers closures add to that pullback.
Competitive pressure has compounded the decline. Rival breastaurant chain Twin Peaks competes in the same category as Hooters, which has been pulling back. Between 2025 and 2026, Hooters closures led the chain to exit multiple state markets entirely, including New York, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Massachusetts, a pattern Hoodline has tracked in its own coverage of the last NYC Hooters closing.
Georgia's Wing Chain Keeps Thinning Out
Georgia has not been spared from the broader pullback despite its role as the brand's corporate home. Florida has also seen closures, including Jacksonville's last Hooters shutting down after a 40-year run and a Daytona Beach location closing after 35 years. With only Cartersville and Buford left standing in the core metro area, Kiefer's insistence that Hooters remains committed to Georgia long term will face its next test as the founders' re-Hooterization push rolls out across whatever stores remain.
