Not the breast of friends

Breastaurant wars: Hooters sues Twin Peaks and Houston's the boob battleground

Hooters, that pinnacle of fine fast dining, has sued its breastaurant competitor Twin Peaks for allegedly stealing its trade secrets.

Twin Peaks operates 15 restaurants in the Southeast — including two locations in the greater Houston area. A Joseph Hummel, who is named in the suit, is the chief operating officer of franchisee group La Cima, which has plans to open 35 additional locations in the next couple of years. He is also a former VP at Hooters.

Twin Peaks is taking on Hooters in Houston in a big way as well — with a new Twin Peaks set to open soon near Kirby and the Southwest Freeway. That's right by foodie-favorite Haven and, more importantly in this breastaurant feud, right across the Southwest Freeway from a Hooters. These two don't figure to be friendly neighbors.

Hooters alleges that Hummel, who left Hooters this summer, based his Twin Peaks business plan off of confidential information he stole from Hooters, violating trade secrets laws.

The lawsuit specifically names documents including marketing plans, contracts, recruiting guidelines and sales figures as having been downloaded by Hummel prior to leaving the company.

Of the lawsuit, Twin Peaks founder and CEO Randy DeWitt says, "~~no I'm not you are~~" "None of Hooters' trade secrets have ever been offered to Twin Peaks and we would not want them anyway."

Of Hooters in general, he continues "[co-founder Scott Gordon] and I have never worked for Hooters and only went there a few times as customers. We did not think the food was very good and the brand was stuck in the 1980s, but not in a cool retro way."

What a bunch of boobs.

unspecified

leaves and grains and pizzas

Fresh Houston restaurant groups serves up pizza and salads for Memorial

Photo by Michael Ma

Murray Hoffman, Edward Thompson, and Deets Hoffman are bringing Leaf & Grain to Memorial.

A rapidly-growing Houston restaurant group is opening two new concepts in Memorial. Salad-focused concept Leaf & Grain has claimed the former Texadelphia space near Memorial City Mall for its sixth Houston-area location as well as a pizzeria called Murray’s Pizza & Wine.

Initially, Leaf & Grain founder Deets Hoffman and business partner Edward Thompson intended to open a pizzeria in 2019, but they put those plans on hold due to the pandemic. Located at the same Village Towers development (9655 Katy Fwy) that’s home to Cajun favorite Treebeards, the Texadelphia space’s size dictated that it could be divided into both a new location of Leaf & Grain as well as an opportunity to bring the pizzeria to fruition.

Murray's Pizza Here's a sneak peak at Murray's sausage pizza.Photo by Michael Ma

Named for Hoffman’s wife, the restaurant will serve pizzas and small plates. For the first time, the group will also operate a restaurant that serves cocktails. Both the new Leaf & Grain and Murray’s are expected to open this summer.

"We’ve been trying to break into Memorial for almost a decade, and then we stumbled onto this opportunity serendipitously while doing a ‘Guest Chef’ collab at Belong Kitchen next door,” Hoffman said in a statement. “We fell in love with the space. The only complication was that it was twice the size of what we needed, so we thought this was the perfect opportunity to open the pizza concept we had been working on, as well.”

Leaf & Grain serves salads, bowls, and sandwiches. Diners may build their own from a range of toppings that include six vegetable or grain bases, 19 standard toppings, 20 premium toppings, and 14 dressings. Preset choices include staples such as a Caesar salad and lemon-caper salmon bowl. Seasonal specials add variety and freshness to the menu.

The restaurant opened its first location in the Shops at Houston Center in 2017. Last year, it opened its fourth location in Tanglewood. A fifth location will open this summer in downtown’s Chase Tower (600 Travis St.).

openings news-you-can-eat pizza