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.