Business

Hooters chain seeks buyer; could fetch $250M

Hooters is rattling its cans on Wall Street.

The Atlanta-based “breast-aurant” chain — famous for the scantily clad waitresses who serve up its burgers and spicy wings — is beckoning prospective buyers, sources told The Post.

Hooters has recently shopped itself to a number of private-equity firms as sales have sagged with the recession, sources said. The closely held company, meanwhile, is in advanced talks with a Connecticut-based investor that has been granted certain rights of refusal on any potential transaction, according to one source.

An asking price couldn’t be learned, and North Point Advisors, a San Francisco-based investment bank that Hooters has hired, didn’t respond to requests for comment. A Hooters spokeswoman couldn’t be reached yesterday.

Some analysts estimate the chain might fetch more than $250 million despite the bumpy business climate. Hooters’ 450 owned and franchised restaurants, which are as far-flung as Australia and China, racked up more than $1 billion in sales in 2008, according to Technomic, a food-industry research firm.

Nevertheless, insiders said Hooters appears to be strapped financially. The chain’s comparable sales lately have suffered steep declines, according to one source, as the hobbled economy has deflated appetites for Hooters’ burgers-and-babes fare.

If an upcoming episode of the CBS reality show “Undercover Boss” is any indication, there may be management issues, too. In an episode slated to run Sunday, CEO Coby Brooks discovers a restaurant supervisor staging an eating contest for female employees, forcing them to bury their faces in platefuls of food without using their hands.

“Ladies, if you want to leave early today, you’re going to play my reindeer game,” the manager says, howling “Hoooo, doggie!” as the women eat.

To make matters worse, Brooks has had to repair damage from ill-advised side ventures initiated by his controversial father Robert Brooks, who died in 2006 after being part of a group that co-founded the firm in 1983.

Not least among them was Hooters Air, a passenger airline that was grounded in 2006 after a three-year effort to elevate the chain’s “hotties-in-tight-T-shirts” concept to the skies.

Insiders speculated that the bad fortunes of the Hooters Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas likewise might be a factor. The resort’s operations aren’t connected with Hooters, to which it pays a royalty fee for the use of its name. But the Las Vegas development was recently in default on $144.5 million in long-term debt as its losses widened and revenue plunged amid dwindling occupancy. Key creditors include investment vehicles owned by Hooters’ founders.

On the bright side, Hooters’ choice to seek a buyer now could signal that the restaurant industry has found a bottom, said Brad Ludington, an analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets. james.covert@nypost.com