April, 2025 | Wall Street Memes

The restaurant chain known only as ‘Hooters’, famous for its chicken wings and nothing else, has declared: BANKRUPTCY!

But don’t worry! They’re not getting rid of your favorite orange thing, this is merely a scaling back, a reduction if you will. Hooters plans to sell off all 100 restaurants to two separate franchisee groups based in Florida and Chicago. So really this is just a change in management and idk why this is even news.

“We believe that by shifting from a D-grade company to a C or B, we may lighten the load on our workers and our shareholders,” explained Neville Carson, who, I guess, works there. “Hopefully, the Hooters brand will now be able to fit through doors and not have quite as much back pain.”

Confusingly, the sale of Hooters is from Hooters of America Inc. to Hooters Inc., which is a completely different Hooters. Hooters Inc. (not Hooters of America Inc.) is owned by the original Hooters founders. Hooters of America Inc., however, is owned by private equity firms Nord Bay Capital and TriArtisan Capital Advisors, who are distinctly un-Hooters.

What A Hoot!

Hooters was originally founded on April 1st, 42 years ago as an April Fool’s Day joke, so it’s pretty apt this bankruptcy filing comes around now. I guess Hooters was a big joke all along.

Whilst many believe that Hooters is named after the big ol’ chonky honkers that were required dress code at the restaurants, this is in fact a myth. Hooters owes its name to a wise old owl called ‘Millicent’ who lived at the Cincinnati Zoo from 1867 to 1873. Millicent was a friend to all, but was particularly affectionate to small children and widowers.

Hooters Owl — A painting of ‘Millicent’ before she died

Millicent became known throughout America as a mascot for the zoo and would occasionally tour as part of the regional world fairs. Here, visitors from far and wide would marvel at Millicent’s particular affection for small children and widowers.

Although owls are evolved to eat live animals such as rodents and small children, Milicent was fed a strict diet of spicy-spicy chicken wings (which was all the rage at the time). And so when Milicent died at the tender age of 6 (which is 6 in owl years), her diet of spicy-spicy chicken wings was not presumed to be the culprit (since it was all the rage at the time).

Modern owlologists now know that it probably was her subsistence on spicy-spicy chicken wings that caused Milicent’s death.

The restaurant chain Hooters was thus founded in Milicent’s honor so that all might remember that spicy-spicy chicken wings are meant for humans and not owls.

Also people like boobs.

Donald Trump has reportedly called French right-wing politician Marine Le Pen to assure her that she has nothing to worry about after she was found guilty of embezzlement.

Over the three-hour phone call, Trump is said to have calmed down the distraught Marine Le Pen (which is French for ‘the pen is underwater’) by saying that embezzlement isn’t really a crime anyways.

“I got embezzled once,” Trump is rumored to have said. “It was a horrible thing, just terrible, the worst, but they said I did it better than anyone else. But they let me do it, you know? They said I was guilty and made me pay a lot of money, but they don’t remember any of that. Voters don’t remember. It was a show trial, a fraud, not me, I’m not a fraud, the trial I mean.”

The Pen is said to have assured Trump that this was different from one of his stupid American criminal trials and will likely end her political career. However, Trump disagreed.

“I say let ‘em do it. They let you keep your job and if anything it makes you more popular. When you’re voted in you just make convicting a president illegal. You should try that. Maybe become the president and then you could make it illegal, you know, to be embezzled.”

But that probably won’t happen since the Underwater Pen now has to serve four years under house arrest and pay €100,000 personally and €2 million from her party. And I don’t know about you, but that seems like a lot of money. She also can’t run again, which is really sad because that was her dream since she was a little girl. Penny will likely appeal the verdict.

People on X are, of course, popping off claiming that this is the death of democracy as we know it. And quite rightly so, embezzlement is a cornerstone of democracy.

Who knows, maybe France will one day be able to live in peace with corrupt politicians, but until that day, I’m sure we can all agree on the definition of embezzlement.

Thanks for reading! If you’d like to read the exact same joke for a second time, click here: Trump Calls South Korean President To Say Impeachment “Ain’t No Thang”