February 15, 2010 11:05 AM
- Text
Hooters CEO Coby Brooks 'Undercover'
(CBS)
When Coby Brooks, president and CEO of Hooters, goes undercover in his own company, he finds himself struggling to keep up in a fast-paced kitchen, and is later forced to take action when a restaurant manager steps out of line.
In the second episode of "Undercover Boss," which aired Sunday on CBS, Brooks started out at an entry-level job at a Hooters location and was axed before the day was out.
The next day, he worked on marketing with two female employees and discovered -- it really seemed to be a surprise to him -- that many Americans did not view Hooters as a family establishment and had the impression that the franchise was degrading to women.
In an interview with "Early Show" co-anchor Harry Smith last week, before the segment aired, Brooks said Hooters "empowers women all the time."
"Thirty-seven percent of our corporate office and management staff are women, 75 percent of all of our employees are women," he explained. "We raised a lot of women. We just sent one of our vice presidents, who was a Hooter girl, to Rwanda recently to help better educate women and empower women. So, there's a lot of things that Hooters does behind-the-scenes that we never get credit for, but the bad things, you always hear about."
On the third day, he got to see first-hand why customers might not view Hooters as female friendly. At a restaurant in Texas, he encountered "Jimbo," a manager who treated his female employees as chattel, held leering "inspections" of the staff and had an unusual way of determining who would be lucky enough to go home early if business was slow. The lucky staffer was the winner of a contest in which all the women had to eat a plate of beans without using their hands.
Brooks called those actions "inappropriate" and said they would not be tolerated. According to the show, Jimbo was reprimanded and has since adopted a more politically-correct management style.
Day Four brought Brooks into contact with a single mom who managed one of his shops and to whom he managed to give a vacation. On Day Five, he went to the Naturally Fresh factory in Atlanta, where his dad, who founded the enterprise, used to have an office. There, he learned morale was poor and that employees who had never met him, and referred to him only as "the son," couldn't stand him.
In 1983, Brooks' father, Robert, joined six fellow entrepreneurs to start the company in Florida, and he ended up with the franchising rights and then the actual name. Robert Brooks passed away in 2006.
While out in the field, Brooks took notice of the different views his employees had of him and his father.
"Well, my father and I are different characters," he told Smith. "He was much more strong-armed. I'm more laid back. I manage by majority movement and my whole executive team gets together.
"My father was more of a single person; this is what we're going to do. There are some differences," he said.
In the second episode of "Undercover Boss," which aired Sunday on CBS, Brooks started out at an entry-level job at a Hooters location and was axed before the day was out.
The next day, he worked on marketing with two female employees and discovered -- it really seemed to be a surprise to him -- that many Americans did not view Hooters as a family establishment and had the impression that the franchise was degrading to women.
In an interview with "Early Show" co-anchor Harry Smith last week, before the segment aired, Brooks said Hooters "empowers women all the time."
"Thirty-seven percent of our corporate office and management staff are women, 75 percent of all of our employees are women," he explained. "We raised a lot of women. We just sent one of our vice presidents, who was a Hooter girl, to Rwanda recently to help better educate women and empower women. So, there's a lot of things that Hooters does behind-the-scenes that we never get credit for, but the bad things, you always hear about."
On the third day, he got to see first-hand why customers might not view Hooters as female friendly. At a restaurant in Texas, he encountered "Jimbo," a manager who treated his female employees as chattel, held leering "inspections" of the staff and had an unusual way of determining who would be lucky enough to go home early if business was slow. The lucky staffer was the winner of a contest in which all the women had to eat a plate of beans without using their hands.
Brooks called those actions "inappropriate" and said they would not be tolerated. According to the show, Jimbo was reprimanded and has since adopted a more politically-correct management style.
Day Four brought Brooks into contact with a single mom who managed one of his shops and to whom he managed to give a vacation. On Day Five, he went to the Naturally Fresh factory in Atlanta, where his dad, who founded the enterprise, used to have an office. There, he learned morale was poor and that employees who had never met him, and referred to him only as "the son," couldn't stand him.
In 1983, Brooks' father, Robert, joined six fellow entrepreneurs to start the company in Florida, and he ended up with the franchising rights and then the actual name. Robert Brooks passed away in 2006.
While out in the field, Brooks took notice of the different views his employees had of him and his father.
"Well, my father and I are different characters," he told Smith. "He was much more strong-armed. I'm more laid back. I manage by majority movement and my whole executive team gets together.
"My father was more of a single person; this is what we're going to do. There are some differences," he said.
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