Roots

Have you ever been into a Hooters® restaurant and taken a look at the back of the menu? There's always a list of sister stores in the general area and then a bunch from farther away. I was sitting with Eli having a few beers at the Channelside location that I call my watering hole and we got to talking about how many of the Hooters® that we had been to. In Florida there were alot of them, but outside of the state we had been to maybe 15 between the two of us. We ended up talking about how long we thought it would take to visit them all and then forgot about it until sometime later.

Then one day Eli, Kelly, and I were at a local convenience store and picked up a copy of Hooters Magazine®, inside it had a listing of all of the Hooters® locations worldwide, this brought our discussion to a whole new level. Kelly thought initially that it was a stupid idea... I mean, seriously, who wants to spend a whole year in Hooters®? Then I explained to her that although the main focus of the tour was to be able to say that I've eaten at every Hooters®, the consequence would be that I would get to see the entire US and much of the rest of the world, something that I've really wanted to do more and more as I get older, but I've been unable to do due to school and work. After that she said that she wanted to come along to some of the locations.

So we had an idea, and a general notion of how long it would take and how much it would cost, but we needed to take it to the next level, we needed to actually plan the trip.

top

Route

Despite the fact that this plan started as a beer soaked idea it's grown much further and is actually a pretty well thought out process. I'm not just going to travel haphazardly around the country and hope to get to every Hooters, I've actually enlisted the help of a friend to create a computer program that will optimize the path that I need to take to get to all of the locations in the shortest amount of time. We will use this method for the US and Canadian leg of the journey and then will be hand planning the worldwide leg. To all of you programmers out there I'm trying to convince my friend to open source his program.

top

Fund raising

Being a college student who relies on financial aid, student loans, and a job to support myself I don't really end up being able to save enough to take a year off so early on I realized the need to raise some capital as well as some support from various sponsors to make this dream a reality. Since I am pretty active on the internet I decided that a web site would be a good vehicle to accomplish my goals. I've set up this site as not only a window into the idea behind the tour, but also as a platform from which I can thank and promote sponsors as well as provide reviews for anyone wishing to visit these Hooters® in the future.

If you are affiliated with a company and feel that you have something to contribute to the tour please visit the sponsors page and contact me, if you're a regular individual and like the idea and would just like to donate a few dollars to help out please see the donation page. To anyone contributing to the tour thank you, and if there is anything I can do for you please let me know.

top

Ground Rules

To make it fair to everyone who donates to help me achieve my dream I've set up a few ground rules for the tour.

First of all, every restaurant that I visit will get a full review judging it on things from attitude and service to cleanliness and quality of food. To make these reviews a little more fair to the individual establishments I've decided to place them in the forum and make them open for comments. I've worked in the service industry for many year in both FoH and BoH so I know a little more about operations than the general person, but I know that the restaurant I visit might have just had a bad day, so placing reviews in the forums gives everyone else a chance to post their experiences as well.

The second rule is that I will try one of everything on the menu throughout the tour, and will be sure to try regional specialties when they are available. This will give people who plan on travelling an idea of what to expect when they see these special items on the menu.

The third rule is that I will try the regional beers as I come across them. Before I go on the tour I will try to brush up a little bit on my beer tasting lingo so I can provide valuable commentary on the local brews.

The fourth rule is that I will keep a roadblog detailing the travel and all of the "in-between" times, so anyone who is interested in reading about my experiences will have an easy way to do so. I'll still be enrolled full time in online classes during the tour, but I'll make sure to at least add a short blurb at some point in time during each day. I'll also be opening up a section for the other participants on the tour to write their comments.

The fifth rule is that I'll make sure to always have someone with me, this will mean that we'll definitely get some pictures and have more than one opinion in the reviews... besides travelling alone is boring.

top

Reviews

In order to provide some valuable information from the tour I will be reviewing not only every Hooters® that we visit, but also any beers that I try, lodging that we have, as well as anything that our sponsors provide for us.

These reviews will be unbiased(well maybe not the beer reviews :) ), and I will attempt to provide as much useful information as possible. As previously stated the reviews will be contained in the forum so user comments will be possible. If you want a little more information or have something to contribute to the review you'll be able to register for the forum and add your thoughts.

top

Technology
	Currently we'll be using an iBook and a digital camera to chronicle the journey, but if we get some sponsors to provide us with a few items I may be able to add some streaming videos and some other great content. We'll also be using a really cool piece of software to plan the shortest route, if I can talk my friend into open sourcing his code I'll provide it here. top

Site

This site is the heart of the project, I'll be using it to fund raise until I can start the tour and then will chronicle every part of the tour here. I'll never charge a membership fee, nor will I ever SPAM any of our users, but if you do use this site please consider donating something, or at the very least visiting some of our sponsors or some of the ads on our site to help us pay for our bandwidth. Even a few dollars is very helpful, I'm not asking for any one individual to contribute a lot, although it is welcome, but I'd love to get a couple dollars from everyone interested in the tour so I can finally make this a reality.

top