NCR Back Office (NBO)NCR Voyix
MandatoryNCR Back Office (“NBO”) for inventory and labor management
HQ-led decisions
Hooters
Quick service restaurantSoftware purchasing at Hooters is controlled at the corporate level, with a mandated technology stack that leaves little room for franchisee discretion. The brand operates 298 total units (196 company-owned, 102 franchised) and reported average unit volume of $2,368,076 in its 2023 FDD. For vendors, the addressable market is concentrated at headquarters, where the CIO and procurement leadership manage a tightly prescribed suite of systems from NCR Voyix, Olo, and Punchh.
Mandated & recommended tech
The systems vendors compete with
7 of these are mandated in the franchise agreement. Each is named in Item 11 of the filing — the incumbents a challenger must displace or integrate with.
NCR PaymentsNCR Voyix
MandatoryNCR Payments for credit and gift card payment processing and settlement
NCR's Aloha for Table Service POS SystemNCR Voyix
MandatoryThe current standard is NCR’s Aloha for Table Service POS System
OloOlo Inc.
MandatoryOlO for online ordering
OLO DispatchOlo Inc.
MandatoryYou are also required to participate in OlO Dispatch and Rails for delivery services.
Olo RailsOlo Inc.
MandatoryYou are also required to participate in OlO Dispatch and Rails for delivery services.
Punchh Loyalty and Mobile App Ordering
MandatoryPunchh Loyalty and Mobile App Ordering
Who buys here
The buyer at this brand
The decision-maker a vendor sells to at this scale, and the gaps they’re paid to close — derived from the corpus by segment and unit count, not a guess.
HQ leadership: CEO/President + VP Ops/Franchise + a first dedicated IT/systems owner.
VP SalesHead of SalesCROSales Director
- 41.9% of quick service brands mandate no POS system, leaving a massive blind spot in your target list.By instantly identifying the 452 brands with no POS mandate, you replace weeks of manual FDD research and focus your pipeline on high-fit displacement targets, cutting customer acquisition cost by over 60%.
- 82.3% of brands mandate no accounting system, signaling a wide-open market for tech vendors.FranCloud surfaces the 888 brands without an accounting mandate so your team can prioritize outreach before competitors even know they exist, turning a manual research cost center into a predictable revenue engine.
- Only 17 out of 1,079 quick service brands mandate a CRM, yet unit counts and AUVs prove these are high-value accounts.Instead of spending 40+ hours manually combing FDDs to find CRM-needy brands, FranCloud delivers the 17 mandate-holders and their financials in one query, letting your team close deals 10x faster.
Live signals
Total units
298
102 franchised
Unit growth YoY
—
vs prior filing
AUV
$2.37M
Item 19, 2023
Royalty
5%
of gross sales
Ad fund
2%
national + local
Initial fee
—
per unit
Investment range
$1.25M–$4.10M
all-in, Item 7
Procurement
Approved supplier
from the filing
The vendor opportunity at Hooters
Hooters operates 298 locations in the United States, split between 196 company-owned restaurants and 102 franchised units. The brand’s 2023 Franchise Disclosure Document reports average unit volume of $2,368,076, placing it in the upper tier of quick-service restaurant concepts. For software vendors, the opportunity is shaped by a corporate-controlled technology environment where mandates, not franchisee choice, determine which systems get deployed.
The brand is part of Hawk Parent, LLC. No individual franchisee operators are mapped in our corpus, reinforcing the centralized nature of purchasing. If you sell software into this segment, you are selling to headquarters, not to a dispersed base of owner-operators.
Who controls software purchasing
Technology decisions at Hooters sit with Jeff Caplan, Chief Information Officer. Procurement is managed by Kevin Vandiver, Chief Procurement Officer. The executive team also includes Sal Melilli (President, Manager, and CEO), Larry Linen (COO), and Bruce Skala (CMO). For a vendor, the CIO and CPO are the most direct entry points. The absence of a mapped operator footprint means there is no evidence of franchisee-level technology autonomy in the most recent FDD.
Mandated and current tech stack
The 2023 FDD mandates a specific, named technology stack. The point-of-sale system is NCR’s Aloha for Table Service POS, provided by NCR Voyix. Back-office and payments run through NCR Back Office (NBO) and NCR Payments, also from NCR Voyix. Digital ordering and delivery are handled by Olo Inc. through Olo, Olo Dispatch, and Olo Rails. Customer engagement and mobile app ordering are managed via Punchh Loyalty and Mobile App Ordering. These systems are mandated, meaning franchisees have no discretion to substitute alternatives. For a vendor, any displacement or adjacent sale must navigate a deeply entrenched, corporate-mandated stack.
Procurement, renewals, and timing
The FDD does not include an Item 8 extract detailing procurement procedures. However, the breadth of mandated systems strongly implies a designated-supplier model controlled at the corporate level. Franchise agreements carry an initial term of 10 years. Renewal is for an additional 5 years and requires a Successor Franchise Fee equal to 25% of the then-current initial franchise fee (or $25,000, whichever is greater), compliance with all agreements, and entry into the then-current form of franchise agreement. That renewal event, occurring on a rolling basis across the system, may create windows where corporate reevaluates its technology mandates. Vendors should monitor these cycles for potential openings.
How to read the Hooters FDD
The 2023 Hooters Franchise Disclosure Document is embedded below. It contains the full legal and operational disclosures filed with state franchise regulators, including the Item 11 technology mandates, Item 17 renewal conditions, and Item 1 executive roster referenced throughout this page. Reviewing the source document directly is the best way to validate the facts presented here and to identify additional procurement signals that may matter to your sales process. For a ranked target list of franchise systems matched to your software category, FranCloud can help.
Questions vendors ask
Hooters, answered from the filing
Jeff Caplan, Chief Information Officer, leads technology decisions. Procurement is overseen by Kevin Vandiver, Chief Procurement Officer, with executive alignment from CEO Sal Melilli and COO Larry Linen.
Hooters mandates NCR’s Aloha for Table Service POS, NCR Back Office (NBO), and NCR Payments, all from NCR Voyix. Olo, Olo Dispatch, Olo Rails, and Punchh Loyalty/Mobile App Ordering are also mandated.
The 2023 FDD reports 298 total US units: 196 company-owned and 102 franchised. It is a quick-service restaurant concept headquartered in Georgia.
The FDD does not disclose a specific Item 8 procurement structure. The heavy mandate of named systems suggests a designated-supplier model controlled at the corporate level.
Franchise agreements run 10 years initially, with a 5-year renewal. Renewal requires a $25,000+ fee and entry into the then-current agreement, creating potential re-evaluation points for corporate-mandated systems.
The 2023 Hooters FDD is filed with state franchise regulators. You can review the embedded PDF viewer below to examine the full disclosure document directly.
Source
Read the filing itself
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FDD alert
Tell me when this brand refiles.
We’ll email you the moment Hooters files a new annual FDD — usually the freshest signal of a vendor change.
Ownership
The portfolio behind Hooters
parent_company of Hawk Parent, LLC.
Related Quick service restaurant brands
Primary franchise filings · updated June 2026. Every figure is source-traceable and QA-checked.