A Boobs and Burger Battle Is Unfolding in Hong Kong

Last week, the two worlds of breasts and burgers dramatically swung into each other in Hong Kong. First came the declaration that America's tight-shirt, orange-hot-pants, chicken-wing depot Hooters was opening its first Hong Kong branch. Days later, an online kerfuffle broke out about the opening of a second establishment that uses cleavage to sell comfort food. Its name? Double D.

Double D (it supposedly stands for "Dirty and Decadent"), which is set to have a soft opening this month on Wellington Street, ended up in the centre of a social media stink due to the restaurant's front advert and recruitment posters. The imagery looked like it was taken from a strip club that provided burgers the size of a human head alongside lapdances, featuring chest-blessed girls in suspenders alongside the slogan, "In your mouth soon!"

The posters, combined with the "That's what she said!"-inducing wording of their staff recruitment ad—workers must understand the "dirtiness of our juicy burgers"—predictably attracted the comment box assassins.

"Is it necessary that you devolve into the objectification of women to sell a cheeseburger? It isn't edgy. It isn't cool. It is overplayed, and so yesterday," cyber-screeched one person. "Are you all sexist, chauvinistic pigs? Double D? Really. Change the name," wrote another.

As anyone who's seen the sweaty-shirted sexpats prowling Hong Kong's prostitute theme park Wan Chai knows, a mildly suggestive restaurant name and an advert not much racier than the Littlewoods catalogue underwear section hardly comprises the seediest side of the island. But while such a venue would raise few eyebrows in most major cities, Hong Kong's current reputation as a magnet for sexual nastiness makes Double D's marketing feel dodgier than it would elsewhere.

As Lisa Cam—who reports on the Hong Kong food scene for Time Out—tells me, Double D's attempt to hit the cheeky-not-seedy middle ground may be the problem, because in Hong Kong, that middle ground barely exists.

"Hong Kong is schizophrenic about its sexuality," she says. "In the public sphere it's ultra-sanitary, whereas once you cross the line into the sex trade—which means just crossing the road, in some areas—it's all out in the open. There's not a lot of in-between. Bachelorette parties are a bitch to plan, as it's hard to find any naughty-but-not-dirty fun."

This is a shame, because food-wise, Double D sounds as though it could be amazing. They researched their burger recipe for nine months by testing roughly 50 different types of beef, and the company behind it, Maximal Concepts, is already responsible for some of Hong Kong's best-loved eateries.

It's being billed as an all-ages, all-genders place. Matt Reid, director of Maximal Concepts, tells me that he won't be using Hooters' recruitment style of hiring almost exclusively massive-breasted women. Guys and girls alike will be serving there, and innuendo will be largely limited to suggestive names on the menu.

"There will be no girls walking around in [those types of] T-shirts," Reid says. "While we have all the respect in the world for Hooters, Hooters is a restaurant with a massive menu selling standard American fare. We're not really doing that."

Reid brushed off the social media stabs. "It says 'Dirty and Decadent' on the door and that makes absolute sense," he says. "It's a mild nod to humour.We think that burgers are as sexy as a hot woman and a hot guy. It's not that we need a girl's boobs to sell burgers."

From a pure business point of view, too, beyond the eye-grabbing opening, Reid is right to try to sell the place through the burgers and chips rather than shirt potatoes. Hong Kong is a fiercely competitive food and drink market, with skyscraper-high rent and demanding customers.

Despite being the established brand, it may be Hooters that has more work to do there. "Hooters will need to up their game with the food," says Cam. "Tight T-shirts aside, no-one will pay for bad food here."

Hooters' Hong Kong opening is part of the brand's Asia expansion, which will see them open 30 new restaurants over the next six years. The company's Asia vice president David Duncome tells me that despite the tough market, the move is just another opening following the brand's recent success on the continent already.

"We are not opening here to offend anybody, we have a great brand," he says. "There are a lot of people that like this particular type of entertainment. Our Hooters girls are the iconic foundation, the cornerstone of the brand. And in terms of Double D, I wish them all the best. It's a home-grown brand, I applaud anybody who creates a brand from their beliefs from their experiences."

It seems that despite their equally buxom marketing styles, the biggest boobs and burger battle in Hong Kong won't be directly between Hooters and Double D. Rather, it'll be for Hooters surviving in one of the toughest markets in the world: a market that places quality above gimmickry in terms of importance.

"I'm curious about who they're going to hire," says Cam. "The labour market for the service industry is very competitive. You'd have to pay a premium if one of the requirements is to fill out the company shirt adequately."