How working as Hooters waitresses prepared Nikki and Brie Garcia for WWE

Before they were famous, retired WWE stars Nikki and Brie Garcia worked as Hooters waitresses — and the experience gave them a leg up in the ring, they told The Post this week.

When they were 19, the identical twins, who went by the wrestling name The Bella Twins , were servers at the chain’s Mission Valley, San Diego location.

“Working there, you really owned your feminine energy. As a waitress, you have to have confidence to go up to strangers and talk. But we had to have thick skin and not only confidence, but you had to own it,” said Brie.

“You’re going up to men who are excited and want to get crazy. So we knew how to keep them in line … and we all set boundaries for ourselves … and didn’t take any crap from our customers. So it really taught me at a young age just to stand up for myself and to own it, own the room and own a table. And I think it really helped me with pro wrestling to take that attitude into that.”

The brunette beauties, 40 — who are now on a podcast tour, “ The Nikki and Brie Show: Moms Gone Wild Tour ” and will be at City Winery in the Meatpacking District on July 20 — also revealed their tricks for upselling their male clientele.

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“Squeezing your cleavage. You’d be like, ‘Do you want more fries with that?'” Nikki dished.

“Yeah, we got really creative. Like with the lingo, even just saying, ‘I hope you had a Hooter-fic time,'” added Brie. “You just came up with this really cheeky verbiage as waitresses there. And let’s be honest, everyone loves seeing the Hooters girls doing the YMCA and hula hoop — tips were going up.”

On their podcast, “ The Nikki & Brie Show ,” the Garcia girls get “really real and raw” with their fans, once dubbed the Bella Army, but now referred to as the Bonita Army. [The girls are half-Mexican and half-Italian, and bella and bonita mean pretty in Italian and Spanish, respectively.]

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On one episode, the pair, who live on the same block in Napa, CA and gave birth 22 hours apart, discuss coaching their 3-year-old sons’ T-ball team.

“We took T-ball coaching very serious. It was crazy because it’s hard work. And you realize you have all these little eyes looking up at you like, ‘What’s next?'” Brie, who shares a son, Buddy, and daughter, Birdie, with her husband, pro wrestler Bryan Danielson .

“My son, every time he would hit the ball, he would go run after it and fight to get it back, like he wanted the ball he hit,” said Nikki, who has a son, Matteo, with her husband, Artem Chigvintsev, her partner on “Dancing with the Stars .”

The California-born duo, who were raised in Arizona, joined Cameo a few months ago to help fund their wine label, Bonita Bonita , which they launched in 2019.

“We’re like, ‘Okay, we need to buy more grapes for wine,'” Brie, who has 8.5 million Instagram followers , explained. “You know, grapes aren’t cheap.”

They send birthday wishes and pep talks to fans via the platform, where celebrities record personalized video messages for a fee, but have already had to body slam several fetish requests.

“Someone was like, ‘If you could put the phone on the ground and have bare feet and act like you’re stomping it,'” said Nikki, who has 10.6 million followers on Instagram .

“And people ask me a lot to get into my wrestling gear.”

“Yesterday I got this request, and they’re like, ‘Can you roast your sister in like a minute video or something?,'” added Brie.

“And I was like, ‘Denied.’ I don’t want to roast my sister.”

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