Hardee's

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Hardee's
Type	Subsidiary of CKE Restaurants
Founded	1960 (Greenville, North Carolina)
Headquarters	St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Key people	Wilbur Hardee, Founder
Industry	Food
Products	Fast food (including hamburgers, french fries, and milkshakes)
Website	www.hardees.com

Hardee's is an American fast-food restaurant chain, located primarily on the Eastern half of the United States in Midwest, Southeast and East Coast regions. There are several stores located in the Middle East. Hardee's had a few stores in Hong Kong before it ceased to operate in December 27, 2006 due to problems with franchising rights.

Contents 1 Company History 1.1 The 1960s 1.2 The 1970s 1.3 The 1980s and 1990s 1.4 Hardee's today 2 Breakfast at Hardee's 3 Kids' Meals and premiums 4 Hardee's advertising 4.1 Thickburger campaign 5 Menu Items 5.1 Monster Thickburger 6 Notes 7 External links

[edit] Company History

Hardee's founder Wilbur Hardee opened his first restaurant in Greenville, North Carolina in 1960. On the strength of its two distinctive signature sandwiches (the Big Deluxe and the Big Twin), the chain experienced rapid growth by franchising and, to a lesser extent, by acquiring other restaurant chains. The first "franchise" store opened in Rocky Mount, NC in May 1961 by Jim Gardner and Leonard Rawls. The chain was headquartered in Rocky Mount until 2001.

[edit] The 1960s

Many original Hardee's were built with a hexagonal style building with a pointed roof. In keeping with that theme, for a short period of time, Hardee's hamburgers were actually hexagonal, particularly the quarter-pound patties. Some early locations had lobbies, but almost all were fresco-walk-up style.

[edit] The 1970s

In the early-1970s, the regular menu featured the Big Twin (a two-patty burger with a unique sauce) and the Big Deluxe (a quarter-pound burger with a tangy mayonnaise). Hardee's purchased Sandy's in 1972, but primarily emphasized franchise growth on the strength of its menu. During the 1970s, when Hardee's saw rapid growth, the burgers were "charco-broiled" and were cooked in a process using heated "char-rocks" that caused the fat content dripping off the cooking beef to ignite for a distinctive "flame-broiled" taste. The charco-broiling process was discontinued throughout the 80's and 90's. Charbroiling (minus the rocks) was reintroduced in 2001 with the addition of their Thickburger menu.

[edit] The 1980s and 1990s

Hardee's seemed to have fallen victim to the buy-out phenomena of the 1980s. A new management team in the early 1980s seeking to cut costs immediately changed the signature burger recipe by, among other things, replacing the menu with frozen patties. When sales declined, the chain eliminated altogether the flagship menu items of the Big Twin and the Big Deluxe. Instead, the chain installed condiment islands where the customer had to take a plain fast food patty and bun. The Hardee's of the 1980s and '90s was frequently criticized for its very low hamburger quality. The chain leveraged itself to acquire Burger Chef in 1982 and Roy Rogers in 1990. For a short time in the early 1990s, Hardee's outlets sold the popular fried chicken recipe acquired from Roy Rogers, which Hardee's claimed in their advertisements beat Kentucky Fried Chicken in a taste test, 63 to 37. However, they had only compared it to KFC's Original Recipe, thus giving KFC a clever counter-advertisement in which they claim that their Extra Tasty Crispy chicken beat Hardee's chicken. Hardee's chicken was quickly discontinued at some locations a few years later in another series of cost-cutting moves. However, some Hardee's franchisers still offer fried chicken and traditional chicken dinner side dishes at a few locations. Commercials advertising a free bottle of Texas Pete hotsauce with the purchase of a family sized chicken dinner were aired as recently as the summer of 2006. At one point the chain expanded to 2,500 locations in the United States, but the chain's expansion has contracted in recent years.

[edit] Hardee's today

In 1997, the chain was acquired by CKE Restaurants, the parent company of the Carl's Jr. fast-food restaurant chain. (Imasco retained the few remaining Roy Rogers locations, though CKE is reported to do some supplying of them). Over time, some Hardee's restaurants were converted to serve the relatively higher-quality hamburgers and other products available from Carl's Jr., and also took on the Carl's Jr. star logo in the process. Some locations were simply fully-rebranded Carl's Jr.

CKE Restaurants has been dual branding some Hardee's locations with Red Burrito, similar to its Green Burrito/Carl's Jr. dual brand concept.

As of 2006, Hardee's operates 1,993 restaurants in 31 US states. Hardee's has found a niche market in smaller towns that may lack franchises of the other major hamburger chains.

On March 12, 2007 the first ever Hardee's restaurant (located in Rocky Mount, North Carolina) was demolished to make room for a veterans memorial park named after Jack Laughery, a former Hardee's executive and US army veteran.

[edit] Breakfast at Hardee's

Main article: Breakfast sandwich

While Hardee's has experienced extensive changes in its lunch and dinner menus over the years, its breakfast menu has remained largely unchanged. As a result, Hardee's still retains significant customer loyalty for this time of the day. The average Hardee's restaurant generates 40 to 45 percent of its business from breakfast, and the median age of its breakfast customers is 45, as it is particularly popular among the elderly in the Southeastern states.^[1]

The core of the Hardee's breakfast menu are its biscuit sandwiches, reflecting the southern origins of this chain. The meats on these biscuit sandwiches vary regionally. Most Hardee's biscuits have traditional fare such as a sausage, bacon, or ham. More unusual biscuits with chicken fried steak or pork chop can be found in the southeast, but are more difficult to find in Hardee's outside this region.

[edit] Kids' Meals and premiums

Although the franchise would come to humorously criticize such concepts, Hardee's has conceived several memorable Kids' Meal toys throughout the past few decades. The 1980s featured popular, nonposeable figures of the Smurfs as well as Beach Bunnies. Renditions of other cartoon characters would later premiere, including the Ghostbusters and Nickelodeon characters.

Other popular licenses were garnered as well. Marvel Comics characters would be featured in the 1990 Marvel Super Hero Vehicles collection. And in the summer of 2000, DC Comics' DC Super Heroes finally found a spot in the Hardee's toy scene.

Possibly the most well known Hardee's premiums, however, would be the Dancin' Singin' California Raisins. Several collections of the nonposeable figures were produced in 1987, 1988, 1991, and once again in 2001. Traditionally, they would be available with the purchase of Hardee's cinnamon raisin biscuits.

Hardee's also marketed special Super Bowl celebratory pins in the early 1990s.

[edit] Hardee's advertising

In the early days of the take-over by CKE, Hardee's began to use the anthropomorphic smiling star logo that Carl's Jr. had used for many years. "The Hardee's Star", as it was now called, appeared in a series of commercials played by a dwarf in a costume likeness of the star. Norm MacDonald provided the voice for the Hardee's Star. For a time, many Hardee's locations even gave out free antenna toppers in the shape of the recently adopted star. The star remains Hardee's logo, but the mascot ceased appearing in the commercials with the advent of the Thickburger campaign. A new Hardee's logo was unveiled in 2006 that featured script lettering and further minimized the smiling star icon.

[edit] Thickburger campaign

Early commercials during the Thickburger campaign made a point of acknowledging and apologizing for the poor quality of Hardee's past cuisine and service. Later commercials demonstrated adults attempting to fit their mouths around the large Thickburger.

The point of most Thickburger commercials, however, is that most adults prefer to eat large, restaurant-quality hamburgers instead of smaller, allegedly lower-quality hamburgers sold by fast-food establishments targeted at children, in particular McDonald's. The commercials took the rival fast food chain to task for the quality of its food and because it offers toys with meals marketed toward children. One of the commercials depicted a pregnant woman enjoying a Thickburger and the announcer telling her to enjoy Hardee's while she can, since she will "be eating at McDonald's for the next 12 years."

Commercials that did not mention McDonald's by name overtly referred to the chain, such as an ad where a man works on a classic car while eating a Thickburger. The announcer then says that "it's awful hard for those other chains to fit a busted carburetor in a bag" and then says that Hardee's "has big burgers because men need big toys."

Hardee's cavalier marketing is not simply confined to burgers. Recent ads for its chicken products state that "we have chicken breast strips because scientists have proven chickens don't have nuggets" and another for its 1/3-pound chicken breast sandwich where a chicken walks around with a black "censored" bar over where its breasts would be if it was a human to burlesque music.

In 2005, Carls Jr. and Hardee's also pushed the envelope with a controversial commercial featuring hotel heiress Paris Hilton soaping up a Bentley in a skimpy bikini while striking poses and eating the Thickburger in a sensuous manner. Carl's Jr. aired the ad first, and Hardee's soon followed.

[edit] Menu Items

[edit] Monster Thickburger

Monster Thickburger
Serving size	1 sandwich (413g)
Energy	1,410 cal
Energy from fat	965 cal
Total fat	107 g (165%)
Saturated fat	45 g (225%)
Cholesterol	229 mg (76%)
Sodium	2740 mg (170%)
Dietary fiber	2 g (8%)
Sugars	9 g
Protein	12 g (92%)
Source	Hardees.com (PDF)
Notes	May vary outside US market. US % Daily Value based on 2000 calorie (8,370 kJ) diet.

The Monster Thickburger is a type of double-bacon cheeseburger. The burger contains 1,410 calories (5,900 kJ), 107 grams of fat, and 2740 mg of sodium. This burger is much the same as the Six Dollar Burger offered by sister company Carl's Jr.

Ingredients include a sesame-seed bun, mayonnaise, bacon, cheese, butter-flavored shortening and two patties of ground beef made from Angus cattle for a total of 2/3 lb (300 g) (uncooked) of meat.

The marketing of this burger may represent a neo-comfort food movement against alarms raised by nutritionists about an obesity epidemic. In an interview on CNBC, Hardee's CEO Andrew Puzder said sarcastically that the sandwich was "not a burger for tree huggers." The burger was also parodied on an episode of the Late Show with David Letterman when the "CEO of Hardee's" came out to talk about the then-new Monster Thickburger to David Letterman, only to die from a heart attack after just taking one bite. Nevertheless, sales for the 2,067-restaurant chain have risen steadily since the introduction of the Thickburger family in 2003, with same-store sales up 7.8% annually.

The Monster Thickburger is based on the Monster Burger, which had similar ingredients but was the size of a double quarter pounder instead of two-thirds of a pound.

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Hardee's official website
• Hardee's @ Review the World
• Nation's Restaurant News, August 11, 2003
• Article on the release of the Monster Thickburger with information on the marketing and success

CKE Restaurants
Carl Karcher (fast-food chain founder)
Franchises Carl's Jr. | Hardee's | Green Burrito | Red Burrito | La Salsa