Hardee's
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Template:Infobox Company Hardee's is an American fast-food restaurant chain, located mostly in the East Coast of the United States.
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Company History
Hardee's was founded by Wilbur Hardee, who opened his first restaurant in Rocky Mount, North Carolina in 1960. The chain grew by franchising and by acquiring other restaurant chains. In the early 1970s, the regular menu featured the Deluxe burger, the "Jr. Deluxe", as well as regular hamburgers and cheeseburgers, chili dogs, fries, shakes and fountain drinks, and the obligatory rectangular deep-fried apple pie. The burgers were advertised as "charcoal broiled" but it was actually a process of electrically heated "char-rocks" that caused the fat content dripping off the cooking beef to ignite for that "flame-broiled" taste. Mama Cass Elliot was the vocalist for Hardee's radio ads at the time of her death in 1974, with the jingle, "Hurry on down to Hardee's, where the burgers are charcoal broiled..." Many original Hardee's were built with a hexagonal style building with a pointed roof. Some had lobbies, but most were al fresco-walk-up style. For a time, Hardee's hamburgers were hexagonal.
Hardee's purchased Sandy's in 1972, Burger Chef in 1982, and Roy Rogers in 1990. The chain with more than 2,500 restaurants, existed just about anywhere in the United States outside of the West Coast at that point.
Hardee's was owned by the Canadian company Imasco from 1981 to 1997. In 1997, the chain was acquired by CKE Restaurants, the parent company of West Coast-based Carl's Jr. fast-food restaurant chain. (Imasco retained the remaining Roy Rogers locations, though CKE does some supplying of them). While its popular breakfast menu -- featuring "made from scratch" biscuits — had been its strength in the 1980s and 1990s, Hardee's was frequently criticized for its low hamburger quality. Over time, the Hardee's restaurants were converted to serve the much higher-quality hamburgers and many other products from Carl's Jr., and also took on the Carl's Jr. star logo in the process. The stigma of the Hardee's name, however, continued to drive away customers, and initially many analysts considered the buyout a bad investment.
In 1996 and 1997, CKE Restaurants bought out the remaining Burger Chef stores in the East Coast of the United States, and converted them into the Hardee's brand.
However, with the introduction of the highly promoted "Thickburger" in 2003, which was made from high-quality Angus beef, Hardee's revenue began to increase. Thickburgers are sold in sizes up to 2/3-pound (300 g), pre-cooked weight. In November of 2004, Hardee's introduced the Monster Thickburger; containing 1,420 calories (5,950 kilojoules) and 107 grams of fat, it is argubly the largest hamburger on any American fast food menu.
As of April 10, 2005, Hardee's operates 1,894 restaurants in 31 U.S. states.
Hardee's advertising
In the early days of the take-over by Carl's Jr., Hardee's used 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. The star remains Hardee's logo, but ceased appearing in the commercials with the advent of the Thickburger campaign.
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."
Much controversy arose with various family and Christian groups after an advertisement featuring Paris Hilton washing a car in a bikini, stuffing a Hardee's Thickburger in her mouth was aired on national television. Hardee's stopped running the ads, but many people continue to boycott the chain. However, the impact of the boycott is unclear (if even noticeable), and this advertising campaign is seen by some as designed to stir up controversy to draw attention to Hardee's.
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.
Red Burrito/Hardee's dual brand concept
A new dual branded concept opened in the St. Louis area in 2005. It is similar to the Green Burrito/Carl's Jr. dual brand concept. There's also one in Waterloo, Illinois and opening soon; Chester, Illinois.Image:Redburrito.gif
