Hardee's
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Hardee's | |
 |
|
| Type of Company | 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, and Hardee's also operates a few stores in Hong Kong, where the menu bears little resemblence to its U.S counterparts.
Contents |
[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.
[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 most were al 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 frozen patties 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 has now been unavailable in any Hardee's restaurant for nearly a quarter-century as alternative cooking methods are now employed.
[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 80s 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 where they claim that their Extra Tasty Crispy chicken beat Hardee's chicken. Hardee's chicken was quickly discontinued a few years later in another in a series of cost-cutting moves. At one point the chain expanded to 2,500 locations in the United States, but chain expansion has tapered off 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). In 1996 and 1997 CKE Restaurants bought out the remaining Burger Chef stores in the United States and converted those in the Eastern part of the country to the Hardee's brand. 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.
[edit] Form over substance
Beginning in the early 1990's, Hardee's began trying a number of marketing efforts, discussed below, to try to regain the ascendancy it enjoyed in the 1970s. Perhaps the biggest of these ad campaigns used the comedian Norm MacDonald as an irreverent spokesman to try to establish the "Star" brand in the mind of consumers. The stigma of the Hardee's name created by the cost-cutting measures begun in the 1980's, however, seems to have caused once loyal customers to no longer give claims of new and improved menu items a chance. Indeed, each successive marketing campaign has tacitly admitted how bad the immediately preceding menu was in an effort to get customers to try the latest menu changes. Most recently, in 2003, Hardee's introduced the highly promoted, diet-busting "Thickburger," made from Angus beef (see below) which tend to take additional time to custom-prepare, resulting in longer delays for fast-food patrons accustomed to prompt service.
As of 2006, Hardee's operates just 1,993 restaurants in 31 US states. By comparison, Wendy's, a direct competitor of about equal size in the late-1970s, now has over 6,000 American locations.
[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 begun 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.
[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] External links
- Hardee's official website
- Hardee's @ Review the World
- official site for Thickburger ad, including Paris Hilton's commentary
- 60 second Thickburger ad
- 30 second Thickburger ad
| CKE Restaurants |
|---|
|
Carl Karcher (fast-food chain founder) |
| Franchises
Carl's Jr. | Hardee's | Green Burrito | Red Burrito | La Salsa |
