Hardee's
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | Food |
| Founded | 1960 |
| Headquarters | St. Louis, Missouri |
Key people | Wilbur Hardee, Founder |
| Products | Fast food (including hamburgers, french fries, and milkshakes) |
| Website | www.hardees.com |
Hardee's is an American fast-food restaurant chain, located mostly on the Eastern half of the United States in Midwest, Southeast and East Coast regions.
Company History
Hardee's was founded by Wilbur Hardee, who 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 1960's: 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.
The 1970's: Emphasizing substance over form, the shape of the hamburgers became much less important than the taste of the hamburgers. In the early-1970s, the regular menu featured the Big Twin (a two-patty burger with a unique-to-the-industry sauce), the Big Deluxe (a quarter-pound burger with a tangy mayonnaise recipe), as well as fairly routine hamburgers, cheeseburgers, a Junior Deluxe, chili dogs, fries, shakes, fountain drinks, and the obligatory rectangular deep-fried apple pie. Hardee's purchased Sandy's in 1972, but primarily emphasized franchise growth on the strength of its unconventional menu tastes within the industry. During its heyday in the 1970's, when Hardee's saw meteoric growth and profits, the burgers were advertised as "charco-broiled" and were cooked in a novel process using electrically heated "char-rocks" that caused the fat content dripping off the cooking beef to ignite for a distinctive "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 charco-broiled..." This innovative broiling process was one of the first casualties of a management change in the early 1980's and has now been unavailable in any Hardee's restaurant for nearly a quarter-century.
The 1980's and 1990's: Flush with incredibly fast growth and high per-franchise profit, Hardee's fell victim to the buy-out phenomena of the 1980's. Hardee's was owned by the Canadian company Imasco from 1981 to 1997. A new management team in the early 1980's seeking to cut costs immediately changed the signature burger recipe by replacing the menu with frozen patties, then when sales rapidly declined, eliminated altogether the flagship menu items of the Big Twin and the Big Deluxe. Instead, the chain eventually installed condiment islands where the customer had to take a plain standard fast food patty and bun. The chain leveraged itself to acquire Burger Chef in 1982 and Roy Rogers in 1990. For a short time, Hardee's outlets sold the highly popular fried chicken recipe acquired from Roy Rogers, but quickly discontinued its availability in yet another in a seemingly unending series of cost-cutting moves. At one point the chain expanded to 2,500 locations in the United States outside of the West Coast, but the chain has been in a state of contraction since then. The Hardee's of the 80's and 90's was frequently criticized for its very low hamburger quality. The chain did find a measure of success by being one of the first chains to enter the breakfast market with a breakfast menu, featuring "made from scratch" biscuits, which was its only bright spot in the 1980s and 1990s, at least in comparison to it lunch and dinner business.
Today: In 1997, the chain was acquired by CKE Restaurants, the parent company of the highly popular 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 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..
Form over substance: Beginning in the early 1990's, Hardee's begain trying a number of marketing efforts, discussed below, to try to regain the ascendancy it enjoyed in the 1970's. Perhaps the biggest of these ad campaigns used the comedian Norm MacDonald as an irreverant 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, Hardees introduced the highly promoted "Thickburger," made from Angus beef, as discussed below, which tend to take a long time to custom-prepare, resulting in lengthy delays for fast-food patrons accustomed to prompt service.
As of 2006, Hardee's operates just 1,993 restaurants in 31 U.S. states. By comparison, Wendy's, a direct competitor of about equal size in the late-1970's, now has over 6,000 American locations. Interestingly, Wendy's also experimented with a breakfast menu in the 1980's but abandoned it due to the low profit potential inherent in fast-food breakfast. Faced with similar problems as those encountered by Hardee's, Wendy's management instead opted in the mid-80's to return to what had worked, admitting management mistakes and bringing back founder Dave Thomas long after his buyout to restore the recipe for success and turn the company and its menu back to its roots.
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 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. For a time, many Hardee's locations even gave out free antenna toppers in the shape of the recently adapted 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." Of course, the very choice of Norm "MacDonald" as a spokesman creates a subliminal link to the McDonalds even when no overt comparison is made.
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, Hardee's also pushed the envelope with a controversial commercial featuring heiress Paris Hilton washing a luxury car in a skimpy outfit while striking poses and eating the Thickburger in a sensuous manner.
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.
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 now open; Chester, Illinois. There are also rebranded Hardee's in Greenville, South Carolina and Columbia, South Carolina; now Hardee's/Red Burrito.