Hardee's

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 25th of August 2025, the Hardee's in Millvale, Pennsylvania closed without warning. It had served its neighborhood for 52 years. With that shutdown, the chain disappeared from Greater Pittsburgh. Only a single restaurant in Western Pennsylvania survived, in Waynesburg, close to the West Virginia border.

  Hardee's is an American fast-food chain, strongest in the Southern and Midwestern states, and it has changed hands many times since it began in North Carolina. Its history raises odd questions. How did the founder lose control of a company that carried his own name? Why can a Hardee's not exist in Canada? How did a burger chain from the American South end up serving Halal beef in Pakistan and Iraqi Kurdistan? And why did a chain once tied to a California rival decide to go its own way again?

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• 2. A Founder Outplayed

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  Wilber Hardee, who lived from 1918 to 2008, opened a restaurant bearing his surname in Greenville, North Carolina, on the 3rd of September 1960. After a year of good business, he considered a second location. He met with James Gardner and Leonard Rawls to talk it over.

  The first company-run store opened in Rocky Mount in May 1961, at 329 North Church Street. Gardner and Rawls ran it, and inside the chain it was known as building number 1. The building was demolished in 2007. A veterans' park named after Jack Laughery, a former chairman and military veteran, now stands on the site.

  Gardner and Rawls disputed that account. They said they simply bought him out and then started selling franchises. Jack Laughery, who was chief executive from 1975 to 1990, credited Rawls in particular. He said Leonard put together an organization with relatively little capital, and that without him and Jim Gardner there would be nothing of Hardee's Food Systems.

  The first franchises went to a small circle of longtime friends and acquaintances. They formed their own companies and, over time, built hundreds more locations. The business went public in 1963, with Rawls as president and Gardner as vice president. Gardner had political ambitions, and he left when voters sent him to the United States House of Representatives in 1966.

  What those early restaurants actually sold, and for how little, is recorded in surprising detail.

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• 3. Fifteen Cents a Burger

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  A hamburger on the 1964 Hardee's menu cost 15 cents. A cheeseburger cost 20 cents, and french fries cost a dime. Apple turnovers were 15 cents, milk was 12 cents, and coffee and soft drinks were 10 cents each.

  Milkshakes cost 20 cents in chocolate, strawberry or vanilla. The strawberry shake was not a separate recipe. Staff made it from vanilla by adding berry syrup, which had to be mixed in with a spindle.

  By the mid and late 1970s, the chain was growing quickly and earning high profits. Two sandwiches carried it, the Big Twin and the Big Deluxe. In 1977, after a trial at a Virginia Beach restaurant owned by longtime franchisee Boddie-Noell Enterprises, Hardee's took breakfast nationwide. The centerpiece was its Made from Scratch breakfast biscuits.

  Breakfast would prove unusually important. Hardee's sold more during morning hours than most fast-food chains did, which would shape a major corporate decision two decades later.

  In the early 1980s, a new management team set out to cut costs. It changed the signature burger recipe and dropped the flagship Big Twin entirely. The Big Deluxe stayed on menus through the 1990s.

  The early 1990s brought a gamble on chicken. After the chain acquired Roy Rogers Restaurants, some Hardee's outlets sold fried chicken made to the Roy Rogers recipe, hoping to compete with KFC. Hardee's also owned Rax Roast Beef for a time and sold roast beef sandwiches across its system.

  In 2005, the chain added Hand-Scooped Ice Cream Shakes and Malts, a long way from the spindle-mixed strawberry shake of 1964.

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• 4. The Acquisition Years

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  By the end of the 1960s, Hardee's ran nearly 200 restaurants in the Midwest and Southeast. Its first locations outside the United States opened in West Germany. Around the same time, it pushed into the mid-Atlantic, especially Southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and Delaware.

  That push came through a franchisee, Hardee Northern, Inc. The company was a subsidiary of Acme Markets, a prominent grocery chain based in Philadelphia.

  In 1972, Hardee's bought the Sandy's burger chain. Late in the decade it added Dee's Drive-In, a burger chain based in Utah.

  The biggest change in ownership came in 1981, when the Canadian company Imasco Limited bought Hardee's. The following year Imasco purchased Burger Chef from General Foods for $44 million. Many Burger Chef sites became Hardee's. Franchisees and locations near an existing Hardee's could convert to other brands. Restaurants that did neither simply closed.

  In 1998, Hardee's bought 557 franchised restaurants from Advantica Restaurant Group. Then the direction reversed, and the company began selling stores back to operators. In 2007, CKE Restaurants sold 34 Hardee's locations in North Carolina to Boddie-Noell Enterprises, the same franchisee that had tested breakfast in Virginia Beach.

  In 2008 it sold 23 restaurants in Indiana and Ohio to Midwest First Star, and nine in Davenport, Iowa to Westar Foods.

  In September 2013, the company announced plans to expand into the Northeastern United States.

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• 5. Marriage to Carl's Jr.

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  In April 1997, CKE Restaurants Holdings, the parent of Carl's Jr., paid Imasco $327 million for Hardee's. The deal produced a chain of 3,828 restaurants. Of those, 3,152 were Hardee's outlets in 40 states and 10 foreign countries, and 676 were Carl's Jr. restaurants, mostly in California.

  The first plan was dramatic. The larger Hardee's chain would take the Carl's Jr. name entirely, while keeping a menu called Hardee's breakfast because of its strong morning sales. CKE tested the idea by rebranding Hardee's locations in Peoria, Illinois and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

  By 1999 the company had changed course. Hardee's kept its name and its breakfast menu, but took on the Carl's Jr. look, including the Happy Star logo and parts of the lunch menu. Only the Oklahoma City restaurants kept the Carl's Jr. branding for good.

  The old headquarters tells its own story. Hardee's had built a complex in Rocky Mount in 1960 at 1405-1625 N Church Street. It held six buildings totaling 216,906 square feet, including a six-story office tower and five single-story office and warehouse buildings. In 2001, the company headquarters moved to St. Louis, Missouri. The last executives left the Rocky Mount complex in 2015.

  A new logo arrived in 2006, with script lettering and the Happy Star kept, which tied the two brands closer still. Rankings from 2015 show how the merger changed the picture. Nation's Restaurant News placed Hardee's 28th among American foodservice chains by sales through 2011, with Carl's Jr. at 37th. Combined, they would have ranked 15th.

  QSR's 2013 list put Hardee's at 20th and Carl's Jr. at 24th, or 14th together. As of March 2016, CKE counted 3,664 franchised or company-operated restaurants in 44 states and 37 foreign countries and U.S. territories.

  Then, in June 2018, CKE's former chief executive Jason Marker announced the two brands would separate. His reason was that racy advertising did not suit a family-oriented chain like Hardee's. In April 2019, Ned Lyerly, a 30-year company veteran and former president of the International division, replaced Marker as chief executive.

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• 6. Fights Over a Name

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  In January 2007, River West Brands of Chicago filed a challenge against Hardee's at the U.S. Patents and Trademarks Office. The dispute concerned the Burger Chef name, a brand Hardee's had absorbed decades earlier.

  Hardee's answered by reviving a Burger Chef sandwich, the Big Shef. It tested the sandwich in Terre Haute, Indiana, then offered it for a limited time in more Indiana markets and in Dayton, Ohio. Advertising used the Burger Chef name and logo and promised fans of the old chain their Big Shef fix.

  On the 16th of April 2009, River West Brands dropped its petition to cancel the trademark. Both sides agreed to cover their own attorney's fees.

  A separate trademark dispute shut the brand out of an entire country. Canada's Harvey's burger chain holds rights that prevent the Hardee's name from being used there. CKE operates in Canada exclusively under the Carl's Jr. banner.

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• 7. Selling Sex, Then Retreating

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  The Parents Television Council was one of the groups that criticized several Hardee's campaigns of the 2000s as sexually suggestive. One was titled More Than a Piece of Meat, and showed scantily clad women who seemed to gain sexual gratification from eating Hardee's food. Another, Name Our Holes, promoted Biscuit Holes through an ad campaign and website.

  In January 2015, Carl's Jr. released a commercial online for its All Natural Burger, to air regionally during Super Bowl XLIX. It starred model Charlotte McKinney strolling through a farmers' market. Strategically placed produce and double entendres implied she was naked, until the ad revealed her in a bikini eating the burger.

  Critics said the ad sets feminism back four decades. Others liked it, including McKinney's elderly grandfather. Before Carl's Jr. made the video private in March 2017, it had more than 13 million views and 10 thousand likes.

  That same March, Hardee's started moving away from this style. A commercial starred Charles Esten as Carl Hardee Sr., a white-bearded founder who returns to the office, to his employees' delight. He finds his son, Carl Jr., played by Drew Tarver, focused on sex appeal rather than food.

  The spot marked a turning point for CKE, which wanted to emphasize food and compete with Five Guys, Steak 'n Shake and In-N-Out Burger. Carl Hardee Sr. was expected to become the new company spokesperson.

  In July 2015, Hardee's had already begun selling The All-Natural Burger that debuted at Carl's Jr. in December 2014. In 2018, CKE went back to separate campaigns for each brand. Hardee's launched Tastes Like America, with music by Big Wet. The campaign revived the 1976 logo in white, with the Happy Star replacing the A in Tastes.

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• 8. A Menu for the Middle East

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  The Americana Group opened the first Hardee's in the Middle East, in Kuwait, in June 1980. It went on to own and operate most of the chain's international franchises. In April 2015, Hardee's announced its 300th Middle Eastern restaurant with that same franchisee.

  By 2016 there were over 300 Hardee's restaurants across Asia and the Middle East. They were in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with plans to open in Israel. The Middle Eastern menu has no pork, and all beef is certified Halal, in keeping with religious and cultural beliefs.

  Not every market lasted. A Singapore franchise opened in 1984, but its last three outlets closed in 1988. A South Korean restaurant opened in 1990 and was pulled in 2004 because of poor performance. Hong Kong operations ended in 2006 because of licensing issues with the American parent.

  Pakistan got its first Hardee's in Lahore in 2009, with the same menu used in the Middle East. It now has 18 locations: six in Lahore, four in Karachi, two each in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, and one each in Faisalabad, Bhera, Peshawar and Multan. In 2014, Hardee's opened a restaurant in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan.

  One of its most unexpected outposts is in Africa, inside Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi.

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