Hardee’s

In 1960, Wilbur Hardee in Greenville, North Carolina, opened the first Hardee’s restaurant. It featured 15-cent charco-broiled hamburgers, soft drinks, french fries, and milkshakes. Later, biscuits were added to the menu. In 1961J. Leonard Rawls and James Carson Gardner bought out Wilbur Hardee. They took out advertisements and quickly expanded their operations, particularly in small towns in the South. Fourteen years later, Hardee’s had more than 900 outlets, housed in modular buildings that reportedly took just six hours to erect. At first, these buildings had red and white stripes, like McDonald’s, but then the company shifted to a brown-and-orange color scheme like Burger King’s. The company also purchased a bakery and suppliers of seafood and frozen hamburger patties. Hardee’s was one of the first fast food chains to sell stock on the open market. In 1977, Imasco, the Canadian tobacco, food, and retail conglomerate, began buying Hardee’s stock, and in 1980 it took over Hardee’s. The chain expanded to Central America and the Middle East and absorbed many Burger Chef restaurants when that chain folded. In 1990 Hardee’s acquired the Roy Rogers chain, and Hardee’s was, in turn, acquired by Carl’s Jr. in 1997. Hardee’s outlets feature Carl Jr.’s symbol—a five-pointed yellow star with a happy face. As of 2010, there were almost 2,000 Hardee’s outlets.