Carl's Jr. grew from a Los Angeles hot dog cart bought with a car loan
In 1941 truck driver Carl Karcher and his wife Margaret borrowed $311 against their Plymouth, added $15 of savings, and bought a hot dog cart in Los Angeles. Hot dogs and tamales cost a dime. The name Carl's Jr. arrived in 1956 for smaller offshoots of their Anaheim drive-in.
Within a few years the couple ran four stands, and in 1945 they moved to Anaheim to open Carl's Drive-In Barbecue, adding hamburgers the following year. The first two Carl's Jr. outlets opened in Anaheim and Brea in 1956, and the original building later became a church hall. The company incorporated in 1966, kept menus short for speed, and by 1975 had over 100 Southern California sites.
It liked to try things first. In 1977 it became the first quick-service chain to put salad bars in all 200 of its restaurants, and it was among the earliest to let customers pay with ATM cards. A Mexican spin-off, Taco de Carlos, flopped; Karcher blamed branches built too far apart. The chain went public in 1981, franchised for the first time in 1984, and had reached 534 outlets by the end of that decade.
Karcher's own fortunes wobbled. In 1988 he and his family settled insider trading accusations with the SEC, paying over half a million dollars, and after public rows about marketing the board removed him as chairman on 1 October 1993. The board then slimmed the menu, cut prices and pitched to young men with messy-eating adverts. Parent company CKE bought Hardee's and its 2,500 locations in 1997, and the Six Dollar Burger arrived in 2001. Karcher died in 2008 at 90.
Later menu firsts included turkey burgers from a national chain in 2011 and, in 2019, an early nationwide rollout of a Beyond Meat patty that rivals such as Burger King soon followed. Abroad, the chain reached its 200th Mexican restaurant in 2015 and opened in India in 2016. Its first British outlet opened in Cardiff in April 2025.
Source: Carl's Jr.
