Did Wilber Hardee really lose his burger chain in a poker game?
Wilber Hardee opened a burger stand in Greenville, North Carolina, in September 1960. Within a year two partners had control of the business, and Hardee later claimed they won it from him at a poker table. The partners told a plainer story about buying him out.
Whichever version is true, James Carson Gardner and Leonard Rawls built the company. They opened the first company store in Rocky Mount in May 1961 and sold early franchises to friends and acquaintances, who in turn opened hundreds more outlets. Shares were first sold to the public in 1963, when Rawls held the presidency, and Gardner left after winning a seat in the US House of Representatives in 1966. Jack Laughery, chief executive from 1975 to 1990, credited the pair with building an organization on very little capital.
Prices were modest. The 1964 menu offered a hamburger for 15 cents, a cheeseburger or milkshake for 20, and fries, coffee or a soft drink for a dime. Strawberry shakes were simply vanilla ones with berry syrup whisked in on a spindle. By the end of that decade the chain ran nearly 200 restaurants across the Midwest and Southeast and had opened its first foreign outlets in West Germany.
Growth in the 1970s rode on two sandwiches, the Big Twin and the Big Deluxe, and on breakfast. After a trial in Virginia Beach, Hardee's rolled out made-from-scratch biscuits nationwide in 1977, and morning sales became unusually strong for a fast-food chain. The Canadian firm Imasco bought the company in 1981 and absorbed Burger Chef, though cost-cutting managers later dropped the Big Twin altogether.
In April 1997 CKE, owner of Carl's Jr., bought Hardee's for $327 million, forming a group of 3,828 restaurants. A plan to rebrand Hardee's as Carl's Jr. was tested and then dropped, partly because the breakfast business was too valuable to disturb. The headquarters moved to St. Louis in 2001, and in 2018 CKE separated the two brands, judging Carl's Jr.'s provocative advertising a poor fit for a family chain.
Source: Hardee's
