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The parent company of Carl’s Jr. says it will be closing its Anaheim office and moving those operations to Franklin, Tenn., where the company is now based, effectively ending a California legacy that started when the chain was founded in 1941 in Los Angeles. CKE, which also owns the Hardee’s, Green Burrito and Red Burrito restaurant brands, moved its Carpenteria headquarters to Franklin last year, blaming high taxes and a stringent business climate, factors that have driven other companies out of the Golden State.

Like many Americans, I find it distressing to see multi-millionaire athletes kneeling during the playing of our national anthem before professional football games. In my lifetime, football has been a big part of our image as Americans. In my working-class Cleveland, Ohio family, Sunday football was always a big event. One of my cousins was married to Lenny Dawson who would become a Hall of Fame quarterback. It was a rare Sunday during football season when we weren’t gathered around our TV or radio for the Cleveland Browns or the Kansas City Chiefs game (both if possible). As we watched...

Jack Webb, the co-franchisee of a Carl's Jr. in Alberta, Canada, was discovered to have committed multiple food safety violations while being filmed by in-store security cameras, CBC reported. The first clip of 10 shared with CBC shows Webb almost elbow-deep in barbecue sauce. Webb is mixing the sauce with his bare hands, a clear violation of food safety measures, going so far as to refuse a spoon when a worker offers it to him. Other clips show Webb mixing sauces and scooping them from one container to another with his bare hands. In one case, he uses a spatula...

On Monday, L.A. City Attorney Mike Feuer announced that the city is fining Carl’s Jr. in the amount of $1.45 million, alleging that seven of its locations had failed to pay 37 workers the legal minimum wage between July and December 2016, reports The Los Angeles Times. As it stands, the legal minimum wage in California is $10.50 per hour, but Feuer told the LA Times that the seven Carl’s Jr. locations only paid out between $10 and $10.25 per hour. In total, Carl’s Jr. reportedly underpaid its employees $5,400.

Why have one sexy model eating a burger when you can have three? Carl’s Jr.’s most recent ad campaign features lots of burgers, bacon, and babes. The fast food chain’s newest item is the Bacon 3-Way Burger. The only thing that sells better than bacon is sex, but the restaurant took that to another level with their Three-Way “Fantasy.” The provocative ad spot features former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Genevieve Morton, along with social media babes Emily Sears and Elena Belle. The women, clad only in white string bikinis, make grilling a greasy fast food burger actually look seductive. The...

Consumer preferences, reduced technology costs and government policies that increase labor costs are driving a trend toward automation in the restaurant business. If you make something more convenient and less expensive, it tends to catch on. As recently as the 1960s, gas-station employees would rush to fill your car’s tank, wash the windows, check the oil and put air in the tires. Telephone operators made your long-distance calls and bank tellers cashed your checks. Those jobs now are either gone or greatly diminished. Today, we reduce jobs whenever we shop on Amazon instead of our local retail outlet, use an...

Eatsa, the mostly automated healthy, fast food bowl shop based in San Francisco, has inspired the CEO of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s to rethink the traditional workforce—by replacing all humans with robots. ...CEO Andy Puzder told Business Insider. "We could have a restaurant that's focused on all-natural products and is much like an Eatsa, where you order on a kiosk, you pay with a credit or debit card, your order pops up, and you never see a person." ... The CEO acknowledges that it may be some time before Carl’s Jr is people-free as it would take a pretty sophisticated...

Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s CEO Andy Puzder has people all in a huff over his idea to automate restaurants. But why be upset with Puzder? This is an inevitable consequence of massive minimum wage hikes by the government. “I want to try it,” CEO Puzder said. He’s looking at something “where you order on a kiosk, you pay with a credit or debit card, your order pops up, and you never see a person.” Is he heartless? No. Just responding to the government’s foolish plans to jack up the minimum wage and put restaurants, hotels, bars and other service industries...

As minimum wages across the country rise and restaurants face increased labor costs, one fast food CEO is thinking about replacing human workers with robots. Carl's Jr. head honcho Andy Puzder wants to open a new restaurant concept that's "employee-free," reports Business Insider. Puzder was inspired by a visit to Eatsa, the futuristic San Francisco-born restaurant where patrons order via tablet and retrieve their food from automated cubbies. He believes the idea of a restaurant free of social interaction could be especially appealing to millennials, noting that young people seem particularly fond of ordering from kiosks over humans.

Last week onClashDaily.comwe ran a story about Mormon twin sisters who founded “Beauty Redefined”, who are calling on folks to boycott Carl's Jr.’s hamburger joint because they run adverts with hot models. According to the religious twins, these ads, “objectify women”; and I guess, by that inference, girls everywhere, because of the ads, will start to feel badly about themselves, adopt some eating disorder and/or get ocean-buoy-sized breast implants in order to look like Kate Upton. Or something to that effect. Now, before I go on, here’s an FYI for forlorn ladies wanting to look like Kate after watching a Carl's...

For years, Andrew F. Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants, the parent company of the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's fast-food chains, has been telling the world that while the U.S. government makes life needlessly miserable for businesses, California, where it has been headquartered, is exponentially worse. This week, CKE announced that it is moving its headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee. A story at the Orange County Register failed to go beyond the company's deliberately non-combative statement to explain why. As far as I can tell, the Los Angeles Times hasn't covered the move at all (I can't be absolutely sure because...

We recently looked at how the “Fight for 15” had impacted employment in Seattle, with job numbers inside the affected zone plummeting as hiring spiked in the suburbs where wages and associated labor costs remained at relatively normal levels. So what can the employers who are hit with these higher costs do when their prices are driven to above competitive levels? One unfortunate but completely predictable choice for lower skill positions is to replace them with high tech, automated options. That’s the path that Andy Puzder, CEO of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, is considering after a recent visit to...

NEW YORK – A CEO of a fast-food company is causing a stir on social media after claiming that he wants to create a fully automated restaurant. “We could have a restaurant that’s focused on all-natural products and is much like an Eatsa, where you order on a kiosk, you pay with a credit or debit card, your order pops up, and you never see a person,” Carl’s Jr. CEO Andy Puzder told Business Insider. Puzder says the automated restaurant would be cheaper since he wouldn’t have to worry about rising minimum wage. “If you’re making labor more expensive, and...

Full title: Carl's Jr's racy new TexMex burger commercial featuring scantily-clad women playing volleyball over a border wall reflects 'what's going on with immigration', says one of its models New ad involves two sets of models representing Texas and Mexico The women are playing to determine whether the burger is 'Tex' or 'Mex' Kara Del Toro, who is in 'Team Mex', says the commercial is a 'bold move' She claims it is 'playing' on the immigration debate dominating the 2016 presidential race The American team are all blondes while the Mexican team are brunettes but Del Toro insists the commercial...

The CEO of Carl's Jr. doesn't care if you find the burger chain's racy ads offensive. Well, he cares in one respect – if no one is offended, he's going to convince the marketing department to craft an even sexier commercial next time. "If you don't complain, I go to the head of marketing and say, 'What's wrong with our ads?'" says Andrew Puzder, CEO of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's parent company CKE Restaurants, describing a conversation with the head of an unnamed organization that regularly protests company marketing. "Those complaints aren't necessarily bad for us. What you look at...

Carl's Jr. and Hardee's are cramming a summer cookout into one burger. The upcoming menu item is made with a beef patty that is topped with a split hot dog. The meaty duo sits on a layer of Lay's potato chips between hamburger buns. Ketchup, mustard, tomato, red onion, pickles and American cheese will be thrown in, too.

CKE Restaurants' roots began in California roughly seven decades ago, but you won't see the parent company of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's expanding there much anymore. Related Stories What's causing what company CEO Andy Puzder describes as "very little growth" in the state? In part it's because "the minimum wage is so high so it's harder to come up with profitable business models," Puzder said in an interview. The state's minimum wage is set to rise to $9 in July, making it among the nation's highest, and $10 by January 2016. In cities in other states where the minimum wage...

Carl's Jr. said its newly opened unit in Houston set a company record with $117,203 in sales its opening week. The revenue topped the chain's domestic and international sales mark, Carl's Jr. said Thursday.

Carl Karcher, who parlayed a single hot dog pushcart into a chain of more than 1,000 fast-food restaurants bearing his name, died Friday. He was 90. The affable, burly entrepreneur, known to millions as the jovial television pitchman for the Carl's Jr. chain, died of complications from Parkinson's-related pneumonia at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, according to Beth Mansfield, a spokeswoman for parent company CKE Restaurants. A stalwart Orange County Republican, Karcher worked tirelessly for the party and its candidates, still finding time for active and enthusiastic involvement in local causes, including United Way of Orange County, Orangewood Children's...

The parent company of the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's fast food chains sued rival Jack In The Box Inc. on Friday to stop TV ads that it says suggest Carl's Jr. and Hardee's use cow anus to make Angus beef hamburgers. CKE Restaurants Inc. sued Jack In The Box in U.S. District Court on Friday over an ad in which executives laugh hysterically at the word "Angus" and another where the chain's pingpong ball-headed mascot, Jack, is asked to point to a diagram of a cow and show where Angus meat comes from. "I'd rather not," the pointy-nosed Jack replies....