Place: Hardee's
Lunch: 1/3 lb Baby Back Rib Thickburger, ice water
Smiling Counter Girl greets me and does the whole "for here or to go" thing.
Me: "1/3 pound Baby Back Rib Thickburger."
Smiling Counter Girl: "In a combo?"
Me: "No, just the sandwich."
She fiddles with the cash register a bit, looks confused, and grabs a pile of coupons for the sandwich. "Like this?" pointing at the burger image.
Me: "Yes, the 1/3 pound Baby Back Rib Thickburger."
She fiddles with the register some more. "I'm going to give you the coupon for a dollar off if I can figure it out."
Me: "Don't worry about it. No big deal."
She's determined. "Hey! How do I input the coupon?" she asks another employee walking by. He looks at the screen. "That's only good on combos," he says, and walks off. "Oh!" she exclaims. Then she looks at me and starts to explain I can't use the coupon before realizing I didn't ask to use the coupon at all and am clearly getting fed up with this nonsense and she just says "I'm sorry."
The Baby Back Rib Thickburger is another Hardee's/Carl's Jr Frankenstein concoction of unnatural burger meat bybrids. They top the burger patty with rib meat, add barbecue sauce, pickles, and crispy onion strings. I liked it WAY more than I thought I would. The rib meat appears to be real pulled rib meat, not a pressed patty like a McRib. It's smoky and tender and works really well here.
Speaking of Frankenstein, over the past couple of years KFC has bombarded the airwaves with ads featuring various actors portraying their dead founder Colonel Harlan Sanders. Every "Colonel" has had unique personality traits and quirks they bring to the role. It's sort of like they stole the idea of regeneration from Doctor Who. And the various Colonels seem to get quirkier as time goes by.
Hardee's is borrowing from this approach with a fictional founder by the name of Carl Hardee Sr.
Yeah, have a look...
Carl Hardee Sr
For those not familiar, the Hardee's chain (founded by Wilbur Hardee, also dead) was purchased by the parent company of Carl's Jr (founded by Carl Karcher, he's dead too) in the mid-1990's. The original plan was to marry the brands by rebranding all the restaurants as Carl's Jr with the classic Carl's Jr lunch/dinner menu, but adopt the Hardee's breakfast menu. The whole thing went horribly, horribly wrong and it's a miracle the company still exists today at all. But it does, and both brands are now successful, focusing on premium burgers largely promoted in the ads by sexy well-endowed women who can't possibly be eating these burger beasts they're promoting on any regular basis.
The campaign has been controversial, and apparently, it's time for change. And that's what Carl Hardee Sr is here to do, laying the blame for the allegedly sexist campaign at the foot of Carl Hardee Jr. Senior comes off as a rednecky version of the Dos Equis "Most Interesting Man in the World" guy.
The focus on the ads is going to be on the food and quality ingredients going forward. That's fine, I guess.
I suppose in the era of Ronald McDonald, the creepy Burger King (who I miss dearly, he needs to come back) and Jack Box, this is all perfectly normal.
As for the unemployed models, maybe they can milk up a campaign for Dairy Queen.
(Sorry...not sorry.)
