It's Clear Why Hardee's Has Been Struggling

Most brands come and go, so when one sticks around for more than half a century, you know that it's been doing something right. Until recently, this seemed to be the case with Hardee's. Since opening in Greenville, North Carolina in 1960, Hardee's went on to go from strength to strength, swelling to an enormous size with thousands of restaurants dotted around the country (and, indeed, the world).

Signature offerings like Hardee's biscuits and its Thickburgers kept business thriving and brand loyalty strong. Well, until recently, that is. In the last few years, Hardee's has seen a significant downturn in its fortunes, with closing restaurants and struggling franchises.



So why has Hardee's been doing so badly lately? Well, it seems to be a perfect storm of poor choices, bad market conditions, and a deteriorating public image. Moves like removing its Thickburgers from the menu or putting out ad campaigns that feel totally outdated have contributed to its downfall, and it's also been impacted by its ability to expand into certain territories and its decision to embrace new technologies. It appears that Hardee's is quickly becoming a relic, and we think we're pretty clear on exactly where it's been getting it wrong.

Hardee's franchisees are in a rough state If you want the measure of how any restaurant is doing, check out what's happening with its franchisees. When a restaurant brand is healthy and thriving, its franchisees will be doing the same: People are excited about going to the fast food chain for their food, ergo its profits are higher, and the franchisee can invest more in its services. However, when a restaurant brand is on the downturn, its franchisees are the first to take the hit.

This happened in 2023 in a big way to Summit Restaurant Holdings, a franchisee that at its peak operated 145 Hardee's restaurants. In May of that year, Summit Restaurant Holdings had to declare bankruptcy, and in doing so closed 39 of its units. In court documents it was revealed that the company had been struggling with underperforming restaurants for a while, with a combination of lower footfall during the COVID-19 pandemic and higher costs for its products and labor contributing to a massive cash loss.

Hardee's parent company CKE Restaurant Holdings was quick to issue a positive-sounding statement declaring that it was focused on offering its customers the best experience and food possible, and professing hope that the restaurants would find a buyer soon. However, you have to ask the question: Does this all stem from people losing their taste for Hardee's food in the first place? Its locations are closing fairly rapidly It's not uncommon for fast food locations to pop up pretty quickly, but it's never a great sign when they close at the same rate. Unfortunately for Hardee's, in the last few years that's what's been happening.

2024 saw a spate of closures of Hardee's restaurants, following a large-scale shutting of stores in 2023 when franchisee Summit Restaurant Holdings went bust. Locations in Illinois, Tennessee, and Missouri were all closed, with Illinois being hit particularly hard: The Midwestern state lost eight restaurants in total. If you thought 2025 was going to be a better year for the franchise, you're mistaken.

We're just a couple months into the year, and one Hardee's location in Delaware has already announced that it's closing. The Delaware franchise, based in Bear, may have been impacted by the rise of other fast food joints in the area. This makes Delaware one of the only states without a Hardee's location .

These may sound like a drop in the ocean, but when you look at the bigger picture things appear a bit more stark. Hardee's has closed several hundred of its locations over the last five years, and it seems that the chain has been hit particularly hard by the COVID pandemic and its after-effects, as well as changing consumer tastes. Hardee's has never quite got past its sexist ad campaigns If you needed any proof that Hardee's was a franchise that's stuck in the past, look no further than the ad campaigns that it used to put out.

The advertising history of Hardee's has, for the last few decades, been defined by its tendency to try and sell its burgers using pretty racy means. Models and famous female celebrities in various states of undress have featured in its commercials, with Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, and Heidi Klum all taking part in Hardee's ads. The motivation behind all of this was clear: This kind of stuff sells.

How does it affect a brand long-term, though? Unfortunately, pretty poorly. Hardee's only started to shift its advertising strategy towards the end of the 2010s, but by that point criticism of its commercials was already well underway, with people accusing the company of propagating sexist and outdated imagery. This all coincided with the rise of the #MeToo movement, with Hardee's struggling to justify its advertising choices amidst very real and important conversations around sexism and objectification.

Although Hardee's has since tried to distance itself from its former ads, anyone with an internet browser can see what kind of company it used to be — and it's one that's out of touch with the world today. The restaurant's drive-thru operation isn't performing well Drive-thrus are hugely important to fast food franchises, and it's vital that they operate at their best. If they're not, people tend to take their business (and their cars) somewhere else pretty fast.

Sadly, it seems like Hardee's has lost its handle on its drive-thrus, with declining performances and odd choices that have left customers frustrated. The annual InTouch Insight report into drive-thru satisfaction and service found that in 2024, Hardee's had slipped in its rankings. Just a couple years before, it was ranked as one of the quickest out of 10 major fast food restaurants by customers, and it also did pretty well with its service satisfaction and order accuracy.

Cut to 2024, and it's slipped out of the top rankings for all of these. It seems like Hardee's solution to these issues is not to focus on its customer service and speed, but to replace its workers entirely with AI solutions. In late 2023, CKE Restaurant Holdings signed a deal with Presto Automations, to provide AI-operated drive-thru solutions to Carl's Jr.

, with Hardee's presumably to follow. However, folks who tried these new AI drive-thru machines found them to be clunky, weird, and soulless. It doesn't look like things are gonna improve any time soon at this flailing chain.

Hardee's is making its items smaller, to the disappointment of customers There was a time when Hardee's was famed for its generosity, with its Thickburger being a testament to that. Hardee's Thickburgers came with supersized patties that were way bigger than the quarter-pounders you'd get in other fast food joints, with some of its sandwiches coming with burgers weighing in at two-thirds of a pound. Pretty satisfying, huh? Well, somewhere down the line, it seems like Hardee's decided it was time to retire its Thickburgers — and its customers were deeply unhappy.

Numerous customers have said how disappointed they were in Hardee's decision to remove Thickburgers from its menu, with some stating that they no longer go to its restaurants as a result. Although Hardee's still offers loads of other burgers, they just aren't the same. As well as this, Hardee's has been accused of cutting corners with its other products' sizes, potentially indicating that it's a victim of shrinkflation.

Hardee's chicken tenders and drinks have been accused of being way too small for the price point they're placed at. Trust us, folks: This kind of thing doesn't get past loyal customers, and sooner or later, they stop going entirely. It's plagued by poor customer reviews Anyone who's ever eaten anywhere or bought anything knows that the first thing you check is the reviews.

Although people will always find something to complain about, good reviews across the board mean that you're in for a good experience — but when a massive chain like Hardee's can barely get above a 2.5 rating at multiple locations, you know that things are going badly. Check out any online reviews for Hardee's branches around the country (or around the world), and you'll find a barrage of negative comments and one-star ratings, with people pointing out how poor its food, customer service, and cleanliness is.

Whether Hardee's is serving breakfast , lunch, or dinner, people are getting riled up by its cold items, tiny portion sizes, and overpriced grub. We don't blame them. Now, it's easy to isolate a few bad reviews from locations across the country and make the argument that Hardee's is suffering.

However, we're not doing that: We're looking at the big picture. On Yelp , Hardee's has a 2.3 out of 5 rating, with that score based on reviews from approximately 1,400 locations.

The overwhelming majority of those reviews are one-star. If you're Googling where you should eat and this is what you're met with, then wouldn't you go somewhere else to eat? Hardee's expansion into Canada is severely limited To be a successful restaurant franchise, you need to be able to expand — and not just in the United States. International territories are big business for many U.

S.-based fast food franchises, and Canada's a key market for them. Unfortunately, when it comes to Hardee's, that's just not on the cards.

The fact of the matter is you'll never find a Hardee's in Canada , because of a name clash that hinders the restaurant from operating in the United States' neighboring country. It all comes down to the fact that there's another burger chain called Harvey's, which has been operating in Canada since before Hardee's even existed. The closeness of the two names, and the fact that they sell similar food, has meant that unless Hardee's rebranded itself it'd never stand out.

This is all despite the fact that Hardee's was previously operated by Imasco Limited, a Canadian corporation which operated out of Montreal. Instead of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, CKE Restaurant Holdings has pressed ahead with its other brand, Carls Jr., in the country.

However, Hardee's has been left without a major chunk of business. This isn't the only spat that Hardee's has had, either: It once had a feud with Jack In The Box. It got rid of its plant-based burgers — which was likely a big mistake So we don't know if you know this, but plant-based food is here to stay.

Plant-based meat alternatives have been all the rage in fast food for several years now, and the plant-based food market more generally is only set to get bigger as time goes on — meaning that there'll be more customers hankering after vegan burgers in restaurants like Hardee's. The chain seemed to cotton onto this in late 2020, when it introduced an expanded partnership with Beyond Meat, introducing its Beyond Burger in its units around the country. This partnership was naturally welcome news to people who follow a plant-based lifestyle, but it unfortunately didn't stand the test of time.

Shortly after announcing this partnership and putting its Beyond Burger front and center, Hardee's removed it from its menu. Nowadays, it's nowhere to be found, and vegetarians and vegans have been left wanting for alternatives. This may have been because Hardee's found it difficult to sell these burgers (people on Reddit reported their local stores giving away full boxes of Beyond patties), but removing it from the menu seriously limited people's choice and options, and we wouldn't be surprised if its sales were dented by plant-based eaters going elsewhere.

Hardee's food and labor costs are getting more expensive One of the biggest reasons that Hardee's is struggling is one that's affecting almost every restaurant out there: Things are just way more expensive than they used to be, guys. The price of food and labor has gone through the roof in the last few years, with the latter being an especially big spend for Hardee's. "What continues to be ahead of historical averages is the increase in labor costs that restaurants are seeing," says Jim Salera, Stephens analyst, via CNBC .

The more that costs go up, the more that Hardee's has to increase its prices to balance the checkbook. However, when a restaurant's already in trouble, it either makes its items totally unaffordable or starts to close units as a result. When you consider how many Hardee's restaurants have shut in the last couple years, and the fact that Hardee's franchising are citing spiraling costs as reasons for their bankruptcy, it's clear that the state of the economy has the brand clinging onto survival by its fingertips.

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