America's favorite fast food chains

Sorry McDonald's, you don't make the cut
Piper Weiss, Shine Staff
Thu Jun 30, 2011
http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/food/americas-favorite-fast-food-chains-sorry-mcdonalds-you-dont-make-the-cut-2504452

For the best restaurants in the country ask a Michelin guide reviewer. For the best fast food joints, ask everyone else. That's what Consumer Reports did in their new survey out today. They polled 36,733 subscribers to their magazine on their favorite go-to chains for instant gratification.

Based on over 98,000 visits to 53 chains, readers judged the service, speed, cost and overall deliciousness of their quick dining experience. The big surprise: the highest rated fast food didn't come from the biggest chains. McDonald's, Taco Bell, and KFC, also took a backseat to the slightly smaller franchises. Here are readers' picks for the best fast food experience.

Burgers: In-N-Out burger. The West Coast chain beat out Burger King, McDonald's, and countless other burger-flipping joints to rate highest in taste, speed and service. Their freshly prepared, preservative-free patties were a shoe-in for flavor, and also earned high marks for value. Who needs super-sizing when you've got a super-secret menu?

Mexican: Chiptole Mexican Grill. With only 8 chains in this category, the competition is slim, but readers gave this tacos-and-guac haven the highest marks not only for flavor but for speed and service.

Chicken: Chick-fil-A. The fried chicken trays and sandwiches at this nationwide chain beat out KFC's buckets by a long shot.

Sandwiches and Subs: Jason's Deli. The little guy stepped out of the shadows of Quiznos and Subway, as a top pick. It's massive menu options (subs, muffalettas, wraps and even pasta) and "grab-and-go" meals, garnered big-time service and speed points.

Pizza: Papa Murphy's Take N' Bake Pizza. Don't bother making the pizza, we can do it ourselves. That's the message with this surprising fan favorite, a pizza chain that sells prepped, uncooked pizzas that you heat up at home.

Best overall value: Papa Murphy's, CiCi Pizza and In-N-Out Burger. Readers picked these three chains medium-sized chains as the best bang for your buck.

Not everyone was so positive about the fast food experience. Readers rated Round Table Pizza, KFC and the struggling Italian chain, Sbarro's, as offering the least value. And casual dining restaurants like Cracker Barrel and Outback Steakhouse pleased patrons far in terms of experience than the standard to-go chains. Not surprisingly, only 13 percent of those surveyed considered the last meal they ate at a fast food restaurant "healthful." Despite a growing number of lower-fat menu options one thing is clear: they don't turn to the drive-through for diet tips.

China Hearts Colonel Sanders

Yum! Brands (owners of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell) is the most American of korporate food giants this side of a Big Mac. Which makes it interesting that Yum! now makes more dollars in China than the USA.

The spread in quarter three last year: 41.5 percent of Yum! sales came in the Asian giant versus 33.9 from the United States, and the spread in profits was greater, 46.3 vs. 29.1 percent.

The money in China is overwhelmingly KFC: of the 3,664 restaurants they own in the country, 83 percent are the Sanders brand. The rest are Pizza Huts, as Taco Bell was a flop that left the nation in 2008. But perhaps the chicken craze will lead to a reintroduction of Mexican food in China by combining the brands. Mexican food, like pizza, is not a hard sell when given the chance...

Colonel Sanders: China's favorite import
Paul R. La Monica
January 19, 2011
http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/19/news/companies/thebuzz/index.htm

Drive-thru Gourmet: XXL Chalupa: It's huge, and a huge mess

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/7277139.html

Drive-thru Gourmet: XXL Chalupa: It's huge, and a huge mess
KEN HOFFMAN
Houston Chronicle
Nov. 3, 2010

This week I reached out for a new XXL Chalupa, a monster sandwich that brags that big things come in big packages, from America's No. 1 Mexican-inspired drive-through, Taco Bell, with 5,800 restaurants in all 50 states north of the border.

By introducing the XXL Chalupa, Taco Bell is joining the bigger is better club, challenging KFC's Double Down fried chicken sandwich for demented overload and over-the-top calories, fat and carbs. Taco Bell went right past an XL Chalupa and went straight to XXL.

Here's the XXL Chalupa blueprint: a big wide chalupa shell that looks like a deep-fried canoe, packed with seasoned ground beef, crispy lettuce, fiesta salsa, a blend of three cheeses — cheddar, pepper jack and mozzarella — nacho cheese sauce, red tortilla-chip strips and (ironically) reduced-fat sour cream.

Total calories: 650. Fat grams: 39. Dietary fiber: 7. Carbs: 53. Manufacturer's suggested retail price: $2.99. Your mileage may differ.

The XXL Chalupa's shtick is that it is Two X Large, which will be the size of your T-shirt if you eat too many of them. This is strictly for growing teenagers, workout freaks and Adam Richman of Man vs. Food.

The shell is bigger, crispier and doughier than a regular chalupa. It has the texture of fry bread, and it still struggles to keep all its ingredients in check. Have extra napkins — or a drop cloth — handy.

Three cheeses, plus nacho sauce, plus two salsas, plus shredded lettuce and chopped tomatoes and loose ground beef … this may be the messiest Taco Bell brainstorm ever.

ken.hoffman@chron.com

The fast-food giant eating up the world

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/the-fastfood-giant-eating-up-the-world-2025955.html

The fast-food giant eating up the world
Thanks to its success in China, Yum!, the owner of KFC, is bigger than McDonald's – and it's still growing.
Stephen Foley
Wednesday, 14 July 2010

The Colonel's army is on the march. Vast swathes of China have fallen under his dominion, and he is making inroads in India and Russia. It is one of the great American conquests of our time: the Kentucky Fried Chickenification of the middle classes in the world's emerging economies. And it all means that KFC's parent company, Yum! Brands, which also owns Pizza Hut and the Mexican food outlet Taco Bell, has earned the exclamation mark on which it insists.

With 37,000 restaurants in 110 countries, Yum! even eclipses that more famous icon of American colonisation, McDonald's, to rank as the world's largest restaurant chain in terms of numbers of outlets. For Yum! the task is to forge onward in this virgin territory, but also to shore up its gains against the hungry McDonald's and other fast-food giants, all the while trying to keep the home fires burning back in the US, where sales are challenging because consumers are watching their wallets and their waistlines. The 23 years since Yum! opened its first KFC in China near Beijing's Tiananmen Square provide a masterclass in overseas expansion. Its success to date has tempted a hundred imitations and whose progress in the future will be one of the most closely watched stories in corporate America.

"Yum!'s is an amazing story about how they conquered China so much earlier than their main rivals," says RJ Hottovy, an analyst at Morningstar. "Part of the reason is that they built up their supply chain and their distribution system quickly, and that is giving them a real competitive advantage. When you are setting up restaurants in new territories it is often difficult to procure packaging and to develop good relationships with suppliers, but Yum! now has a nice little edge."

China has become so important to Yum! that it now splits its sales there into a separate division ranking equal to its US market. Last year, 33 per cent of its operating profits came from China, nudging the 38 per cent from the US, and it sees much greater potential still. Adding in Pizza Hut, which is pitched as a mid-market family dining experience in China, there will be 475 new Yum! outlets in there this year, on top of the record 509 added last year.

There are almost three times as many KFCs now in mainland China than there are McDonald's restaurants, which opened its doors there just three years later, in 1990. Mr Hottovy says competition is hotting up, however. "At the time that Yum! was accelerating in China, McDonald's was working on a turnaround in the US, but since that has been completed, it has turned its attention to international expansion in a big way and is planning to double its presence in China, so the competition for Yum is going to be increasing," he said.

"McDonald's, with its well-known brand, its advertising and its scale, will be a major player. But there is room for both. This is all about the rise of the middle-income consumer in China that is fuelling the growth, the story that we hear so much about."

All of the Yum! brands are storied American companies. KFC was founded by Harland Sanders in 1952, when he was already an established Kentucky businessman and had earned the title "Kentucky Colonel" for his services to the state. Pizza Hut traces its history back almost as far, and the younger Taco Bell, whose growth has mirrored the growth of the Mexican community and the popularity of its cuisine, was founded in 1962. The three chains were pulled together by Pepsi, the drinks-maker, which ran a restaurant division until 1997, when it decided to spin off the lot.

The growth trajectory in China has not been without its setbacks, including a dip in sales at existing restaurants there in 2005, but David Novak, the former Pepsi executive who has been Yum! chief executive since 2000, boasts that the company's infrastructure in China will not only carry it through but allow it to best its rivals. "China is predicted to be the fastest-growing major economy in the world," he said in the company's latest annual report. "In fact, it is expected to grow its middle class from around 300 million today to 500 million people in 2020. Like I've said in the past, we will no doubt have some bumpy years, but I wouldn't trade our long-term position in China with any consumer company in the world."

It is worth remembering that what Yum! is doing has never been done before. Who really knows what the Chinese appetite for Western-style fast food really will turn out to be? Both KFC and Pizza Hut have adapted their menus to local tastes, and their advertising, too. But, continuing with its second-quarter results last night, the focus is shifting to other expansion opportunities in China and beyond. The company is trialling a new Chinese food chain, called East Dawning, so that it can use its formidable distribution infrastructure for a more diverse range of brands and cuisines – just in case.

And then there are the other emerging markets. Yum has more than 70 KFCs in India, as well as 160 Pizza Huts, and it just opened its first Taco Bell in the country in March. It promises to hit 1,000 outlets in total by 2015, employing 50,000 people and raking in $100m in operating profit. Meanwhile, Mr Novak is hoping to engineer a dramatic expansion of Taco Bell, too. "Two global brands – and one on the way," he is fond of saying.

Taco Bell, with its menu of Mexican staples, from burritos and nachos to tacos, brought in just 3 per cent of its sales from outside the US in 2008, but that low figure was not for want of trying. The chain has attempted launches across the world on several occasions since the Eighties, but never gained popular acceptance. It is only now sticking a toe back into the European market, with a return to the UK via a first outlet in the Lakeside shopping centre, which opened two weeks ago.

In the US, the focus is on sprucing up the menus across the Yum! outlets, and that means making them healthier. At KFC, less chicken is being fried (hence a preference for using the initials) and more is being grilled. At Pizza Hut, putting chicken wings on a wider menu has helped reverse a slide in revenues, while Taco Bell is pushing salads. More important perhaps to the company's financial health is a move to switch the US business from being owned and operated directly by Yum! from its headquarters at 1,900 Colonel Sanders Lane in Louisville, Kentucky, to being run by franchisees. The revenue from licence fees is lower, but at least it is stable and the margins are higher.

In short, the stagnation of its US business does not mean that an American corporation is doomed to stagnate itself, if it can seize opportunities around the world. Yum! is on course to boost earnings by 10 per cent this year, despite falling like-for-like sales in the US. It has peppered its missives to investors with fighting talk, promising to "dramatically improve" its US brands and "aggressive international expansion", with 1,400 new outlets in 2010. It doesn't plan to lose that exclamation mark, and wants to live up to its description of itself: "The defining global company that feeds the world."

Yum! Brands in numbers

509 new restaurants opened in China in 2009
2,950 branches of Kentucky Fried Chicken in China
1,100 branches of McDonald's in China
21 East Dawning Chinese food outlets
$19bn Yum! market capitalisation
440% share price rise since 2000
2% operating profit from China in 1998
33% operating profit from China in 2009
$9.4bn annual sales
1958 First branch of Pizza Hut opens in Kansas
1952 Colonel Harland D Sanders opens first KFC in Utah
11 herbs and spices in KFC's "finger-lickin' flavour"
1962 Glen Bell opens first branch of Taco Bell in California
1 number of Taco Bell stores in the UK
300 million pounds of cheese used by Pizza Hut each year

87,500 Size in square feet of the KFC "face from space" advertisement built in the Nevada desert and showing Colonel Sanders

24 Secret Restaurant Menus Revealed

http://www.couponsherpa.com/ask-coupon-sherpa/secret-restaurant-menus-revealed/

24 Secret Restaurant Menus Revealed
3/3/2010

Mention "secret menus" and many people think of hidden functions on Blackberries or Xbox games. Actually, secret menus refers to items you can special order at restaurants that aren't mentioned on standard menus.

Some places, like Chipotle Mexican Grills, have a whole secret menu that's limited only by your imagination. On the other hand, In-N-Out Burger's secret menu" is so unsecret it's posted on their Web site. Kind of takes the cool factor out of having the inside scoop, doesn't it?

If you're looking to impress a date or just like that feeling of "knowing the chef," here are 24 restaurants that offer secret menus. Remember, not all may participate in the hidden menu. However, if you try to order something and the server looks at you with a blank look, don't give up. Describe the dish and usually they'll make it for you anyway.

Just keep it under your hat.

1. Arbys

•Chicken Cordon Bleu Sandwich - This spin on the cordon bleu is a chicken breast with a piece of ham on top of it with melted Swiss cheese.
•Wet Fries - Hot fries smothered in cheese sauce.
•French Dip – This is a classic Arby’s menu item that is off most menu’s but can still be ordered.

2. Blimpie

•Cheese Trio - This sandwich is a no meat alternative to the normal Blimpie sandwiches, and combines three different types of cheese.

3. Burger King

•Mustard Whopper - This is a normal Whopper with one difference, mustard is spread onto the sandwich instead of mayo.
•Veggie Whopper - A great alternative for vegetarians who love the flavor of Burger King, the beef is substituted for with a veggie patty.
•BLT - A bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich that comes in either a small or medium size.
•Ham and Cheese - A classic sandwich option that you can have served either hot or cold.
•Frings - An order of frings will split your French fry order with onion rings.
•Suicide Burger - This is a large burger including four meat patties, four slices of cheese, bacon and special sauce.
•Rodeo Burger - A burger assembled with onion rings and bbq sauce on it.
•BK Club - This sandwich is the Original chicken sandwich with bacon, tomato, and cheese.

4. Chick-fil-a

•Fried Club - This is their normal club sandwich with the fried chicken substituted for the grilled chicken.

5. Chili’s

•Chili – This food is the name sake of the company, so even though it has been off the menu for many years they will still make you a bowl of chili if you request it.

6. Chipotle
Chipolte will make you any combination of ingredients they have available to them. Listed below are some of the favorites.

•Nachos - Made with tortilla chips, your choice of salsa and meat, beans, and topped with a layer of cheese.
•Quesadilla - These come in two sizes, the children’s size which is made with two soft taco shells layered with your choice of fillings, or the full size which is a normal burrito tortilla folded in half with your choice of fillings. You can get a side of salsa or sour cream for no additional charge with these.
•Quesorito – A quesadilla with any of the fillings used in a burrito, rolled together and baked in the tortilla warmer. This is a crispier version of a quesadilla.

7. Dairy Queen

•Chocolate Chip Blizzard - This blizzard sounds like your basic chocolate chip ice cream, but its not. It is made with quick to harden chocolate usually used on the dipping cones.
•Banana Split Blizzard - All your basic banana split flavors blended together into a blizzard.
•Jack and Jill Sundae - A classic sundae with marshmallow and hot fudge.
•Lavender Blue Sundae - This is a blueberry sundae with marshmallow.
•Frozen Hot Chocolate - In some places this is still on the menu seasonally, but basically it is hot chocolate blended with ice to give it a frozen crunch.
•Peanut Buster Parfait - This is a multi level sundae combining fudge, vanilla soft serve, and peanuts.

8. Dunkin Doughnuts

•Turbo Hot Coffee - An extra shot of expresso in your coffee.

9. Fat Burger

•Hypocrite - A veggie burger topped with bacon.

10. In–N–Out Burger
Famous for its not-so-secret menu, all In-N-Out Burger employees should be aware of these options.

•Double Meat – Two beef patties, lettuce, tomato, spread, and bun. You can always order onions either grilled or sliced.
•3 by Meat – Three beef patties, any veggies and sauce you desire with no cheese.
•3 x 3 – Three beef patties, three slices of cheese, veggies and bun.
•2 x 4 – For those who love cheese this is a great option, two meat patties with four slices of cheese.
•4 x 4 – Four beef patties, four slices of cheese, veggies, and a bun. A cure for anyone’s hunger
•Grilled Cheese – 2 Slices of cheese melted with lettuce and tomato and a bun.
•Protein Style – A low carb alternative to any burger wrapped in lettuce instead of a bun
•Animal Style – A beef patty smothered in mustard before its cooked, with lettuce tomato, pickle, extra spread, and grilled onions.
•Animal Style Fries – Cheese, spread, grilled onions, and pickles piled high on top of fries.
•Flying Dutchman – Two meat patties and two slices of cheese, with nothing else not even a bun.
•Fries Well Done – Fries cooked extra crispy, almost like potato chips.
•Fries Light – Fries cooked less, they will be more tender and oily.
•Neapolitan Shake – Chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream blended together into one shake.
•Extra Toast – Buns that have been left on the grill longer until they are extra crispy.
•Veggie Burger / Wish Burger – This burger has no meat or cheese, but lots of grilled onions lettuce and sauce along with double tomatoes.
•Cheese Fries – Fries with a layer of cheese melted on top.
•Untoasted – Any burger with a bun that has not been toasted.
•Mustard Grilled Patty – A burger with mustard spread on it before grilling.
•Chopped Chilies – Diced jalapenos can be added to any burger.
•Large & Extra Large Shakes – Although they are not on the menu they are available upon request.
•100 x 100 Burger – Although they are not on the menu they are available upon request.

11. Jamba Juice
Since Jamba Juice keeps the ingredients that create their hidden menu drinks under wraps all we have for you are the titles.

•Pink Starburst
•Raspberry Dreamin’
•Pineapple Dreamin’
•Bluetopia
•Sourpatch Kid
•Now and Later
•Peanut Butter and Jelly
•Apple Pie
•Fruity Pebbles
•Strawberry Shortcake
•Red Gummy Bear
•White Gummy Bear
•Chocolate Gummy Bear
•Push Pop
•Skittles

12. KFC/A&W

•Poutine - This is a Canadian favorite that includes French fries, fried cheese curds, and gravy layered together.

13. Little Caesers

•Stuffed Crust Pizza - If you ask for it they will make you a pizza with the cheese stuff crust made famous by Pizza Hut.

14. Long John Silvers

•Side of Crumbs - This is a (Free!) box of fried batter parts that have fallen off the fried fish or chicken. Great to put on top of salads.

15. McDonalds

•Biscuits and Gravy - This one may only be available in the South – but it’s the classic combination of gravy smothering hot biscuits.
•McKinley Mac – A big Mac with quarter pounder patties.
•Grilled Cheese - A bun grilled with American cheese inside.
•Big Mac with Quarter Pounder Patties - This is great if you are looking to decrease the cost and calories of the classic Big Mac Sandwich. You get the entire flavor with less meat.
•All American - This is a normal sized hamburger with only pickles and ketchup.
•Big McChicken - This is a huge sandwich in which the chicken patties replace the bun.
•Fries with Big Mac Sauce - Fries smothered in the secret and special big Mac Sauce.
•Chicken and Waffles - This is a McGriddle sandwich with chicken in the middle.
•Neopolitan Milk Shake - 1/3 vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice creams blended together into one shake.
•McLeprichon - This shake is only available in March and is composed of the shamrock shake mixed with the chocolate shake making a mint chocolate shake.
•Pie McFlurry - If you purchase a pie you can have it blended into your McFlurry.
•McGangBang - This is a double cheeseburger with a chicken patty in between the two beef patties.
•Land, Sea, and Air Burger - The Land, Sea, and Air burger, has a beef patty, chicken patty, and fillet-o-fish patty all piled high onto a bun.
•Root Beer Float - You can pick any size of root beer and they will add the vanilla ice cream on top.
•Coke Float - Any size of coke with ice cream. You can even get it with chocolate ice cream.
•Monster Mac - A big Mac composed of 8 meat patties.
•2 Cheese Burger Meal Mac - Two cheese burgers, fries and a drink.

16. Popeyes

•Naked – Any Popeyes sandwich you can order “naked”, meaning their will be no breading on the meat.

17. Potbelly’s Secret Menu

•Cheeseburger – This is a meatball sandwich with ketchup replacing the marinara and the addition of mustard, cheese, and pickles.
•Fireball – A meatball sandwich with chili on top.
•Wrecking ball – A combination of both the meatball sandwich and the wreck sandwich.

18. Sonic

•Frito Pie - This is a southern favorite with layers of chili and fritos.
•Grilled Ham and Cheese - This is your basic warm gooey ham and cheese sandwich.

19. Starbucks – With the large variety of different Starbucks franchises it is important to know what’s in any hidden menu drink you order. Many should know these options however, since they are not all the same just remember the ingredients in case they do not know and they will be happy to make the drink for you.

•Biscotti Frapuccino - This is a typical frapuccino but it has a biscotti blended inside. You will have to purchase the biscotti separate when you are checking out, but you can have it in any flavor frap.
•Short Drink - This is a less expensive version of any Starbucks drink. It is smaller than a tall with a lower price.
•Red Eye - This is a shot of espresso in regular drip coffee.
•Black Eye - This drink has 2 shots of espresso in regular drip coffee.
•Green Eye - This drink includes 3 shots of espresso in regular drip coffee.
•Poor Mans Latte - We recommend you do not tell your Barista you are planning on creating this drink when you order. Order an iced Americano with no water and half ice, then use the free milk on the side to mix it up to your standards.
•Poor Mans Chai Latte - Same recommendation as above applies here. Order a Chai Tea Misto with extra foam, two tea bags, and half cinnamon and half vanilla syrup.
•French Pressed Coffee - If you want coffee served fresh from a French press you may have it with any variety in the shop.
•Chocolate Cream Frapuccino - This is a frapuccino made with chocolate syrup and chocolate frapuccino base.
•Cake Batter Frap - Order a vanilla frappucino and ask for both the vanilla bean and almond flavorings. It will taste just like cake batter.
•Crunchberry Frap - Flavored like the crunchberry cereal, this is a strawberrys and cream frappucino with hazelnut flavoring.
•Strawberry Blended Lemonade - Although this had been taken off the menu, most locations will still blend the strawberry flavoring with lemonade for you.
•London Fog - This is made with vanilla flavoring in Earl Gray Tea.
•Zebra Mocha (also called a Tuxedo or Penguin Mocha) - This is a mix of the white chocolate and regular chocolate mochas.
•Red Tux Mocha (also called Bleeding Penguin) - The same mix of white chocolate and regular chocolate mocha with raspberry flavoring.

20. Subway

•Pizza Sub – This sub was taken of the menu in most locations when Subway began marketing itself as healthy alternative to fast food. However, upon request you can get the Pizza Sub which combines cheese, tomato sauce, and pepperoni.

21. Taco Bell

•Cheesy Gordita Crunch – This is a seasonal favorite for many, however it can be ordered year round.
•Green Sauce – Although this sauce is still available in most South West locations, if you request it at your local restaurant usually they will have it on hand.
•Double Grilled Quesadilla – An extra crispy quesadilla.
•Chili Cheese Burrito – A burrito filled with chili and cheese instead of the usual mixes.
•Enchirito – This is a enchilada of beef, beans, cheese, diced onions, and red sauce.

22. Taco John’s

•Ranch Burrito - We’re not certain what exactly is in the ranch burrito, however it appears to have either a beef or chicken option.

23. Wendy’s

•Grand Slam - This burger has a total of four meat patties.
•Big Bacon Classic - This is your classic burger with bacon.
•Value Crispy Chicken Club – A reduced price Crispy Chicken sandwich with bacon, lettuce, tomato, and mayo.
•Jr. Cheeseburger Deluxe – This value sized burger includes lettuce, tomato, onions, pickles, and ketchup.
•Barnyard – A spicy chicken sandwich with ham, bacon and beef separated by cheese.

24. White Castle

•Seasoned Fries - Classic fries with additional seasoning for flavor.

Taco Bell Founder Dead at 86

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=9594542

Taco Bell Founder Dead at 86
Glen W. Bell, founder of Taco Bell chain, dies at 86
RANCHO SANTA FE, Calif.
January 18, 2010

Glen W. Bell Jr., an entrepreneur best known as the founder of the Taco Bell chain, has died. He was 86.

Bell died Sunday at his home in Rancho Santa Fe, according to a statement posted Monday on the Taco Bell Web site.

The Irvine-based company did not release a cause of death.

"Glen Bell was a visionary and innovator in the restaurant industry, as well as a dedicated family man," Greg Creed, president of Taco Bell, said in the statement.

Bell launched his first restaurant, called Bell's Drive-In, in 1948 in San Bernardino after seeing the success of McDonald's Bar-B-Que, the predecessor of McDonald's, which was founded in the same city in 1940. Like McDonald's, Bell's restaurant sought to take advantage of Southern California's car culture by serving hamburgers and hot dogs through drive-in windows.

The World War II veteran next helped establish Taco Tias in Los Angeles, El Tacos in the Long Beach area, and Der Wienerschnitzel, a national hot dog chain.

Bell launched Taco Bell in 1962 in Downey after cutting ties with his business partners and quickly expanding around Los Angeles.

He sold the first Taco Bell franchise in 1964. In 1978, Bell sold his 868 Taco Bell restaurants to PepsiCo for $125 million in stock.

Taco Bell is now owned by Yum! Brands and is the largest Mexican fast-food chain in the nation, serving more than 36.8 million consumers each week in more than 5,600 U.S. locations.

Bell is survived by his wife, Martha, three sisters, two sons, a daughter and four grandchildren.

A private funeral is planned.

Top 5 Fast Food Value Menu Deals

http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/107496/top-5-fast-food-value-menu-deals.html

Top 5 Fast Food Value Menu Deals
by Tara Struyk
Friday, August 14, 2009

Common wisdom suggests that it's cheaper to cook your own meals at home than it is to eat in a restaurant. But as the economy's slump continues, fast-food restaurants have been trumpeting the financial merits of their value menus, many of which offer filling food for a dollar or less.

With these companies' ability to buy food in mass quantities at much greater discounts than what you can get from even a discount grocer, can you really compete? Let's take a look the top five fast food values out there today.

Breaking It Down

To come up with per-serving prices for ingredients in these fast food items, we used their average or estimated retail costs. These will vary depending on where you live and where you shop. The cost of individual condiments was excluded for simplicity's sake.

No. 5 KFC: The "Snacker" Is Just That

KFC launched its 10-item value menu in February, but unlike some of the other chains on this list, only three of its value offerings fall under the $1 mark. The best value of the bunch is probably the Ultimate Cheese KFC Snacker, a 3-ounce breaded chicken strip covered in cheese sauce and lettuce on a dinner-roll sized bun.

At 115 grams, it's a considerable lightweight compared to the other value menu items on this list, which weigh in anywhere from 128 grams (Taco Bell) to 151 grams (McDonald's).

Per-Sandwich Cost at KFC: 99 cents
Per Sandwich Cost at Home:
-Chicken(prepared at home at $3/pound): 56 cents
-Dinner Roll: 15 cents
-Cheese Sauce: 4 cents
-Total: 75 cents + condiments and cooking time

Bottom Line: You can make this at home for less, but only if you can crack the Colonel's secret recipe.

No. 4 Burger King: Where's the Cheese?

There are more than a dozen value menu items at Burger King. The Whopper Junior, a standard burger with 2.2 ounces of beef, is the most substantial item, but unlike the other burgers on this list it does not include cheese. According to BeefRetail.org, the average price of regular ground beef as of March 2009 was $2.44.

Per-Burger Cost at Burger King: 99 cents (depending on where you live)
Per-Burger Cost at Home:
-Meat: 33 cents
-Bun: 25 cents
-Total: 58 cents + condiments and cooking time

Bottom Line: If you make your own version of a Junior Whopper, you can add a slice of cheese and a little extra meat and still get more food for $1.

No. 3 Taco Bell: Why Pay More?

Taco Bell's ‘Why Pay More?’ Value Menu has some of the lowest prices around, with 10 products priced at 79, 89 and 99 cents. This Mexican-inspired food goes for prices that you might see in, well, Mexico. The hot item on this menu is reportedly the Cheesy Double Beef Burrito, an eight-ounce giant with about 2.5 ounces of seasoned ground beef, cheese sauce, seasoned rice and red sauce.

Per-Burrito Cost at Taco Bell: 99 cents
Per Burrito Cost at Home:
-Meat: 38 cents
-Tortilla: 25 cents
-Cheese Sauce (prepared, 1/2 ounce): ~15 cents
-Rice (at a price of 4 cents per ounce and assuming two ounces): 8 cents
-Total: 86 cents + condiments and cooking time

Bottom Line: If you make a similar item at home, you might be cutting it close in terms of coming out ahead of this fast-food item, as tortillas can easily cost as much as 40 cents each, depending on where you shop. If you make your own tortillas, you could make a similar burrito for as little as 60 cents.

No.2 McDonald's: Budgets Are Lovin' It

The iconic Mcdonald's dollar menu has been around since 2002, and although it offers only a handful of items, they seem like a steal. A dollar-menu staple, something you could actually call "lunch", is the McDouble: two hamburger patties, one slice of cheese, condiments and a bun.

Per-Burger Cost at McDonalds: $1
Per-Burger Cost at Home:
-Meat: 49 cents
-Cheese: 20 cents
-Bun: 25 cents
-Total: 94 cents + condiments and the time it takes to cook it

Bottom Line: Assuming the cost of the condiments adds a few more cents, you can see that the McDouble is a tantalizingly good value.

No.1 Wendy's: It's Value

Wendy's doesn't have a signature sandwich but it does capitalize on its signature square burger patties. But does this chain offer a product that's "wayyyy better than fast food" in terms of value?

In a word: yes. Look at Wendy's Double Stack burger, one of the key items on its sizable Super Value Menu. It is advertised as a 99-cent item and consists of two 1.78 ounce hamburger patties, a cheese slice and condiments.

Per-Burger Cost at Wendy's: 99 cents
Per-Burger Cost at Home:
-Meat: 54 cents
-Bun: 25 cents
-Cheese: 20 cents
-Total: 99 cents +condiments and cooking time

Bottom Line: As it turns out, Wendy's really isn't cutting corners with its signature square burgers. If you can find a Wendy's location that's selling this item for 99 cents (some have bumped the price up to $1.49), you'll be sinking your teeth into the most beef you can get for less than a dollar.

Can I Take Your Order?

So, while in most cases you can't get better deal at the drive-through window than in the grocery aisle, if you stick to value menu items, the savings gleaned by flipping your own burgers are very small, particularly for top fast food restaurants like Wendy's and McDonalds.

It all depends on what you value most. If your top priorities are convenience and price, fast food chains may be the most budget-friendly way to fill your stomach. If you're worried about food quality - or your waistline - these cheap, filling fast food deals may not be your best bet.

Famous Taco Bell Chihuahua Dead at 15

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,534415,00.html

Famous Taco Bell Chihuahua Dead at 15
Wednesday, July 22, 2009

The famous Taco Bell Spokesdog – who charmed audiences with the catchphrase “Yo Quiero Taco Bell” – has died.

Gidget, the 15-year-old Chihuaha, suffered a fatal stroke Tuesday night, according to a report from People magazine.

The “mostly-retired” canine also appeared in the film “Legally Blonde 2,” starring as Bruiser’s mom. In addition, she appeared in a commercial for the ‘90s edition of Trivial Pursuit.

When she wasn’t starring in films and commercials, Gidget enjoyed taking hikes, sunning her fur and sleeping for 23 hours, her trainer Sue Chipperton told People.

“She made so many people happy,” Chipperton said. “Gidget always knew where the camera was.”

The Cult of the McRib

http://www.maxim.com/TheCultoftheMcRib/articles/48421.aspx

HUMOR
The Cult of the McRib
In search of the legendary bone-free porky treat that inspired a national obsession.
By Adam Winer

Chicago is shivering beneath the first snowflakes of winter as my rental car skirts the area that was once the meat packing capital of the country. The sky is gray, the trees are bare, the air is raw. But as I make one final turn I find myself basking in the celestial glow of the Golden Arches, beneath which are the three magic words I’ve flown some 800 miles to see: MCRIBS ARE BACK!

McDonald’s McRib is a sandwich of legend. The heavenly blend of pork patty, barbecue sauce, and bun is, to devotees, so addictive that songs have been written about it, Internet shrines erected to it, and TV shows dedicated to it. Yet McDonald’s has made the McRib a limited edition, available only in certain areas of the country for part of the year. It is rarely seen, yet frequently sought and cultishly worshiped. It is the Holy Grail on a bun.

Because I live in New York, where the sandwich is nearly impossible to come by, it has been 15 years since I’ve eaten a McRib. So what to do when McDonald’s offers not only to divulge where it can be found but also to provide access to the men behind the McRib?

It’s time for a McRoadtrip.

I begin my pork-a-thon in Oak Brook, Illinois, where the McDonald’s corporate headquarters is based and where the local franchise sits a mere 100 yards from Ronald’s corner office. My McRib arrives dressed with pickle slices, an even sprinkling of onion arcs, and a healthy dose of barbecue sauce. Literally shaking with anticipation, I take a bite. It’s delicious. The precise appropriation of barbecue sauce per­fectly complements the light saltiness of the rib-shaped meat patty, bringing out its porky grace notes. The pickles burst forth with a sourness that contrasts with the sauce’s sweetness. And the onions rush in to leave the palate with a robust kick. “The more taste sen­sations you can have in a product, the more interesting it is to your tongue,” says Dan Coudreau, head chef for McDonald’s in the United States. “All those savory, salty, sweet, and sour flavors work together. It’s a classic taste combination with barbecue.”

Initially test-marketed in 1981, the McRib was the brainchild of McDonald’s first ex­ec­u­tive chef, Rene Arend, who’d been plucked from the kitchen of a local luxury hotel and tasked with increasing the franchise’s menu options. Arend’s most industry-altering achievement would prove to be the creation of the Chicken McNugget in 1979. And it was the success of the nugget that necessitated the immediate invention of the McRib. “The McNuggets were so well received that every franchise wanted them,” says Arend, now an 80-year-old retiree living in Chicago. “There wasn’t a system to supply enough chicken. We had to come up with something to give the other franchises as a new product. So the McRib came about because of the shortage of chickens.”

The McRib’s direct inspiration was Southern BBQ. “I had just come back from Charleston, South Carolina, where I ate sandwiches made from pulled pork,” Arend remembers. “I said to myself, Something with that flavor should really go over.”

But instead of pulling his pork, Arend decided to give the meat its legendarily absurd shape: Even though it contains no bones, the patty is molded to resemble a miniature rack of ribs. “Some thought, Why not just make it round?” recalls Arend. “It would’ve been easier. But I wanted it to look like a slab of ribs.”

About sixty miles southwest of Chicago, at a Mickey D’s in Kankakee, Illinois, the booths are packed with sauce-stained customers. “I don’t normally go to McDonald’s, but when I saw McRibs were back on the menu, I was like, ‘I gotta get me one,’” says Oliver Corpuz, a 36-year-old attorney. “I’m not even sure if it’s all really pork in there. It’s some sort of extruded meat product.”

Contrary to what its name implies, there is very little actual rib meat in a McRib. “Primar­ily, it’s shoulder meat,” explains Rob Cannell, director of McDonald’s U.S. supply chain. “The McRib is made in large processing plants—lots of stainless steel, a number of production lines, and these long cryogenic freezers. The pork meat is chopped up, then seasoned, then formed into that shape that looks like a rib back. Then we flash-freeze it. The whole process from fresh pork to frozen McRib takes about 45 minutes.”

Since the McRib is a promotional sandwich, as opposed to a full-time menu item, each individual restaurant gets to decide whether or not to stock it. Hence the scarcity that has made it the Halley’s Comet of fast-food entrees. McDonald’s has alerted me which Illinois lo­cations are currently carrying the McRib, so I make a number of stops as night falls. But for the average fan there is the McRib Locator Map at mcrib.kleincast.com, a tracking Web site created by Minneapolis-area meteorologist and hardcore pork enthusiast Alan Klein.

“My inspiration came a year ago when some friends of mine were having a hard time finding McRibs,” explains Klein. On his map visitors can report locations where they’ve found a McRib, allowing rib-heads everywhere to benefit from the shared tracking info. As I stop for the night in Urbana-Champaign, I plug all my finds into the site’s map—the better to help others on pork pilgrimages.

The McRib’s place in the pop culture firmament was solidly established with the 12th episode of the 14th season of The Simpsons. In it Homer becomes addicted to Krusty Burger’s new “Ribwich,” which is made from a mysterious animal Krusty refuses to identify. Obviously, Homer has no choice but to abandon his family to tour the country with other rib addicts. The gorging stops only after Krusty announces that the’ve eaten the mysterious animal into extinction. “Homer would follow it around like people followed the Grateful Dead around,” says Simpsons executive pro­ducer Al Jean. “We asked Bob Seger to sing the commercial for the Ribwich, but he declined.” The McRib has repeatedly popped up in Letterman’s Top 10 Lists (Top 10 Surprises in Clinton’s State of the Union Address: 2. If reelected, would bring back the McRib Sandwich) and was in an episode of Adult Swim’s The Boondocks in which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. returns to the modern day and discov­ers the wonders of processed pork patties. “Oh, snap! No they didn’t!” exclaims King. “A boneless rib sandwich. What will they think of next?”

“The McRib has all the trappings of a true cultural phenomenon,” says Chris Sivori, a former video game tester in Austin, Texas who chron­icled his coworkers’ annual McRib eating challenge on his Web site, letterneversent.com. “It’s so mysterious. A bone-shaped thing that has no bones in it? That’s out of control.”

After the McRib rolled out nationwide in 1982, McDonald’s learned the sandwich worked best as a limited-time offering. Its restricted availability has become a marketing tool. A few years back McDonald’s even launched a highly publicized Farewell Tour, announcing that the McRib was about to disappear forever, only to bring it back the following year for another Farewell Tour. “The McRib was like the Who,” chef Coudreaut admits. McDonald’s still sold 30 million of them in 2007, totaling more than seven million pounds of pig meat.

Driving through St. Louis, a billboard over the horizon announces mcrib: makes moist towelettes feel wanted, and indeed the city’s franchises have a predilection for heavy saucing. As I down one last sandwich before heading home, I leave a glob of sauce in the box and a mound of soiled napkins on the tray. The experience leaves me feeling oddly content.

On my way to the St. Louis airport to fly back to New York, I buy four final McRibs and shove them into my carry-on bag. Somewhere over Ohio, I reach for my bag to sneak out a midflight snack. As I open the McRib container, its aroma of pork and lukewarm sauce pervades the cabin. The middle-aged woman stuck sitting next to me looks visibly horrified. But her husband one seat over? I’m going to categorize him as envious. Yes, you can smell it in the air: The McRib is back.

Sandwich Cemetery

For every McRib, a ton of items end up in that big drive-through in the sky.

McD.L.T.
McDonald’s (1985)
A container that separated the warm patty from the cool veggies. Genius! The jaunty ad starring Jason Alexander was just a bonus.

Chicken Littles
KFC (1987)
The sky began to fall when KFC introduced these mini-sandwiches. Seems fans don’t want to be reminded of White Castle’s Slyders.

Bell Beefer
Taco Bell (c. 1970)
There are two lessons to be learned from this monstrosity: 1. Taco Bell should stick to tacos. 2. Pick a name that’s at least vaguely appetizing.

Fire-Grilled Salads
Burger King (2004)
This edible oxymoron included a “specially designed pouch” with hot chicken to be poured over the chilled greens.

Fat Profits

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/01/13/CKE-Hardees-Profile/

Fat Profits
by Joe Keohane
February 2008 Issue

You want onion rings with that? They're already in the burger—along with bacon, cheese, BBQ sauce, and a corporate philosophy that says to hell with the health police. How a fast-food chain is pushing gluttony to new extremes and changing America's attitude toward eating.

It was a patriotic statement that went a bit too far afield: an attempt to create the "ultimate picnic burger." Called the Fourth of July Burger, it was tested last summer at seven locations by the West Coast fast-food chain Carl's Jr. and consisted of a huge beef patty topped with pickles, ketchup, mustard, potato chips, and a hot dog. Stacked high and loaded with fat and calories, it was the food equivalent of the national anthem played through a sousaphone, a perfect distillation of a peculiarly American form of balls-out, postmodern gluttony that, at least outwardly, we're all supposed to be ashamed of right now.

Yet for all its pomp and glory, it didn't quite work. When John Koncki, director of product development for Carl's Jr., talks about it now, he comes across a little wistful. It tasted really good, he says, but the name and the concept proved too much for the testers. "Sometimes," the earnest Koncki says, "some of the sandwiches are so unique that consumers can't wrap their heads around them."

The uniqueness isn't the only thing that's hard to get your head around. During the past few years, CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, has employed an audacious go-for-bloat approach that defies just about everything you've come to assume about the business of modern fast food. (See nutrition data for CKE franchises and other fast-food chains.) In an age when other chains have been forced to at least pretend that they care about the health of their customers and have started offering packets of apples and things sprinkled with walnuts and yogurt, Hardee's and Carl's Jr. are purposely running in the opposite direction, unapologetically creating an arsenal of higher-priced, high-fat, high-calorie monstrosities—pioneering avant-garde concepts such as "meat as a condiment" and "fast-food porn"—and putting the message out to increasingly receptive consumers with ads that are often as controversial as the burgers themselves.

That message may be revolutionary or totally evil or maybe both, but in any case, it goes like this: Anyone can make Americans fat (hell, everyone already has), but only one fast-food company can make them fat and allow them to feel good about it, even get them to feel like they're making a statement and striking a blow against the forces of political correctness. It's downright Jeffersonian in its own weird way, and judging by the growth of both chains, it's working extraordinarily well. Since 2000, CKE's average sales per store have increased by 31 percent, a rate greater than any other burger chain's, save for the nostalgia-mongering Sonic drive-ins, with which CKE is tied. And its stock soared, from about $2 in 2001 to more than $22 last June, before slipping back to around $15 at the end of the year.

Even more interesting is the growing influence of CKE—a regional company that, with more than 3,000 locations, operates the country's 11th- and 12th-largest fast-food chains—on the way fast food is perceived and marketed in America. With its sheer audacity, its philosophy that no one ever went broke overestimating the American appetite, CKE functions as a sort of id for the larger chains, a direct line into the lizard brain of the male fast-food eater. It has envisioned a future even more gluttonous than the present, it has made money, and now others are taking notice.

After a period of collective indigestion induced by the 2004 documentary Super Size Me and the 2001 book Fast Food Nation and its subsequent film adaptation, much of the industry is returning to its traditional customers—men—and its traditional food—meat—served up in ever-greater quantities. Although CKE's signature behemoths—the Carl's Jr. Double Six Dollar Burger and Hardee's Monster Thickburger, both introduced in 2004—out-calorie all comers, Burger King narrowed the gap with its Triple Whopper With Cheese (2005); Wendy's unveiled the Baconator (2007), which we'll get to shortly; and Taco Bell awakened the industry to new possibilities with its 2006 campaign, which urged customers to enjoy a "fourth meal" each day.

The greasy gridiron is becoming well trod, but the first footprints were CKE's. Conrad Lyon, a restaurant-industry analyst for FTN Midwest Securities, says Hardee's and Carl's Jr. "were the ones that really just threw it in your face, so to speak, and did so in a somewhat egregious way."

Andrew Puzder, 57, chief executive of CKE, sits behind an imposing desk in his office at company headquarters in Carpinteria, California (which, for what it's worth, has a gym and no cafeteria), wearing jeans and an untucked Abercrombie & Fitch button-down. Although he spends a lot of time visiting restaurants, eating at a Carl's Jr. or a Hardee's four or five times a week and opting most consistently for his favorite, the Carl's Jr. Six Dollar Burger, he's fit and sinewy, an avid weight lifter and runner—living proof, he says, that customers don't have to be overweight if they exercise and balance their diets. "I think you need the variety of things," he says. "I eat a lot of fruit and vegetables too." Asked whether he thinks it's ironic that a fitness buff runs a company famous for health-destroying burgers, he says, "I think it's an irony that I'm running CKE, even if I didn't exercise. I was a trial lawyer. I think they all thought they were bringing me in to take the company into bankruptcy."

Puzder was working for a law firm in St. Louis when he met CKE founder Carl Karcher and wound up representing the fast-food magnate in a securities-fraud case. The two men became close; Karcher hired Puzder to handle his personal trust and then, in 1997, to serve as CKE's corporate counsel. That same year, CKE acquired the grimy, moribund Hardee's Food Systems. In June 2000, Puzder was appointed Hardee's president and chief executive, and he became CKE's president and C.E.O. soon afterward. Once he took the helm, he began visiting Hardee's restaurants and was appalled at what he found. The places were filthy, the service was terrible, and the cut-rate food wasn't any good. Puzder instituted policies to take care of the first two problems and then started in on the menu. Working with the ad agency Mendelsohn Zien, a Los Angeles-based firm known for its provocative spots and affinity for companies on life support, Puzder scrapped the old menu, which offered everything from cheap burgers to fried chicken to hot dogs, and devised a new one that focused on bigger burgers for "young, hungry guys" (a phrase chanted like a mantra at headquarters) who were sick of being told what they should and should not eat.

Under Puzder, in 2001, the similarly struggling Carl's Jr. introduced the Six Dollar Burger, a half-pound, premium offering intended to rival the fare of "sit-down" restaurants like T.G.I. Friday's. It was meant to taste like a $6 burger: The retail price was $3.95, expensive for a fast-food chain, but Puzder believes that fast-food customers are more discerning than people think they are and want higher-quality ingredients—such as beef from an Angus cow—than those found in ordinary patties.

The Six Dollar Burger did well with customers and in 2002 won the Silver Skillet Award from Restaurant Business magazine. Puzder saw the future. "I think a lot of this everybody's-gonna-eat-healthy thing is more a concern of people in the media than a concern of people who come into our restaurants," he says. Fast-food customers had indeed been clamoring for healthy alternatives, which prompted an industrywide stampede toward salads and orange slices, but just because customers wanted them on the menu didn't necessarily mean they wanted to eat them. For all the buzz created by snack wraps and yogurt parfaits, burgers and fries remain the two most frequently ordered items in American restaurants, according to industry research group NPD Foodworld. In fact, the addition of salads at McDonald's and other chains is partly aimed at drawing more burger-eating men by placating wives and girlfriends who would otherwise veto the restaurant choice. "What people say they want and what they do don't match up," says Darren Tristano, an executive vice president at Technomic, a food-industry research and consulting firm. "If they say, 'I'm gonna order more salads,' they're going to order more french fries." CKE marketing head Brad Haley, who looks a bit like a golfer with his short-sleeve shirt, goatee, and nascent paunch, echoes the sentiment. "People say what makes them feel better about themselves in surveys."

So Hardee's dispensed with any semblance of social conscience and in 2003 introduced the Thickburger. In 2004, this begat the downright lurid Monster Thickburger, a messy two-thirds of a pound of charbroiled Angus beef containing more than 1,400 calories and 107 grams of fat. Soon afterward, when McDonald's, under fire in the wake of Super Size Me, responded to critics by phasing out its supersize menu, Thickburgers were there to help fill the void. Sales soared, nutritionists cried foul, and a string of burgers of escalating perversity followed from both Hardee's and Carl's Jr.: the Breakfast Burger (a huge patty crowned with a fried egg, bacon, and hash browns), the Philly Cheese Steak Thickburger (topped with sliced steak and cheese), and the Pastrami Burger (take a guess).

When the latter two prompted a horrified Jay Leno to denounce CKE for using meat as "a condiment for other meats," CKE was delighted and started touting "meat as a condiment" in its promotional materials. "When we do a big, decadent burger," says Haley, a man whose office fridge is full of nothing but springwater and Diet Coke, "we'll send the press release to Jay Leno, and we're not afraid if he says, 'This disgusting thing is 5,000 calories.'?"

Leno's disgust has become a reliable boost to CKE's sales. Every time the company introduces a new item, he attacks it, but not before running down its entire list of ingredients in detail, as he did in late 2007 when Hardee's unveiled its contribution to the rapidly growing breakfast market, the Country Breakfast Burrito. Consisting of two eggs, ham, bacon, sausage, cheese, and sausage gravy in a flour tortilla, it has 60 grams of fat and more than 900 calories—the biggest in the land, a belt notch ahead of the Carl's Jr. Breakfast Burger, which comes in at 830 calories. When Haley was quoted as saying that the burrito finally makes a big country breakfast portable, Leno, in one of two separate bits he did on the breakfast beast, quipped, "See, this way you can take it with you in the ambulance after your heart stops." Says Puzder: "A lot of people think Leno's on the payroll."

Some other major fast-food chains have been heading down the same path as Hardee's. Six weeks after Hardee's Country Breakfast Burrito appeared, McDonald's countered with the 610-calorie McSkillet Burrito, featuring egg, sausage, potatoes, and American and Monterey Jack cheeses. In the past four years, Burger King and McDonald's have introduced Angus burgers, and Burger King went for sheer excess with its colossal Meatnormous omelet and BK Stackers (multiple patties in one bun). Burger King began offering stackers in 2006 because "we went out and talked to superfans, and they told us a menu gap we had was a really indulgent meat-and-cheese burger," says John Schaufelberger, head of global product innovation. Since then, Burger King's share price has nearly doubled. A spokeswoman for McDonald's said it is testing the Angus burger in response to customer wishes. McDonald's has otherwise lagged in the big-burger arms race but has dramatically boosted its share price in the past five years via a multipronged approach involving everything from premium coffee and better service to an expanded menu and the ubiquitous I'm Lovin' It marketing campaign.

Last summer, Wendy's introduced the Baconator—two hamburger patties, two slices of American cheese, and no fewer than six strips of bacon. Wendy's spokesman Denny Lynch says research shows that customers had an unslakable yearning for more bacon. "Well, if they like two strips of bacon, would they like three? And if they like three, how about six? And that's where the Baconator came from," he says, adding, "there is a trend toward large, indulgent hamburgers." Wendy's (which now also serves stacker-style burgers) reinforced that trend in November, when it announced it would be creating a Philly Style Hoagie Burger—two patties covered with salami, ham, and creamy Italian dressing. And both Burger King and Wendy's have run quirky, somewhat absurdist ads tailored specifically for the young, hungry, male sensibility, though their spots aren't nearly as provocative as CKE's. In 2006, for instance, Burger King launched its I Am Man campaign, in which fed-up men who marched down the street decrying "chick food" opted for Burger King's Texas Double Whopper.

Newton, Mississippi, is a place of churches, farmland, and small, low-slung, porch-heavy houses. But the highway on the outskirts of town is strewn with the sorts of chain restaurants that have contributed to Mississippi's standing as the fattest state in the nation. A whopping 30.6 percent of its residents are obese, according to the nonprofit group Trust for America's Health.

Vying for the attention of passersby are a McDonald's, a Sonic, a K.F.C., a Taco Bell, and, in the shadow of a Wal-Mart Supercenter poised atop a grassy incline, a Hardee's.

This is prime Hardee's country. According to CKE's internal market numbers, two-thirds of Hardee's locations are in small towns, mostly in the Southeast and Midwest. Blue-collar white males are well represented in Hardee's customer base, and one-third of all its customers fall within the coveted 18- to 34-year-old demographic. More than 70 percent of Thickburgers are bought by men. Carl's Jr.'s patrons also skew male, though they're more moneyed; 29 percent make more than $75,000 a year.

"We have a lot of young, hungry guys, a lot of construction workers," says Bill Boddie, who owns the most Hardee's franchises—343 restaurants in North Carolina, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Virginia. "And they burn up calories. They want something big, and they want something good to eat. They're the ones who buy the huge burgers and the huge breakfast burritos."

At around 1 p.m. on a Sunday, the Newton Hardee's is starting to fill up. It's a beige-and-red box, incongruously colorful against its mostly gray setting, giving it the air of forced gaiety and desolation one tends to find in fast-food restaurants located by highway interchanges. A good number of patrons come in wearing their church clothes. The clean interior is adorned with comment cards and vintage photos of Hardee's restaurants before they went to seed in the '90s. Like Carl's Jr., Hardee's offers limited table service, so after ordering, you take a seat and one of the employees working the counter brings your meal to you. Tony Adams, a big, bearded 45-year-old wearing jeans, cowboy boots, and a blue-and-white trucker hat, has been working as a cattle-and-crop researcher for the state for 26 years. His current title is dairy herdsman. Today, he sits in the middle of the dining room with his diminutive, white-haired mother, Arlie Mae Adams, who is clad in a robin's-egg-blue outfit and gold flats. They're regulars: Tony says he eats at Hardee's four times a month, sometimes breakfast, sometimes lunch or dinner. He's quietly, methodically working on a Philly Cheese Steak Thickburger, a large fries, and a tankard of soda. It takes him a solid 15 minutes to get through it all. Arlie Mae is eating a comparatively dainty Big Chicken Fillet Sandwich (770 calories) and fries and drinking a "small" Coke, which is about the size of her thigh. A quote printed on her cup, which reads "Hardee's knows what America wants," is attributed to the Marshall Independent, a Minnesota newspaper.

His lunch effectively vanquished, Tony packs up his wrappers, ambles across the dining room, and dumps them in the trash, then plunks himself back down at the table. "It was good," he says, leaning back in his chair. Asked whether he buys into the notion that a fast-food chain shouldn't sell such hefty fare, he rolls his eyes and snorts. "I wouldn't agree with that," he says. "I don't got no complaints."

"To me," chimes in Arlie Mae, "Hardee's is the best fast food in town."

There's a certain kind of genius at work here, evidence of a well-thought-out defensive game. By not merely disclosing the fat and calorie content of its products but actively boasting about it, CKE effectively declaws the so-called food police, who act on the assumption that people eat fast food only because they don't know it's bad for them. This frankness makes CKE less vulnerable to the sort of social, political, and even legal pressure that its rivals—particularly McDonald's, which offers pedometers with its Go Active Adult Happy Meal—feel so acutely. Far from shameful, it's a point of manly pride to go to Hardee's for lunch and scarf down a Monster Thickburger, a chocolate shake (made with real ice cream, it has three times the fat of the McDonald's version), and a medium fries, which adds up to 170 grams of fat and 2,760 calories. And the more society's nannies say you shouldn't, the more you kind of want to.

The same subversive approach is applied to the company's advertising. In general, CKE doesn't market directly to children. It did recently sign a promotional deal with the producers of the animated film Igor—which stars, coincidentally, Jay Leno. But Puzder says the agreement involves only in-restaurant publicity (small posters as well as toys or action figures given away with meals), not TV or radio, which spares the company trouble with its detractors.

Instead, CKE continues to target the aforementioned "young, hungry guys," along with the people who, for whatever reason, aspire to be like them. This gives the firm a fair amount of leeway. Its most famous ad starred a soaked, soapy, scantily clad Paris Hilton washing a car while eating the mammoth Spicy BBQ Six Dollar Burger. The spot created a big stir, which culminated in Bill O'Reilly's expressing his outrage in two separate segments (during which the ad ran continuously), telling Puzder, "Families looking at this…a lot of them are going to go, 'Well, we hate you. We hate you.'?" Puzder says, "They complained about the sex in the ad, and I said there wasn't even a guy in it. It was a beautiful woman in a bathing suit eating a burger and washing a car. What could be more American?"

Other ads have included a gorgeous woman riding a mechanical bull while eating a Western Bacon Six Dollar Burger, an attractive woman inserting her entire fist into her mouth to demonstrate the oral capacity one would need to down a Monster Thickburger in a single go, and a Playmate-flanked Hugh Hefner holding one of several varieties of the Six Dollar Burger, with the tagline, "Because guys don't like the same thing night after night." The Hefner spot drew fire from televangelist Robert Schuller, who was quoted in news reports as saying that devout Christian Carl Karcher was "just heartbroken" by the wanton carnal innuendo on display. Puzder says Karcher, who maintained an office at CKE's offices in Anaheim until his death January 11 at the age of 90, "hated the ads for 12 years" but understood their necessity. Puzder, a Catholic, says, "I'm probably more a member of the religious right than I am anything else, so these are my people I'm offending. That's kind of a weird thing, but I can't run the business to the aesthetic tastes of any particular group in the country. And I will tell you, when we run these ads, sales go up and they don't come down."

While the stocks of other fast-food chains had mixed results in the second half of 2007, CKE's share price tumbled. Puzder says an unfounded report in June that CKE was a buyout target artificially drove up the stock price, which was then buffeted by rising food and fuel costs. He says the company, which owns 30 percent of its restaurants and franchises the rest, is more vulnerable to cost increases than Burger King or McDonald's, which have a much higher proportion of franchised outlets, where local owners bear the risk. CKE has sold about 136 of its Hardee's to franchisees in the past year, Puzder adds, "so we've reduced our exposure" as well as raised money to build and remodel more restaurants. It also sold off the underperforming La Salsa chain to focus on Green Burrito and Red Burrito, which are often located within Carl's Jr. and Hardee's locations, respectively. CKE is looking to expand Carl's Jr. to Canada and push Hardee's deeper into its U.S. markets, focusing especially on Texas and the Atlanta area. "We have a lot of room to grow," Puzder says.

Amid all the bluster, CKE has made a couple of concessions. Carl's Jr. offers a charbroiled-chicken salad that has just seven grams of fat, and Hardee's serves a barbecued-chicken sandwich. "It's a very healthy sandwich. I think we sell about two a day," Pudzer quips. Both chains offer token salads, just lettuce and tomato, that don't sell either. Recently CKE pulled the Double Six Dollar Burger from the Carl's Jr. menu in California and plans to do the same nationwide, due to a lawsuit alleging that the two mammoth patties contain an unacceptable amount, according to California law, of a carcinogen commonly created by grilling meats. This means a burger so big it may actually have been illegal. It's still available to customers upon request, which is tantamount to the public's giving informed consent under the law. And on the ad side, a recent spot for the Carl's Jr. patty-melt sandwich—featuring a young, blond teacher with no backside to speak of gyrating on her desk while her students rap about how they like "flat buns"—drew such heated protest from teachers that Puzder withdrew it. "I can defend the sex," he says, "but I can't fight teachers."

All that being said, he plans to stay the course. CKE's bare-bones product-development team of 16 people tests new Carl's Jr. items at corporate headquarters on a sampling of its own employees. One of the female testers, public relations manager Beth Mansfield, appears dazed after enduring one such session. It was "three solid hours of eating," she says. If a quorum can't be assembled, CKE calls in some employees from the office next door, which houses an alternative-energy firm by the name of Clipper Windpower.

Late last year, Carl's Jr. all but parodied the smoothie craze with its Strawberry Banana Smoothie (made with ice cream, it has nearly 700 calories). The development team is currently working on a Cap'n Crunch shake, featuring vanilla ice cream and crushed Cap'n Crunch cereal. The next sandwich is going to be a spicy jalapeño burger for Hardee's, with sliced jalapeños and a liberal slathering of its zesty Southwest sauce.

Beyond that, CKE is tight-lipped. But whatever it is that CKE ends up unleashing on the world, it's safe to say it will be huge, fattening, delicious, and marketed, however unwittingly, by Jay Leno, Bill O'Reilly, and entire battalions of the gastronomically correct.

Penny Foolish

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/opinion/29schlosser.html

November 29, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Penny Foolish
By ERIC SCHLOSSER

THE migrant farm workers who harvest tomatoes in South Florida have one of the nation’s most backbreaking jobs. For 10 to 12 hours a day, they pick tomatoes by hand, earning a piece-rate of about 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket. During a typical day each migrant picks, carries and unloads two tons of tomatoes. For their efforts, this holiday season many of them are about to get a 40 percent pay cut.

Florida’s tomato growers have long faced pressure to reduce operating costs; one way to do that is to keep migrant wages as low as possible. Although some of the pressure has come from increased competition with Mexican growers, most of it has been forcefully applied by the largest purchaser of Florida tomatoes: American fast food chains that want millions of pounds of cheap tomatoes as a garnish for their hamburgers, tacos and salads.

In 2005, Florida tomato pickers gained their first significant pay raise since the late 1970s when Taco Bell ended a consumer boycott by agreeing to pay an extra penny per pound for its tomatoes, with the extra cent going directly to the farm workers. Last April, McDonald’s agreed to a similar arrangement, increasing the wages of its tomato pickers to about 77 cents per bucket. But Burger King, whose headquarters are in Florida, has adamantly refused to pay the extra penny — and its refusal has encouraged tomato growers to cancel the deals already struck with Taco Bell and McDonald’s.

This month the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, representing 90 percent of the state’s growers, announced that it will not allow any of its members to collect the extra penny for farm workers. Reggie Brown, the executive vice president of the group, described the surcharge for poor migrants as “pretty much near un-American.”

Migrant farm laborers have long been among America’s most impoverished workers. Perhaps 80 percent of the migrants in Florida are illegal immigrants and thus especially vulnerable to abuse. During the past decade, the United States Justice Department has prosecuted half a dozen cases of slavery among farm workers in Florida. Migrants have been driven into debt, forced to work for nothing and kept in chained trailers at night. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers — a farm worker alliance based in Immokalee, Fla. — has done a heroic job improving the lives of migrants in the state, investigating slavery cases and negotiating the penny-per-pound surcharge with fast food chains.

Now the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange has threatened a fine of $100,000 for any grower who accepts an extra penny per pound for migrant wages. The organization claims that such a surcharge would violate “federal and state laws related to antitrust, labor and racketeering.” It has not explained how that extra penny would break those laws; nor has it explained why other surcharges routinely imposed by the growers (for things like higher fuel costs) are perfectly legal.

The prominent role that Burger King has played in rescinding the pay raise offers a spectacle of yuletide greed worthy of Charles Dickens. Burger King has justified its behavior by claiming that it has no control over the labor practices of its suppliers. “Florida growers have a right to run their businesses how they see fit,” a Burger King spokesman told The St. Petersburg Times.

Yet the company has adopted a far more activist approach when the issue is the well-being of livestock. In March, Burger King announced strict new rules on how its meatpacking suppliers should treat chickens and hogs. As for human rights abuses, Burger King has suggested that if the poor farm workers of southern Florida need more money, they should apply for jobs at its restaurants.

Three private equity firms — Bain Capital, the Texas Pacific Group and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners — control most of Burger King’s stock. Last year, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd C. Blankfein, earned the largest annual bonus in Wall Street history, and this year he stands to receive an even larger one. Goldman Sachs has served its investors well lately, avoiding the subprime mortgage meltdown and, according to Business Week, doubling the value of its Burger King investment within three years.

Telling Burger King to pay an extra penny for tomatoes and provide a decent wage to migrant workers would hardly bankrupt the company. Indeed, it would cost Burger King only $250,000 a year. At Goldman Sachs, that sort of money shouldn’t be too hard to find. In 2006, the bonuses of the top 12 Goldman Sachs executives exceeded $200 million — more than twice as much money as all of the roughly 10,000 tomato pickers in southern Florida earned that year. Now Mr. Blankfein should find a way to share some of his company’s good fortune with the workers at the bottom of the food chain.

Eric Schlosser is the author of “Fast Food Nation” and “Reefer Madness.”