The Little-Known Origin Story Of Carl's Jr.

In the summer of 1941, Carl N. Karcher and his wife Margaret scraped together $15 in cash and borrowed $311 using their Chrysler Super Deluxe sedan as collateral and bought a hot dog stand. Karcher was a go-getter who'd had a hardscrabble childhood in Ohio. His father had been a sharecropper and they often moved from place to place. Karcher had to quit school after the eighth grade to help work the land, spending long hours doing back-breaking labor. Towards the end of the 1930s, Karcher left Ohio and moved to Anaheim, California to live with an uncle. He worked at his uncle's feed store 12 hours a day, six days a week. Even so, Karcher, who was 21 at the time, believed he'd found heaven.

By the time Karcher married Margaret Heinz in 1939 he was working for a bakery in Los Angeles but he had bigger dreams. He'd seen hot dog stands dotting the street corners and wanted in. He began selling his "Super Dooper" hot dog for a dime across from a Goodyear plant in L.A. and was soon doing well enough to buy another cart. By 1945, he and Margaret owned a restaurant, Carl's Drive-In Barbecue, in Anaheim, and 11 years later opened their first fast-food business, Carl's Jr, helping to turn California into the unofficial birthplace of fast food.

After World War II, Carl's Drive-In Barbecue was doing a booming business and Karcher had moved on from hot dogs. Then, in the early 1950s, he heard about a restaurant in San Bernardino owned by the McDonald brothers that sold quality burgers for 20 cents less than him, had a limited menu, and a self-service system. Karcher went to see the first McDonald's restaurant, which is now an unofficial museum, for himself and was so impressed he decided to do something similar.

He named his new smaller fast food restaurant Carl's Jr. and used the big star that sat atop of his original barbecue restaurant as the mascot for his new burger business, which he launched in 1956. Karcher had entered the brand-new fast food world at the perfect time — just as American car culture was taking off and the federal government began its massive interstate road system project. Carl's Jr. thrived and went public in 1981. Karcher died in 2008, aged 90, two years after his wife's death. Today, there are more than 1,000 Carl's Jr. restaurants across the U.S., plus locations in 28 countries. So, next time you dig into one of the chain's signature dishes (we recommend Carl's Jr. as the best breakfast sandwich spot), you'll know how it all started.