Hardee's Carcasses

I started 2002 off by moving out of my apartment and taking a cross country trip. I was ready to move out of NC and needed to find where I wanted to go. When I returned to NC a couple months later I decided to move to Los Angeles. I needed to make some money to fund the move so I went back to work as a freelance photo assistant but I never established a residence. I would split time between friends' places around Greensboro when I had work and my parents' in Morehead City when I didn't have work, a distance of 220 miles. Durning this time I spent a lot of time on the roads of NC and I noticed something which led to the project I called Hardee's Carcasses. It was published in a now defunct online magazine in 2003. I recently came across the images while looking through some old files. 

Click here to see images.

Growing up in a small coastal town in North Carolina I remember a time before the town became another battleground for fast food restaurants. In the 70’s, before McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Burger King and all the others came to town, there were only some locally owned drive-ins, a Dairy Queen, and a Hardee’s.

The first Hardee’s was opened in 1960 in Greenville, NC, about 75 miles west from my hometown. Rocky Mount became the corporate headquarters for the fast growing franchise chain. By the 80’s it was the 4^th largest food chain in the world. You may still have some smurf glasses or California raisin figures from their 80’s promotional campaigns. Though Hardee’s has never been my favorite fast food, I feel some pride in the eastern North Carolina restaurant’s rise to become one of the world’s largest restaurant chains.

But apparently with ever rise there is a fall. In the 90’s competition got the best of them and they had to make some changes. A result of this was the buyout by the California fast food chain Carl’s Jr. The corporate headquarters moved out of North Carolina to St. Louis and Hardee’s restaurants began to disappear from the North Carolina landscape.

But the buildings remain.

In my travels through the state I keep spotting the unmistakable buildings in almost ever town I pass through. And now that I am planning to move to California I have been straying off the beaten path and exploring the small towns I have driven by all these years. Almost every town has a building that once was a Hardee’s. Some have new businesses residing in them, some have been recently vacated, and some had new businesses move in and fail. Could it be the effects of bad economic times or are they located too far from the new Wal-Mart. Who knows? But chances are, if you live in the South there may be a Hardee’s carcass near you.