Taking stock in big burgers

ST. LOUIS -- With just 160 pounds on his 5-foot-9 frame, Bruce Frazer appears amazingly fit considering how often he frequents the little-known culinary den of decadence just paces from his executive suite.

As the research-and-development chief for the corporate parent of Hardee's restaurants, Frazer plays scientist in the chain's 36th-floor test kitchen -- his lab in his insatiable bid to build a better burger.

Welcome to ground zero of what St. Louis-based Hardee's calls its "revolution," the place where the once-flagging fast-food chain has unapologetically fed its fortunes in recent years by concocting high-calorie colossi of beef and bun.

Frazer, 45, has a job in which everything is a free lunch. In the test kitchen, he's paid to experiment, trying this and sampling that in search of tomorrow's big seller.

Hold the onions. How about some onion-flavored mayo? Fetch me some jalapenos. Jackpot.

"I have every intention of not trying six versions of a burger, but I always do," he said.

The kitchen -- on the top floor of the towering U.S. Bank building -- offers a spectacular view of downtown and several miles of points west. It's what Hardee's executives jokingly call "the best view of any test kitchen in America."

Lately, they've been feeling on top of the world.

Stock in CKE Restaurants Inc. -- the California-based parent of Hardee's Food Systems -- has been rising since early 2003, when shares fetched just $3.10 on the New York Stock Exchange. That stock, which opened this year at $14.35, reached a five-year high this month around $16.45.

The comeback of 44-year-old Hardee's has centered largely on "Thickburgers" -- Angus beef burgers of up to two-thirds of a pound. Hardee's introduced the Thickburger family in April 2003, perhaps not coincidentally about the time the company's stock started its upward march.

Since then, CKE has slashed its long-term debt from $628 million in fiscal 2000 to $259.6 million as of last fall.

"We're moving from a turnaround story to a growth story," says Andy Puzder, CKE's president and chief executive. "We don't have big debt killing us, and don't have our brand failing so miserably that it's dragging the company down."

Hardee's has found its niche being a contrarian. As restaurants scrambled in recent years to satisfy the health-conscious, Hardee's put its test kitchen to work, perfecting Thickburger incarnations fetching $2.39 to roughly $5.

Last November, Hardee's debuted its double-patty, four-strips-of-bacon Monster Thickburger -- a 1,420-calorie, 107-grams-of-fat behemoth that got plenty of notice from late-night talk show hosts and critics. One health-and-nutrition advocacy group dubbed Thickburgers "food porn."

Frazer and others at Hardee's flick off such criticism, saying they're only giving consumers -- namely "young hungry guys" ages 18 to 34 -- what they crave.

"The specificity of our focus makes it hard to compete with us," Puzder said as he, Frazer and Brad Haley -- the company's executive vice president of marketing -- tried out different combinations of burgers in the test kitchen.

Generally, Hardee's rolls out a new burger every several months. Development can take up to a year.

There are the occasional flops, including the eventually scrapped idea of a "smoked sausage burger." The "pancake on a stick" didn't pan out, either. Nor did the French onion burger that proved too overpowering.

"Each step is a hurdle, and the product can fall off at any point," Haley said.

Hardee's has no problem getting folks as test subjects. With a library about 700 e-mail addresses of people working downtown, Hardee's every couple of weeks electronically invites some to come for a free lunch. Separated in partitioned booths, the tasters get their samples from someone on the other side of a sliding window, then critique it in a questionnaire.

"We try a lot of things to find the one that really clicks," Frazer said. "America's palate is evolving, and as long as we keep up with that we'll be in good shape."

On the Net

CKE Restaurants Inc.: www.ckr.com

Hardee's Food Systems: www.hardees.com