Hardee's Founder Is Dead

When I was a freshman in college, my typical Saturday lunch was eaten at the Hardee's restaurant right over the hill from my dorm. So it brought back a few memories when I read this in yesterday's N.Y. Times:

Wilber Hardee, a farm boy turned grill cook who went on to open the first Hardee’s hamburger stand in 1960, starting a chain that now has nearly 2,000 restaurants in the United States and overseas, died Friday at his home in Greenville, N.C. He was 89.

. . . It was on an empty lot in Greenville, near East Carolina College (now a university), that Mr. Hardee opened that first hamburger stand on Sept. 3, 1960. There was no dining room, no drive-up window. Charcoal-broiled hamburgers and milkshakes sold for 15 cents apiece.

There are now 1,926 Hardee’s restaurants, mostly in the Southeast and the Midwest . . .