Carpinteria, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Carl's Jr.® today announced the opening of its new flagship restaurant in Carpinteria, Calif. Located two miles from the corporate headquarters of parent company CKE Restaurants, Inc., the new Carl's Jr. location is an environmentally friendly unit where sustainability, conservation and energy efficiency will be measured and evaluated for potential company-wide implementation at both Carl's Jr. restaurants and at sister-chain Hardee's®. Some of the conservation efforts are already in use at both brands.
To honor the greening of the company, CKE Restaurants' CEO Andrew F. Puzder will be joined by local dignitaries at a ribbon-cutting celebration held at the new Carl's Jr., located at 4610 Carpinteria Ave., today at 10:30 a.m. PST.
"CKE Restaurants is an innovator – from our menu, to our service, to our marketing and our restaurants," said Puzder. "With our ongoing emphasis on corporate environmental initiatives, we are demonstrating that we can be both a good neighbor and a financially sound business. Our current company-wide environmental initiatives are either cost neutral or result in a cost savings benefit, providing for a better planet while also contributing to the bottom line. The launch of our first green Carl's Jr. restaurant, while not cost-neutral, will help us view our eco-friendly options in action."
Green features of the new Carl's Jr. flagship restaurant include:
"Our commitment to the environment with this green restaurant is more than just lip service, it is a point of pride throughout the company and can be held up as an example for other businesses, that sustainability should be a top priority," said Puzder. "For the restaurant in Carpinteria, we reused the existing shell of a former restaurant to reduce our construction footprint and even went so far as to install a hawk perch for a local bird that took up residence on the roof during construction."
The new Carl's Jr. flagship restaurant employs 50 full- and part-time staff.
Company-wide environmental initiatives are guided by a corporate Green Team under the direction of Chip Seigel, senior vice president, general counsel at CKE. The Green Team ensures that both the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's brands, corporate offices and franchisees, are collaborating on environmental projects and sharing their successes along the path to sustainability.
"We have a long-term goal of zero waste in our corporate facilities and in our restaurants," said Seigel. "The Green Team has been working on environmental issues throughout the company for several years and we're pleased to announce some of those initiatives. Most importantly, we've worked hard to ensure our green initiatives were more than just a band-aid approach to efficiency and conservation, but rather a systematic review and implementation of these programs."
Some of the CKE's company-wide initiatives include:
A list of CKE Restaurants' ongoing environmental initiatives, as well as a full overview of the Carpinteria flagship's green features can be found at http://www.pitchfeed.com/ckerestaurantsinc/538.
Headquartered in Carpinteria, Calif., CKE Restaurants, Inc. is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "CKR." As of the third fiscal quarter ended November 3, 2008, CKE Restaurants, Inc., through its subsidiaries, had a total of 3,110 franchised, licensed or company-operated restaurants in 42 states and in 14 countries, including 1,185 Carl's Jr. restaurants and 1,912 Hardee's restaurants.
Source: CKE Restaurants, Inc.
Carl's Jr. is an American fast-food restaurant chain, located mostly on the Western half of the United States in Pacific, Mountain and West Coast regions.