Checkers Restaurant

[Lajuana Paling]

CheckersAnd Rally's LLC is an American fast food double drive-thru chain franchise in the United States. The brand operates Checkers and Rally's restaurants in 28 states and the District of Columbia. They specialize in hamburgers, hot dogs, french fries, milkshakes, and drinks.

Originally separate companies serving different geographic areas (with Checkers serving the Southeast and Rally's serving the Midwest), Checkers and Rally's merged in August 1999. Generally speaking, the Checkers name remains used in the Southeast as well as the Northeast while the Rally's name remains used in the Midwest as well as California; the two brands have overlapped in several areas.[citation needed]

The merged company is headquartered in Tampa, Florida. Most locations specialize in carryout service with drive-thru and "walk-up" windows available, but no indoor seating, though some legacy Rally's locations in the Midwest retain dining rooms, as well as two Checkers locations with indoor dining areas in both Clearwater and Orlando, Florida.

Checkers was founded in 1986 in Mobile, Alabama by Jim Mattei and went public in 1991. Rally's was founded in Louisville, Kentucky in 1985 by Jim Patterson.[4] In 1991 and 1992, Rally's absorbed Maxie's of America, Snapps Drive-Thru and Zipps Drive-Thru.[5]

In 1996, Rally's was bought by CKE Restaurants, a parent company of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's. CKE sold Rally's to Checkers in 1999. Unlike the two CKE chains (which have at various points flip flopped between marketing Carl's Jr. & Hardee's as one chain or separate regional chains that both share Carl's Jr's Happy Star logo and imaging, but have largely separate menus), Checkers promptly merged Rally's into its branding, and the two chains are now only different by name.

In June 2006, the company went private through a merger with Taxi Holdings Corp., an affiliate of Wellspring Capital Management, a private equity firm. In 2014, Wellspring sold Checkers to another private equity firm, Sentinel Capital Partners.[6] On March 23, 2017, Checkers announced that it would be sold to Oak Hill Capital Partners for $525 million.[7] The sale was completed a month later.[8]

On May 23, 2018, Checkers announced a planned expansion for over two dozen locations in the Pittsburgh area. Despite Rally's having brand recognition in the area the locations were to be branded as Checkers.[9][10] The company made its official return in the area in 2019 under the Rally's brand with the opening of a location in Penn Hills.[11]

One of the first advertising campaigns by Checkers and Rally's from 1999 to late 2000 featured the slogan "High Performance Human Fuel". The television advertisements for the campaign were animated in an anime style, featuring a woman named Holly, in pursuit of fast food. The ads were created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky,[14] and illustrated by Peter Chung, who was also responsible for the animation of MTV series on Flux.[15]

In September 2007, ML Rogers, an advertising agency, won the advertising rights for Checkers Restaurants, and completely restructured the advertising campaign. Among the many changes is their new slogan, "little place. BIG TASTE", beginning October 2007.[16] In 2007, the chain used a character called Rap Cat, a stuffed animal cat who performs a rap song about the chain. The ad campaign became popular after it became a viral video on YouTube.[17] The company gave away paper bags patterned like a basketball jersey to be worn by cats, with slots to cut out for the legs and tail, and asked customers to post videos of their cat wearing it to a Rap Cat website. This received criticism from animal rights activists, though Checkers stated that the packaging was "intended only as a creative extension of our television campaign."[18][19]

In September 2016, rapper and restaurateur Rick Ross stated his plans for a partnership with Checkers and Rally's, including ownership of a few franchises.[20] He opened his first franchise location in Miami in early 2017.

On May 29, 2019, Checkers and Rally's disclosed a long-running data breach that affected an unknown number of customers at 103 of its Checkers and Rally's locations, with some being infected with a point-of-sale malware as early as 2015.[21]

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Checkers Drive-In Restaurants Inc., the drive-thru restaurant chain, has begun a search for a successor to Frances Allen, who will be stepping down after serving as CEO and president for the past four years, the company said Thursday.

Without knowing what would truly unfold in the following months, Allen smartly planned her training well ahead of time. While the office remained open, she had the opportunity to meet with everyone, engage with franchise advisory committees, and visit restaurants in a couple of markets.

One of the biggest initial shifts was dedicating one drive-thru lane to mobile order pickup across company-owned locations.The brand considered the move before COVID arrived, and like most tech-forward initiatives during the pandemic, innovation timelines accelerated.

Because Checkers already had an extra lane to spare, the change mostly required signage and training to ensure employees, customers, and third-party delivery drivers understood how to navigate two different drive-thrus. Fast forward to 2023, a majority of corporate locations have dedicated e-commerce lanes, except for a few stores where the volume is too high through both lanes.

Chief information officer Minh Le began in 2019 and entered the brand with 20-plus years of restaurant technology experience and a mindset of pushing innovation to make jobs easier. Before COVID, Le was aware of automated ordering technology in quick service through phone calls. His idea was to replicate it but in a drive-thru setting. So around 2020, Checkers started down that path and spent six months in its lab playing with different scenarios. About that time, COVID was hitting and so were labor shortages. All of it catalyzed the adoption of voice ordering.

At the approximately 400 locations, Checkers is running 2.5 million transactions per month through the AI system with 95 percent accuracy. There were a few outages in 2021 and early 2022. Since then, the automated voice ordering has been 99.99 percent reliable. There are those customers that refuse to talk to a computer, especially the older generation, but a majority of guests have appreciated the swiftness and politeness of the digitized voice.

In June, the fast-food brand announced that majority ownership switched from private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners to senior lenders Arbour Lane Capital Management, Garnett Station Partners, and Guggenheim Investments. The change helped Checkers reduce long-term debt from $300 million to $75 million. A lot of that financial burden came from when Oak Hill Capital bought Checkers for $525 million in 2017.

Name: Bill Brown

Occupation: Retired Submarine salesman

Lives In:Fort Lauderdale

Restaurant Pick: Southport Raw Bar

Reviewed: Checker's Old Munchen

We were greeted by a friendly valet in the back of the restaurant. Despite a few friendly homeless loitering nearby, we never felt unsafe. We passed a restaurant next to where we were going, and it was empty. It was astounding arriving next door at Checkers to a full house. We had reservations for 6:30, and were seated shortly after arriving. Our server was prompt and friendly, giving us menus and taking our drink orders. Drinks were served with bread basket of fresh dark bread and soft pretzel bites. We had ample time to peruse the menu and asked the server for recommendations. Virtually everything we ordered came by recommendation of the server. Not everything was of German distinction. We ordered a lovely chopped salad with dill and seared tuna as the nightly special. The food came out quickly. Everything was well prepared and flavorable. The appetizers we selected, fried muenster cheese and a sampler plate were nothing special. The potato pancakes though, were the exception. The surprise of the evening was the sauerkraut. Until this night, it was not one of my favorites. The meat dishes were moist and tender. The side dishes of mashed potatoes were delicious, the spaetzle and potato dumpling, not so much. The desserts of Black Forest cake, pineapple upside-down cake and apple strudel, were all rich and delicious and finished with double expressos. Overall, this is a good value for the quality and portion size. The restaurant is clean and inviting.

Name: Matthew Bourie

Occupation: Real Estate Agent

Lives In: Hollywood

Restaurant Pick: Checker's Old Munchen

Reviewed: Checker's Old Munchen

I have been here many times and know that after about 6 or 6:30 once the dinner rush starts not only will you not get a table if you don't have a reservation, but even if you have one it gets very hard to find a parking spot. We had a reservation for 6pm but we were hungry so we got there at about 5:30 so it was very empty. As soon as we got there we ordered our next beer on the boot tour and the Kartoffelpuffers, also known as potato pancakes which are one of my favorites on the menu. I have a habit of always ordering the same thing once I find something I like but I felt like I needed to order something different for this show so I met in the middle and got the same entre I usually do but changed up the sides I usually order. I got the Jager schnitzel which is a veal cutlet in a Riesling and mushroom sauce but got a potato dumpling and cucumber salad which I had not tried before. The Jager schnitzel was fantastic as usual and I was actually pleasantly surprised by how good they both were. The potato dumpling looked like it was just a boiled potato but the middle was delicious and seasoned very well. The cucumber salad was sliced cucumbers and red onions with a dill and oil dressing on it which was quite refreshing. My girlfriend got the hunter chicken which we didn't realize until it came out that it was the same thing I ordered but with chicken instead of veal. She really enjoyed her meal as well. For Dinner we got the Kelly's chocolate cake which wasn't what I was imagining a german cake was in my head but it was delicious as well. It had toasted coconut on top which gave it a good texture.

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