On Sunday, a friend sent me Nick Welsh’s April 21 Angry Poodle Barbecue column entitled “Every Dog Has His Day.” As I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear, there was much with which I disagreed. Without getting into every issue, I thought it would be helpful to correct some errors for purposes of this article and any future articles.
First it’s just untrue that CKE Restaurants, the company for which I serve as CEO, is moving to Nashville because “California’s labor laws have proved too complicated for” it or me. The problems with California’s labor laws impact our restaurants (which are not moving) but have little, if any, impact at the headquarters level.
We currently have three corporate offices, in Carpinteria, Anaheim, and St. Louis, Missouri. We need only two. So, when our leases expire in Carpinteria and St. Louis next year, we will consolidate those offices in Nashville. We chose Nashville for a number of reasons. One of the main reasons was that the restaurants in Nashville are company-owned rather than franchised. Franchisees own and operate our Santa Barbara County and St. Louis restaurants. It’s better to have the corporate offices where we own the restaurants.