Guide

Joe Guith Interview: Turning Around Carl's Jr. and Hardee's

By Wilson K Lee, updated October 2026 · How I get these numbers

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Source: YouTube · the full conversation, free

Joe Guith took over CKE Restaurants, the company behind Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, in March 2025. By his own count on stage, CKE is a $5 billion system, about three times the size of Church’s Texas Chicken, where he ran his previous turnaround. Before Church’s he was brand president at McAlister’s Deli, and that is where the most useful number in this talk comes from.

I interviewed him live on July 30, 2026, at On the Clock 2026, Workstream’s event in Atlanta. We had 30 minutes on stage, and the room got to ask questions at the end. Below are the moments worth skipping to and the lessons I would hand a friend who runs one to five locations.

Why I asked a 3,800-restaurant CEO about small-shop problems

720 Sweets started as one shop. I grew it to seven and then sold it. These days I write and make videos for food and beverage owners, and this page is for the ones running one to five shops.

On the surface, Joe’s problems look nothing like yours. His numbers have more zeros. Yours come down to whether this week’s sales cover this week’s bills.

Listen to how he works, though, and the job is familiar. Find what is really broken. Pick two or three fixes. Hold people to them. Put your staff where guests can see them. So most of my questions were about how he does it, step by step.

The moments worth jumping to

Each time below opens the video at that spot. The first minute is a highlight reel, my intro starts at 0:57, and the conversation itself starts at 1:39.

• 1:39 Walking into an 85-year-old culture. Joe’s case against the big new-brand reset, and the listening he does before he changes anything.
• 3:27 Two surveys, two different answers. Engagement came back average. The organizational health survey put CKE in the fourth quartile.
• 4:52 Tougher rivals. At Church’s he was gaining on brands that had slipped. At CKE he is up against McDonald’s, Burger King and, at breakfast, Chick-fil-A.
• 6:54 A new leadership team, twice. Why he changed out all but one leader at both companies, and the will and skill test behind it.
• 8:08 How old brands give up slowly. A decade at Church’s of treating lost units and falling traffic as normal.
• 9:15 “Behind by a couple touchdowns.” The early forecast that showed him what the culture had become.
• 10:22 Who he wants on his leadership team. Approachable, humble people, plus a line about drama he credits to Michael Dell.
• 12:35 From a long list to two things. How he mixes numbers with conversations until only process and accountability are left.
• 14:36 Why guests started pulling back. Coca-Cola’s chief economist has a 60-year chart on eating out, and Joe gives his read on pricing: the whole industry “took way too much price.”
• 17:35 Costs up, prices stuck. My question about rising costs when you cannot pass them on to guests.
• 18:07 McAlister’s goes from 10% to 40% digital. What it did to sales per labor hour, and his warning for anyone promising labor savings.
• 20:55 Will AI take restaurant jobs? He expects people to move into new work, and says the slow part is us changing our habits.
• 24:13 Gamification, from the floor. Someone in the audience asks about drive-thru games. His answer turns to the audits that were missing.
• 26:30 Franchisees and the front line. What “franchisee friendly” had turned into, and why he stopped the overrides.

What I took from it, for a one to five location owner

These are my translations for a small shop. Joe did not say them this way, so if one misses, that is on me.

1. Ask if they are happy, then ask what is broken. Joe’s engagement survey at CKE came back “pretty average.” His health survey put the company in the fourth quartile, the bottom quarter. If you only ever ask the first question, you never hear the second answer. In a small shop you can skip the survey. Ask each person, one at a time, what slows them down on a shift, and write every answer down. When three people name the same thing, you have your first fix.

2. Push back the first time you hear “we’re not going to make our plan.” After a rough first quarter, one of Joe’s executives brought him a forecast that said CKE would miss plan. Joe pushed back. The company ended up making plan and making bonus, something it had not done in a long time. In a small shop that sentence sounds like “slow month, nothing we can do.” The first time you hear it, push back right then, and ask what the team can still change before the month ends.

3. Two fixes on the wall. Everything else waits. Joe runs a $5 billion system on two priorities: get organized on process, and accountability. His warning to the room was that past two or three, “it’s never going to happen.” If two is enough for him, two is enough for a three-shop owner. Write yours where your managers see them every day, and park the rest of the list for six months.

4. Watch sales per labor hour. At McAlister’s, digital orders went from about 10% to 40% in roughly 18 months, and sales dollars per labor hour jumped 50%, with some inflation inside that number. Joe says the shifts kept their people, and the hours moved to welcoming guests, getting orders right and cleaning. That is why his advice to the room, when anyone talks about saving on labor, was to “run away from that very fast.” On new technology at CKE he was frank too: “We’re not leading on any of those things, just to be clear.”

5. Back your shift lead where the team can see it. At CKE, being “franchisee friendly” had come to mean that a franchisee who disliked a call could phone management and get it overruled. Joe called that “horrible for the culture,” because the front line learned nobody would stand behind them. The small-shop version: a regular complains, you overrule your manager on the spot, and the whole team learns who really decides. Hear the regular out, sort it with your manager in private, and hold the standard.

The two articles I wrote from this talk

I also wrote two articles from this interview for Workstream’s blog. Each one goes deeper on one half of the talk, and each comes with steps you can copy.

• Why a Rebrand Almost Never Fixes a Struggling Restaurant Brand covers the culture half: the two surveys, the forecast, the short list, and holding franchisees to account.
• 5 Moves Joe Guith Makes When He Takes Over a Struggling Restaurant Brand covers the operating half: rivals, the leadership team, basics before tech, digital orders, and pricing.

If you do one thing this Monday

Work out your own sales per labor hour. Take last week’s sales for one shop and divide them by the hours you paid that week. Write the number down. Do the same every Monday for a month before you change a single shift. Once you can see the number move, start moving hours toward the places guests notice: the greeting, the order, the clean table. If you want the full labour cost formula, from what counts as labour to cost per meal, I lay it out in how to calculate restaurant labour cost.

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