Last week marked the beginning of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s inaugural Stars for Troops fundraising campaign. We congratulate them on aiming to raise funds to assist our nation’s military families and veterans. Through a similar method as their highly successful Pink Star Fundraiser to benefit breast cancer screenings and research, funds raised from the sale of $1 commemorative paper “Stars for Troops” will support military charities Homes for Our Troops and USA Cares. Funds will go toward projects such as building homes and providing financial and advocacy services. Synq is proud to contribute to CKE Restaurants’ efforts through the donation of paper stars. For more information and details about participation, please click here. To see a video about the campaign, please click here to visit Hardee’s YouTube channel.

Between April 28 and May 18, guests at participating Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s restaurants across the United States purchased a commemorative pink Happy Star^® cutout for $1 to benefit the National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF), raising a total of $1,010,000—the single largest one-time gift given to the NBCF. The donation will fund their National Mammography Program, which provides free mammograms to underprivileged women through participating medical facilities across the country. According to the NBCF, when breast cancer is detected early through mammograms, the 5-year survival rate is an astonishing 98%.

The “pink star” icon is represented at both the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s chains. The color pink has become synonymous with the fight against breast cancer, and the stars were arranged point-to-point on the restaurants’ walls to remind us to join together in support of everyone who breast cancer has affected. This is the sixth year that Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s have participated in the Pink Star fundraising campaign.

We’re honored to have partnered with CKE Restaurants, Inc. in this remarkable effort. With breast cancer touching more than 208,000 American women and 1,750 men—as well as their families, loved ones, and friends, it gave us great pleasure to donate all of the printed materials related to the Pink Star program. We look forward to another successful campaign next year.

If you’ve ever considered local marketing for your brand or wondered how to better leverage the LRM campaigns you are doing, you won’t want to miss our free webinar: How to Execute a Successful Local Marketing Campaign. Registration is now open at qsrmagazine.com/webinars.

Sponsored by Synq and QSR magazine, this webinar will feature Brad Haley, EVP, Marketing CKE Restaurants, Inc. (Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s) and Synq’s Doug Fergusson, EVP, Solutions.  Brad has successfully deployed Local Marketing tactics to enable his brands to compete more effectively in this very competitive marketplace, while maintaining CKE’s brand standards and messaging guidelines. He’ll reveal best practices, challenges and solutions. Doug will add his experiences working with multiple brands and explain how technology helps streamline this process and makes it easier than ever to execute.

We hope you’ll join us on Thursday, June 24 at 2 – 3 p.m. EDT for what’s sure to be an informative and engaging event!  And if you have questions or topics you’d like our panelists to address, let us know by commenting on our blog.

Lastly, we are sponsoring the 7^th annual Dine America executive conference in Atlanta on September 12-14. This is a must-attend event that always raises the most critical issues facing QSR and Fast Casual restaurants, while sharing innovative ideas and solutions.

Tell us what trends are most impacting your business and join our discussions.

As always, we invite you to post comments or questions and share your thoughts on the subject.

If you liked this post, you may want to take a look at Doug’s blog post on Local Marketing Profiling.

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