McDonald’s doesn’t mess around. It’s not enough to be the biggest fast-food giant in the world. It’s got to keep fighting. Keep expanding. Keep moving, like a shark. Hence, McD’s introduction of specialty coffees (McCafé) giving Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts a run for their money. And now, the Angus burger. As the Wall Street Journal reported, the rollout of the McDonald’s Angus burger is posing a serious challenge to Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr (both owned by CKE Restaurants, Inc.), which have touted large burgers for quite some time. There’s the Big Carl Burger and Hardee’s Monster Thickburger, which, as the Journal‘s Julie Jargon notes, has 1,420 calories and 108 grams of fat. (She compares this with McDonald’s Bacon and Cheese Angus Burger, which has 790 calories and 39 grams of fat.) Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. will be pointing out that their equivalents of a Big Mac are cheaper and better. So much so that if you do end up preferring a Big Mac to, say, a Big Carl, you can mail-in your Big Carl receipt for a refund. In other words, CKE chief executive Andrew Puzder is going to the mattresses. “One day next month, the company will park a Carl’s Jr. mobile diner outside McDonald’s restaurants in Los Angeles and offer to swap McDonald’s customers’ Big Macs for Big Carls,” reports Jargon, who quotes Puzder as saying, “After they so blatantly copied our burgers, we felt it was fair play.” And then there’s this: “CKE also plans to communicate its message to consumers via Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.” Meaning there are people who follow Hardee’s on Twitter.
