Carl Karcher Character Analysis in Fast Food Nation

The founder of the Carl’s Jr. chain of burger restaurants, Carl Karcher moved to California before World War Two, and based his business around other developing burger stands in the region—all of which were adapting to the new car- and highway-based culture of the suburbs. Karcher’s first Carl’s Jr. soon became a chain of franchises, and after the company acquired Hardee’s in the 1990s, Carl’s Jr. began to spread across the country—making Karcher a great deal of money.

Carl Karcher Quotes in Fast Food Nation

The Fast Food Nation quotes below are all either spoken by Carl Karcher or refer to Carl Karcher. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

Diet, Nutrition, and Food Safety Theme Icon

). Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Mariner edition of Fast Food Nation published in 2012.

When I first met my wife . . . this road here was gravel . . . and now it’s blacktop.

Related Characters: (speaker),

Page Number and Citation: 28

Explanation and Analysis:

Carl Karcher Character Timeline in Fast Food Nation

The timeline below shows where the character Carl Karcher appears in Fast Food Nation. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

Schlosser begins his story with Carl Karcher, the eventual founder of Carl’s Jr. fast-food restaurants. Karcher was born to a large... (full context)

Carl realized, after marrying and purchasing a hot dog cart in Anaheim, that he could expand... (full context)

Schlosser argues that Carl Karcher’s business took off at exactly the same time as other key southern California corporations,... (full context)

Bureaucracy and Complex Systems Theme Icon

Schlosser notes that Carl Karcher visited the San Bernardino “Speedee Service” location of the McDonald’s brothers, and imported some... (full context)

Schlosser notes that, for men like Carl Karcher, it was not always a straight line of success. In the early 1990s, Karcher... (full context)

But eight weeks after this “lockout,” Karcher managed to find an investment group that would take on some of Carl’s Jr.’s debt,... (full context)

Disney was also greatly enamored with “progress,” not unlike Carl Karcher, the founder of Carl’s Jr. In particular, Disney’s progress, like Kroc’s, involved an America... (full context)