Carrols Restaurant Group
 |
|
| Public | |
| Traded as | NASDAQ: TAST |
| Industry | Restaurants (SIC code 5812) |
| Founded | 1960 |
| Founder | Herbert N. Slotnik |
| Headquarters | Syracuse, New York, U.S. |
|
Number of locations
|
554 O&O; 30 franchised |
|
Area served
|
United States, Puerto Rico, Ecuador |
|
Key people
|
Dan Accordino, CEO |
| Products | Burger King (franchisee) |
| Revenue | US$816.1 million (Fiscal year 2009) |
| US$20 million (FY 2009) | |
| US$21.8 million (FY 2009) | |
| Total assets | US$440 million |
|
Number of employees
|
over 10,000 |
| Website | www.carrols.com |
Carrols Restaurant Group is an American franchisee company and is the largest Burger King franchisee in the world; Carrols owns and operates over 650 Burger King locations across 20 U.S. states.
The company used to own the restaurant chains Pollo Tropical, Taco Cabana, and Carrols. The original Carrols chain ceased operations in the United States in the mid-1970s. The last unaffiliated Carrols Restaurants existed in Finland. The chain was eventually bought out by another Finnish fast-food chain, Hesburger. In 2012, Hesburger announced that the brand Carrols would be discontinued; the last Carrols (in Oulunkylä) was renamed Hesburger on May 29.
An offshoot of the Tastee-Freez company, it was named for the daughter of Tastee-Freez co-owner Leo Marantz, Carol.
Herb Slotnick bought the franchise rights for the New York area and started opening restaurants in the Syracuse, New York area in the early 1960s. They expanded over the years throughout New York State. During the 1960s, a yellow slug character served as Carrols' first mascot, replaced in 1974 by a young blonde boy wearing a tweed suit and a Fedora hat.
Most Carrols restaurant locations were converted to Burger King franchises in 1975, with less profitable stores shuttered. After the conversion, the Carrols brand was only found overseas in Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Russia, except for a single franchisee-owned store in Batavia, New York which operated under the Carrols name into the 1980s before closing.
The Finnish group Carrols opened up several locations in St. Petersburg, Russia in the mid-to-late 1990s. In 1998 it opened its first operation in Moscow located at 'then' the new Ohotni Riad Mall. Because of the Financial Crisis of 1998, the operations did not generate enough sales for Carrols, and by 2000 all Carrols outlets in Russia were closed.
The Finnish restaurant company Hesburger started to buy out the last existing Carrol's locations in Helsinki, Finland in the mid-2000s.
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Wikipedia