Checkers Drive-In
 
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| Private | |
| Industry | Fast Food |
| Founded | 1986 (as Checker's) Mobile, Alabama, U.S. 1985 (as Rally's) Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. 1999 (Merger of Checkers and Rally's) |
| Headquarters | Tampa, Florida |
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Number of locations
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784 (2014) |
| Products | Burgers, hot dogs, chicken, fish, hot wings, french fries, shakes, soft drinks |
| Owner | Sentinel Capital Partners |
| Website |
www www |
Checkers Drive-In Restaurants, Inc., is one of the largest chains of double drive-thru restaurants in the United States. The company operates Checkers and Rally's restaurants in 28 states and the District of Columbia. They specialize in hamburgers, hot dogs, french fries, and milkshakes.
Originally separate companies serving different geographic areas with Checkers serving the Southeast and Rally's serving the Midwest, Checkers and Rally's merged in August 1999. The merged company is headquartered in Tampa, Florida. Checkers was founded in 1986 in Mobile, Alabama, by Jim Mattei and went public in 1991. Rally's was founded in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1985. In 1991 and 1992, Rally's absorbed Maxie's of America, Snapps Drive-Thru, and Zipps Drive-Thru. In 1996, Rally's was bought by CKE Restaurants, parent company of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's. CKE sold Rally's to Checkers in 1999. In June 2006, the company went private through a merger with Taxi Holdings Corp., an affiliate of Wellspring Capital Management, a private equity firm. In 2014, Wellspring sold Checkers to another private equity firm, Sentinel Capital Partners.
On March 23, 2017, Checkers announced that it would be sold to Oak Hill Capital Partners for $525 million.
Checkers and Rally's had similar concepts, being almost exclusively drive-thru with very little seating. After the merger, Rally's began redesigning its restaurants to follow the Checkers look. Today, Checkers and Rally's restaurants look nearly identical, the only major difference being the name on the sign.
Checkers and Rally's nutritional information is available through the company website.
In 1991, a then-unknown Seth Green starred in a Rally's (formerly Snapps) commercial, giving life to the now-famous "cha-ching" interjection.
In the late 1990s, there was a series of teaser commercials that featured a Burger King burger on a rotating interior microwave oven, and it featured old R&B tracks from the 1960s and 70s in the background following a bleep cue to Rally's advertising. One of the commercials even offered a chance to win a car. It showed a yellow car since the yellow car version of punch buggy was a big fad during this time. A similar advertising strategy for this fad was implemented into a Taco Bell commercial with as many as 20 or 30 yellow taxicabs in one camera shot.
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Wikipedia