Another big Hardee’s franchisee declares bankruptcy
Superior Star, which operates 59 Midwestern locations, has sought Chapter 11 amid an apparent dispute over seller financing.
July 10, 2026
A big Hardee’s franchisee in the Midwest has filed for bankruptcy amid an apparent dispute over seller financing from its 2023 acquisition of the restaurants, according to court filings.
Superior Star LLC, a Phoenix-based operator, declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Thursday. The company has between $10 million and $50 million in both assets and liabilities, according to court documents.
The franchisee currently operates 59 locations, according to Hardee's, though at one point it owned 93 restaurants in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Tennessee. The company has closed at least 12 locations over the past year.
Among those liabilities is a $7 million seller note, in which a seller agrees to finance some or all of a purchase price. That is listed as “disputed” and “subject to setoff,” meaning Superior Star believes it may have claims against the company from which it acquired the restaurants.
The seller note is with Starcorp LLC, a Nevada-based company from which Superior Star bought its restaurants in 2023. Starcorp operated 145 Hardee’s locations when it sold the 93 locations to Superior Star, according to reports.
There is some evidence that Starcorp was struggling at the time of the sale. A landlord sued the franchisee, among others, arguing that the operator and its real estate broker hid Starcorp’s precarious financial condition during a sale-leaseback transaction.
The Superior Star bankruptcy filing also lists among its liabilities several settlement agreements, totaling more than $900,000, mostly with real estate companies or investors.
Hardee’s blamed the bankruptcy on “specific financial and business circumstances.”
“We are aware that Hardee’s franchisee Superior Star, which independently owns and operates certain Hardee’s restaurants primarily in the Midwest region, has filed a voluntary petition for relief under Chapter 11 of the U.S. bankruptcy code,” the franchisor said in a statement. “Superior Star’s decision to file is based on its own specific financial and business circumstances. We remain focused on continuing to strengthen the Hardee’s system and deliver quality experiences for our guests.”
This is the latest bankruptcy filing involving a franchisee of CKE Restaurants, the Roark Capital-owned company that operates both Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr.
Summit Restaurant Holdings, a 145-unit Hardee’s operator, filed for bankruptcy in 2023. More than half of those restaurants were then sold to Arc Burger, a company owned by the same private-equity firm that owns Quiznos and Church’s Texas Chicken. Arc Burger shut its restaurants down late last year and filed Chapter 7 liquidation in April, though Hardee's has since reopened 25 locations as company units and plans to open more.
Friendly Franchisees Corp., a 65-unit Carl’s operator, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April.
Hardee’s in particular has struggled in recent years with weak average unit volumes and closing restaurants. The company has closed more locations than it has opened every year since 2017, having closed nearly 400 locations. The chain currently operates under 1,500 restaurants. At $1.3 million, it has some of the smallest average-unit volumes of any major fast-food burger chain.
UPDATE: This story has been changed to add the number of restaurants that Superior Star operates and add a point on Hardee's reopening some Arc Burger locations.
About the Author
Jonathan Maze
Editor in Chief, Restaurant Business
Restaurant Business Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Maze is a longtime industry journalist who writes about restaurant finance, mergers and acquisitions and the economy, with a particular focus on quick-service restaurants. He writes daily about the factors influencing the operating environment, including labor and food costs and various industry trends such as technology and delivery.
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