Hardee's
How franchisees’ loans performed
Every SBA-guaranteed loan to a Hardee's franchisee approved between 2016–2025. This is the only public record of what happened to people who actually bought this franchise — the disclosure document does not report it.
Rates below count only finished loans — ones that have been repaid in full or written off. A loan still being repaid has not succeeded yet, and counting it as though it had would make every brand look better than it is.
1 of 3 finished loans was charged off
33.3% of finished loans charged off — fewer than 20 finished loans, so read this as a handful of outcomes, not a rate — SBA withheld the outcome on 43% of this brand’s loans, so this covers a minority of them
- Loans on record
- 7
- Finished — repaid or written off
- 3
- Outcome withheld by SBA
- 3 — 43% of all loans
- Median loan approved
- $1,326,900
By dollar rather than by loan: SBA wrote off $803,363 of the $4,434,000 it lent on finished loans — 18.1%, against 33.3% by count. The two differ because failures are not the same size as successes, and because a default late in the term recovers most of the loan. Neither is the truer figure; they answer different questions.
Source: U.S. Small Business Administration 7(a) FOIA disclosure data. A loan is counted only once it has been repaid in full or charged off — loans still running are neither a success nor a failure, and counting them as repaid would flatter every brand here. Loans whose status SBA withheld are excluded from the figures above and shown separately. The median is the loan approved, not the cost of opening — most projects are financed with additional capital.