Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. Restaurants Team with GroupCast Messaging

ST. LOUIS (April 9, 2009) - In response to the growing need for instant communication capabilities within an organization, CKE, the parent of Hardees's and Carl's Jr. restaurants, has teamed with GroupCast Messaging Systems to deliver instant broadcast telephone communications to its 3,100 locations across the United States. GroupCast will enable CKE to contact all Hardees's and Carl's Jr. restaurants, franchise owners and key managers with a single phone call.

"We need an effective way to ensure immediate and concise communication to all the Hardee's and Carl's Jr. restaurants," said Ron Wennerberg, vice president of quality assurance for CKE Restaurants. "The answer to our needs is hanging on the wall at each location - a simple telephone. We have with GroupCast Messaging a cost-effective way to make immediate mass calls to our restaurants and know that our messages have been received and acted upon."

GroupCast enables CKE to call all locations, key owners and staff to alert them with a single call. "When the phone rings at a restaurant, someone answers it; if not, the call is automatically escalated until we have a response," said Wennerberg.

CKE chose GroupCast because of its experience with mass phone communications in support of food-related issues, educational messaging, crisis management and emergency response. The service is entirely Web-based and requires no on-site hardware, software or additional phone lines. "We can use GroupCast from day one," commented Wennerberg.

"As a hosted solution, CKE gains access to a massive, fully redundant notification system at a fraction of the cost of building something comparable internally," said Paul Langhorst, vice president of GroupCast. "We are seeing a trend of quick-serve locations turning to mass notification systems, like GroupCast, to increase response to emerging issues. We look forward to working with CKE, and we know our system will help them with effective proactivity of emergency messaging and a variety of operational issues."

About GroupCast, LLC

GroupCast, LLC is based in St. Louis and was founded in 2002. GroupCast owns and operates a propriety mass notification platform with system nodes in Chicago, St. Louis and Dallas. GroupCast processes more than 150 million broadcast calls annually. GroupCast also operates SchoolReach, the leading parent notification system among private religious schools and the leading provider to public schools in several Midwestern states. For more information about GroupCast, visit www.groupcast.com or contact Paul Langhorst at 800-420-1479 ext. 8026.