Former CKE Chief Doyle Hoping O.C. Ties Help Rally

Louisville, Ky., is fast-food executive Don Doyle’s kind of town.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Doyle lived there while serving as chief of domestic operations for KFC, the fried chicken restaurant chain owned by PepsiCo Inc. And, prior to leaving town in 1993 to become president of CKE Restaurants in Anaheim, Doyle served as an executive in Louisville’s economic growth agency.

Doyle left CKE, the parent company of the Carl’s Jr. chain, following a change in control that resulted in current President and Chief Operating Officer C. Thomas Thompson taking charge. Doyle picked up and moved to Rocky Mount, N.C., where he served as chief operating officer of Hardee’s Food Systems, a burger chain.

But Doyle recently moved back to Louisville, to become president and chief executive officer of Rally’s Hamburgers Inc., a 600-unit restaurant chain. He even bought a house on the same street where he’d previously lived.

And Doyle once again has some ties to Orange County.

Earlier this week, CKE Restaurants and Irvine-based Fidelity National Financial Inc. took a 19.9% stake in Rally’s, along with an option to acquire an additional 15% share of the struggling chain’s common stock.

The deal was orchestrated by William P. Foley II, chairman of both Fidelity National, the Irvine-based title insurance company, and CKE Restaurants. Doyle was president of CKE Restaurants for a brief time after Foley acquired a controlling stake in the company in late 1993.

Doyle had butted heads with Carl’s Jr. founder Carl N. Karcher over the chain’s direction and sided with a majority of the company’s board of directors in a controversial decision to oust Karcher as chairman.

Foley and Thompson will join the board of directors at Rally’s, which is attempting to negotiate its own turnaround in the face of stiff competition from national burger chains.

In a news release issued this week by CKE, Doyle said, “I look forward to working with my former colleagues at Carl’s Jr., where they are experiencing a highly successful turnaround.”

Greg Johnson covers retail businesses and restaurants for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-5950 and at greg.johnson@latimes.com.