Well, not exactly. But the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's chains Wednesday are rolling out a burger and a breakfast sandwich with door-to-door bacon. Specifically: four strips of bacon in each.
The bacon-laden sandwiches: Western X-Tra Bacon Cheeseburger with four strips of bacon, a char-broiled beef patty, two fried onion rings, American cheese and BBQ sauce. And the X-Tra Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit, with four strips of bacon, egg, and American cheese.
Never mind that consumers are more broadly demanding better-for you foods or that the bacon-in-everything fad that was so popular for the past several years had supposedly become yesterday's news. Don't tell that to the folks at Carl's Jr. and Hardee's. The sandwiches each come stuffed with twice the bacon of their classic counterparts.
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Reason: The chain is temporarily tying-in its iconic sandwiches with the May 23 release of 20th Century Fox's upcoming film X-Men: Days of Future Past. Since the film promises to be the biggest X-men film ever, says Brad Haley, chief marketing officer for Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, "we're making two of our most popular menu items bigger and better than ever by loading them up with four strips of bacon."
The nutritionals tells the tale. A single Western X-Tra Bacon Cheeseburger comes stuffed with 800 calories; 39 grams of fat; 90 milligrams of cholesterol and 1670 milligrams of sodium.
Looks like America remains a bacon nation. In 2013, bacon sales climbed 9.5% to an all-time high of nearly $4 billion, reports Information Resources. Bacon sales in the U.S. have increased four consecutive years, says the research specialist.
Perhaps that's why Burger King rolled out a bacon-flavored sundae last year and one distiller even came up with a bacon-flavored vodka.
Even then, bacon-infused products like bacon-flavored chocolate got the thumbs-down from re! staurant chefs in a recent survey of 1,300 members of the American Culinary Federation, asking them what's hot -- and what's not. Bacon, they said, is old news.
None of this, however, is expected to stop some young, hungry Carl's Jr. and Hardee's customers from doing the unthinkable: ordering their X-Tra Bacon burgers -- with a side of bacon.
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