Its parent firm, privately owned CKE Restaurants (which also owns Hardee’s), does not disclose revenues. However, per career platform Zippia estimates it made $1.3 billion in 2024, across 3,800 stores.
Male gaze marketing
The last year has seen some U..S. brands make a controversial return to sexualized marketing catered to the male gaze, which was an industry norm until the mid-2000s, perpetuated by advertisers ranging from Abercrombie & Fitch to GoDaddy.
In June 2025, Dr. Squatch encouraged 1 million people to enter a competition to win bars of soap made from actor Sydney Sweeney’s bathwater. The campaign was supported by a film in which Sweeney mocked “dirty little boys” with a product that smelled like “morning wood.”
Dr. Squatch’s vp of global marketing, John Ludeke, told ADWEEK at the time that “women also love Sydney Sweeney.” He added: “What we’ve heard is people appreciate a woman who is in power, who’s in control, who’s able to have fun and not take themselves too seriously.”
A few months later, Sweeney fronted American Eagle’s divisive “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” campaign. Some of the ads focused on her individual body parts, including her chest and buttocks, with several showing her performing for and addressing an unseen cameraman.
Elsewhere in 2025, a campaign for David Protein, in which actor Julia Fox made a euphemism-laden confession to a priest, sparked criticism for catering to the “male fantasy masquerading as female sexuality.”
