Hart's Story

In the picture, on the left is Mr. L.S. Hartzog and beside him is Mr. Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy's. Mr. L.S. Hartzog's bakeries baked hamburger buns for Wendy's. He was also the first franchisee with Wendy's and built 63 Wendy's hamburger restaurants. Mr. Hart owned several bakeries and over 150 restaurants including 75 Kentucky Fried Chicken stores. He designed and developed the pressure frying system that Kentucky Chicken restaurants used. He loved aviation and sold airplanes to people with same passion. He also went on developing several other restaurants before he passed away. His brother in law, Mr. Wayne Johnson, was the Vice President of the restaurant operations for his company.

In 1964, "Mr. Hart" opened the first Hart's Fried Chicken store in Mobile, AL. In 1972, Mr. Hart sold all of his KFC stores, bakeries, and his restaurant equipment company to the KFC parent company. Because Hart's stores would be competing with KFC franchise stores here in Mobile, Mr. Wayne Johnson bought the Mobile operation from KFC parent company. Since then, Harts has been run by three generations of Johnson family: Mr. Wayne Johnson's son and grandson: Mr. Robert Johnson and Mr. Matthew Johnson. Mr. Robert Johnson ran the company for 40 years and retired in 2014.

When Mr. Wayne Johnson retired in 1980, he sold minority shares to his long-time employee Mr. Dave Hepler who subsequently sold his shares to his son: Kevin Hepler. Mr. Kevin Hepler is currently company's vice president.



Hart's is one of the oldest family owned restaurants in Mobile, Alabama and has five locations in mobile area. We have locations at 830 Dauphin Island Parkway, 1866 Dauphin Island Parkway, 2951 Springhill Avenue, 732 Saraland Blvd., and 929 S. Wilson Avenue.