It’s always hard to swallow the loss of a publicly traded company.

But that’s what happened on July 12, when CKE Restaurants went private after tossing in the napkin and agreeing to be gobbled up by an affiliate of Wall Street financier Leon Black’s Apollo Management empire.

We’ll take a minute to wish CEO Andy Puzder and the team at CKE Restaurants good luck under their new owners.

They added a bit of sizzle to our coverage of regional stocks and we have absolutely no beef with their colorful advertising.

Anyway you slice it, they were fun to have around. But CKE stock got caught up in the meat grinder that is the California economy, and the Carl’s Jr. unit, in particular, was decidedly underdone when it came to profitability.

Now Black is a savvy guy. So maybe as California rebounds, CKE will come back for a second helping. It would be a juicy IPO.

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