Carrols is a chain of fast-food restaurants in various cities in Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

.

The company originally came to Finland as a franchise of an international chain named Carrols Corporation

Carrols Corporation

Carrols Restaurant Group is a fast-food restaurant operator. It is the largest Burger King franchisee in the world; Carrols owns and operates about 330 Burger King locations across 12 U.S. states....

. However, it was eventually completely bought by the Finnish company Tuko which in turn was acquired by the Finnish chain Kesko

Kesko

Kesko is a Finnish retailing conglomerate. It is engaged in the food trade, the home and specialty goods trade, the building and home improvement trade, and the car and machinery trade...

 becoming a completely Finnish-owned company. In the process it was renamed from Carrol's to Carrols, losing the apostrophe

Apostrophe

The apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets...

.

The most famous hamburger

Hamburger

A hamburger is a sandwich consisting of a cooked patty of ground meat usually placed inside a sliced bread roll...

 in Carrols is the Club Burger, which is similar to the Big Mac

Big Mac

The Big Mac is a hamburger sold by McDonald's, an international fast food restaurant chain. It is one of the company's signature products...

 in McDonald's

McDonald's

McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 64 million customers daily in 119 countries. Headquartered in the United States, the company began in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant operated by the eponymous Richard and Maurice McDonald; in 1948...

. The chain also regularly serves limited-time special hamburgers.

The chain was eventually bought out by another Finnish fast-food chain, Hesburger

Hesburger

Hesburger is a fast-food chain based in Turku, Finland. Today, it is the largest Finnish hamburger restaurant chain, with a larger presence in the Finnish market than U.S.-based McDonald's...

, which integrated it to itself almost fully. Almost all Carrols restaurants were converted to Hesburgers. This event caused a minor upset among the residents of Helsinki

Helsinki

Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...

, since Hesburger

Hesburger

Hesburger is a fast-food chain based in Turku, Finland. Today, it is the largest Finnish hamburger restaurant chain, with a larger presence in the Finnish market than U.S.-based McDonald's...

 is based in a rival city

City rivalry in Finland

In Finland, there is a kind of tradition of good-natured rivalry between different cities, most notably between Helsinki , Tampere and Turku...

, Turku

Turku

Turku is a city situated on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River. It is located in the region of Finland Proper. It is believed that Turku came into existence during the end of the 13th century which makes it the oldest city in Finland...

. Since the acquisition by Hesburger, only a few of the most famous Carrols restaurants remained under their original name, all of them located in the Greater Helsinki

Greater Helsinki

Greater Helsinki and the smaller Helsinki Metropolitan Area or Capital Region refer to two regions of different size surrounding Helsinki, the capital of Finland...

 region (except one in Janakkala

Janakkala

Janakkala is a municipality of Finland. Its administrative centre is in Turenki, which is nowadays often erroneously shown on maps as being "Janakkala"....

 and one in Lahti

Lahti

Lahti is a city and municipality in Finland.Lahti is the capital of the Päijänne Tavastia region. It is situated on a bay at the southern end of lake Vesijärvi about north-east of the capital Helsinki...

). Although Hesburger serves the Club Burger in its menu, the limited-time special hamburgers have been discontinued.

In August 2006 new life was breathed into the Carrols brand when a pilot scheme was launched with Pikoil, an operator of Neste branded service stations across Finland. The pilot programme saw new Carrols restaurants opening at Pikoil sites in Imatra and Vantaa. One reason for the Carrols brand being used instead of Hesburger was that Hesburger already operates fast food restaurants under its own name at service stations run by the rival S-Group. Along with the launch of new Carrols restaurants, the Carrols.fi domain no longer pointed to the Hesburger site but instead to a relaunched dedicated Carrols site.

Further information

• Information about Pikoil project (In Finnish) http://www.kauppalehti.fi/4/i/uutiset/etusivu/tulosta_juttu.jsp?oid=2006/08/26/2022237.