Scooter’s Coffee adds 31 stores in Southeast with Hardee’s operator

Scooter’s Coffee made one of its biggest franchise plays yet, signing a deal for 31 planned stores across North Carolina and Virginia with Boddie-Noell Enterprises, the nation’s largest Hardee’s franchise operator. The move matters because it is not a first-time restaurant group testing coffee on the side. Boddie-Noell already runs more than 330 Hardee’s locations across four states, giving Scooter’s a deep-pocketed, multi-unit operator with real field experience behind the wheel.

The agreement gives Scooter’s a much bigger push into the Southeast, where the brand already had 14 North Carolina locations when the deal was announced on April 21. Virginia is still early territory for the chain, which opened its first store there in Richmond in 2024. That opening came with franchisee Ryan Kim, who said he planned to open 10 Scooter’s locations over the next 10 years. This new agreement blows past that kind of measured start and suggests Scooter’s wants faster, broader coverage in the region.

Boddie-Noell brings a very different profile from a typical coffee franchisee. The company is headquartered in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and traces its Hardee’s roots to 1962, when Carleton Noell and his two entrepreneurial nephews, the late Mayo and Nick Boddie, opened one of the first Hardee’s restaurants in Fayetteville. It describes itself as a third-generation, family-owned company, and that scale gives Scooter’s an operator that already understands site selection, labor, throughput, and multi-state restaurant management.

Scooter’s called the agreement one of the largest multi-store development deals in its history. That tracks with the company’s recent pace: in February 2026, Scooter’s said it had reached 900 stores across 32 states. Adding 31 more units in two adjacent Southeast markets is not just a growth story. It is a signal that Scooter’s believes the drive-thru coffee lane still has room to take share from Starbucks, Dunkin’, and local chains, especially in suburban and highway corridors where speed and convenience win the morning rush.

For North Carolina and Virginia, the practical impact is simple: more Scooter’s boxes, more coffee competition, and a stronger national chain presence in markets where regional loyalty still matters. With Boddie-Noell involved, this looks less like a cautious experiment and more like a serious rollout plan.