Burger King

Burger King runs close to 7,000 restaurants in the United States. Independent franchisees hold roughly 99 of every 100 of the chain’s 19,000-plus restaurants and set the prices in each one. What a Whopper costs therefore moves from one market to the next. A chain conveyor carries beef patties over an open gas flame, and that broiler has carried the brand’s name since the 1950s.

What follows covers the founding, the owners the brand has passed through, and the shape of the US estate today.

Burger King History

Keith Cramer and Matthew Burns opened the first Insta-Burger King in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1953. Their machine cooked a dozen patties at a time in a wire basket. James McLamore and David Edgerton bought the Miami franchise rights a year later, took over the whole company in 1959, and dropped the Insta- prefix. They scrapped the founding machine and built the flame broiler in its place.

The Whopper followed in 1957, after McLamore watched a rival sell a bigger burger than anything on his own board. A quarter-pound flame-broiled patty on a sesame seed bun has defined it ever since. Have It Your Way arrived in 1974 and became the chain’s whole position. Kitchens built each sandwich to order rather than pulling a finished one from a chute.

Pillsbury bought the company in 1967 and Grand Metropolitan took it in 1989. A TPG-led private-equity group followed in 2002, a public listing came in 2006, and the Brazilian firm 3G Capital took the chain private in 2010. Restaurant Brands International grew out of a 2014 merger with Tim Hortons and runs from Toronto under chief executive Josh Kobza. Burger King runs its own head office from Blue Lagoon Drive in Miami-Dade County.

Burger King Menus & Details

Three pages carry the detail behind the counter, and every row on them pairs an item with its price and its calorie figure.

The full board, section by section, from Whoppers and Royal Crispy chicken through sides, shakes, drinks and dipping sauces, with a price and a calorie figure beside every item.

Off-menu builds regulars order by name, the wording that works at the counter, and the board item each one is priced from.

Milk, egg, wheat, soy, sesame and sulfites named item by item, with the calorie figure from the menu page beside each row.