48 Fun Facts About Burger King

Burger King was founded in Jacksonville in 1953 under what name?

Insta-Burger King built every store around an oven called the Insta-Broiler; when the Jacksonville company ran into financial trouble, two of its franchisees bought it in 1959 and dropped the 'Insta'.

Which two franchisees bought the struggling Burger King chain in 1959 and rebuilt it?

James McLamore and David Edgerton renamed the company, replaced its troublesome ovens with a flame broiler of their own design, and had grown it to 274 US restaurants by the time they sold it in 1967.

Burger King's founders were inspired by whose original restaurant in San Bernardino, California?

The McDonald brothers' stand prompted Keith Cramer and Matthew Burns to buy the rights to two cooking machines and build their own burger stores around them.

Burger King's first broiler oven was replaced in the 1950s because what kept degrading its heating elements?

Beef drippings fell on the heating elements and wore them out, so the new owners designed a gas flame broiler that carried patties over the burners on a moving chain and left grill marks on the meat.

The Whopper was created in 1957 after a rival restaurant thrived on what?

Bigger burgers at a busy rival convinced a Burger King co-founder that size was the draw, so he devised a larger sandwich of his own, priced it at 37 cents and gave it a name meant to sound big.

Burger King's 1998 April Fools' hoax was a Whopper with condiments rotated for whom?

Left-handed people would find the toppings no longer spilled out the right side, the advert claimed; next day the chain admitted the hoax and said thousands of customers had asked for the burger.

Burger King's 2015 Halloween Whopper, flavoured with A.1. steak sauce, came on a bun of what colour?

Black buns marked the A.1. Halloween Whopper, and the chain followed it the next spring with the Angriest Whopper, which had hot sauce baked into a red bun.

The Whopper Jr. was born when a Puerto Rico restaurant opened without what?

Big buns could not be baked because the moulds had reportedly not arrived, so Luis Arenas served the burger on ordinary small buns rather than delay opening day in 1963; the chain later adopted it worldwide.

Around 1970 the Whopper switched from a plain bun to what?

A sesame seed bun gave the Whopper its familiar look; a 1985 makeover that enlarged the patty to 4.2 ounces, backed by a $30 million ad campaign, failed to bring in new business.

One Halloween, Burger King gave free Whoppers to customers dressed as what?

Clowns got the free Whoppers on Halloween 2017 in a dig at McDonald's, whose mascot is the clown Ronald McDonald.

A 2017 Burger King TV ad ended with a line designed to make which gadget read out the Whopper's Wikipedia entry?

Google Home speakers obediently read the page aloud until pranksters rewrote it, adding cyanide to the ingredients; the trigger was soon blocked, so the chain re-recorded the line to get round the block.

Which Brazilian investment firm bought Burger King in 2010 in a deal worth about $3.26 billion?

3G Capital, backed by Brazilian billionaire Jorge Paulo Lemann, paid $24 a share and brought a fierce cost-cutting regime, right down to limits on colour copies, before buying Heinz with Warren Buffett in 2013.

Burger King's 2014 merger with which Canadian chain created Restaurant Brands International?

Tim Hortons, Canada's coffee-and-doughnut chain, gave the combined company a Canadian home, a move its executives insisted was not about cutting taxes; Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway helped finance the deal.

Which chicken chain did Restaurant Brands International add to its portfolio in 2017?

Popeyes cost Restaurant Brands $1.8 billion in 2017; two years later its new chicken sandwich kept selling out, kicking off a sandwich war with rival fast-food chains.

Where is Burger King's corporate headquarters?

Miami-Dade County, Florida, is where two local franchisees built the chain in the 1950s, and its offices have stayed there even though the parent company, Restaurant Brands International, is based in Toronto.

Burger King trades as Hungry Jack's in which country, where the Burger King name was already registered?

Australia already had a registered Burger King trademark, so franchisee Jack Cowin had to pick another name from those the parent company owned when he opened his first restaurant in 1971.

The Hungry Jack's name was borrowed from a Pillsbury brand of what?

Pancake mix sold in America as Hungry Jack supplied the name: franchisee Jack Cowin picked it from the trademarks Pillsbury already owned and added an apostrophe and an s.

In 2006 Burger King sold three budget video games starring its King mascot for which family of consoles?

Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles both ran the discs, sold for $3.99 with a value meal; more than three million copies were sold, enough for the chain's agency to rank them among the ten best-selling games of 2006.

Burger King's 2019 Super Bowl commercial was 45 seconds of old film showing which artist quietly eating a Whopper?

Andy Warhol unwraps the burger, fights a ketchup bottle and eats almost in silence; the full four-and-a-half-minute scene ends in a long pause because he was waiting for a cue to speak.

In the 2004 advert reviving Burger King's masked King, a man finds him where?

In his bed is where the plastic-headed King turns up in the 'Wake Up with the King' advert, lying beside a startled man before handing him breakfast.

The Subservient Chicken site, where a costumed man obeyed commands, played on which slogan?

Have It Your Way, taken literally: visitors typed orders and the performer obeyed, and he was dressed as a chicken because the site was selling the new TenderCrisp chicken sandwich.

Burger King's failed $40 million 1985 campaign asked customers to find whom?

Herb was billed as the one American who had never eaten a Whopper; when he was finally unveiled as a bespectacled nerd at the 1986 Super Bowl the campaign fell flat, and the chain dropped its ad agency.

The 2009 "Whopper Sacrifice" promotion offered a free burger for doing what?

Deleting ten Facebook friends earned a coupon for a free burger, and each dropped friend was told they had been 'sacrificed'; Facebook switched the app off after ten days, by which time some 234,000 friendships had ended.

Which future TV star, then about four years old, fronted an early-1980s Burger King advert attacking McDonald's by name?

Sarah Michelle Gellar told viewers the chain's burgers were bigger and better than McDonald's, among the first fast-food adverts to name a rival; until then chains had made only vague allusions to competitors.

Which country's Burger King opened in 2014 with a mutton Whopper on the menu?

India's first Burger King opened in 2014 with no beef or pork anywhere on the menu, in deference to Hindu and Muslim customers, so the chain's signature burger had to be reinvented for it.

The Windows 7 Whopper, a seven-patty promotional burger, was sold in which country?

It promoted Microsoft's operating system launch; the Angry Whopper, by contrast, adds jalapeños and "Angry Sauce".

Which breakfast item did Burger King add in 1983?

The Croissan'Wich gave Burger King its first breakfast hit: the chain had followed McDonald's into the morning trade with a menu much like its rival's, and the croissant sandwich finally set it apart.

Burger King's Chicken Tenders arrived in the mid-1980s as an answer to which McDonald's product?

McNuggets had a rival so popular that Burger King could not buy enough chicken to meet demand, and had to pull the $30 million advertising campaign launching its Chicken Tenders.

When Burger King tried evening table service in 1992, what free snack did diners get while they waited?

Popcorn kept diners busy from 4 to 8 p.m. while staff carried 'dinner baskets' of steak sandwiches, fried shrimp or chicken to the table, a bid for the evening trade that fast food had struggled to crack.

After buying Carrols, its biggest US franchisee, in 2024, Burger King's parent planned what for 600 restaurants?

A remodel and resale: the $1 billion deal let the parent company modernise about 600 Carrols restaurants within five years, then sell them back to smaller local operators.

Which cartoon gang took over from the Burger King Kingdom characters in the chain's advertising around 1990?

The BK Kids Club gang fronted the chain's advertising to youngsters until 2004, when Burger King turned to the Honbatz, a new set of characters aimed at older pre-teens.

Burger King's $70 million campaign of 1997 relaunched which menu item with a crisper coating?

French fries got a potato-starch coating to keep them crisp for longer, and the chain marked the launch by giving portions away on a 'Free FryDay' while its adverts took aim at McDonald's fries.

In 2019 Burger King's Swedish restaurants served a menu of 'Not Big Macs' after McDonald's lost what in the EU?

A trademark case went against McDonald's that January, when EU officials ruled it had not proved genuine use of the Big Mac name in a dispute with Irish chain Supermac's; the joke menu included 'The Burger Big Mac Wished It Was'.

Burger King's hit film tie-in deal of the early 1990s ended in 1996 when which studio switched to McDonald's?

Disney's ten-film deal caught the studio's animation revival at its height, tying Burger King to Aladdin, The Lion King and Toy Story before the studio left for its rival.

What was Burger King's loyalty programme, tested in 2021, called?

Royal Perks was tested in five US markets, Los Angeles and New York among them, because executives wanted rewards to replace the chain's reliance on one-off deals.

Which plant-based sandwich did Burger King launch in the UK in 2021?

The Vegan Royale put a crispy plant-based fillet from The Vegetarian Butcher into the chain's chicken burger and won Vegan Society certification, unlike the earlier Rebel Whopper, cooked on the same grill as meat.

McDonald's sued Hungry Jack's in 2020 over which burger's name?

The Big Jack sat too close to the Big Mac, McDonald's argued; Hungry Jack's replied in adverts that its burger was 'clearly bigger' than 'some American burger' and said the name played on its founder, Jack Cowin.

Burger King's King mascot, retired in 2011, returned in 2015 by walking which boxer to the ring?

Floyd Mayweather walked to the ring with the King in his entourage, a cameo that reportedly cost the chain $1 million and drew a backlash online, since most brands had steered clear of the controversial boxer.

Which Burger King snack, dropped in 2012, came back in 2014 after fans pleaded for it on social media?

Chicken Fries were being demanded in a tweet every 40 seconds on some days, the chain's marketing chief said, and a Change.org petition backed the call; the comeback drew a million Twitter mentions.

Which drinks giant, born of a 1997 Guinness merger, put Burger King up for sale in 2000?

Diageo wanted to concentrate on its drinks brands after Grand Metropolitan merged with Guinness, and in 2002 it sold Burger King to a group led by Texas Pacific for $1.5 billion.

Which Burger King burger went national in 1997 to rival McDonald's double-decker?

Big King began as the Double Supreme, tested with adverts boasting 75% more beef than the Big Mac, before going national under its final name in 1997.

Burger King must stay 20 miles from Mattoon, Illinois, because a diner did what first?

Registered the name: the Mattoon stand, open since 1957, registered 'Burger King' in Illinois in 1959, two years before the chain's federal registration, so a 1968 court gave it a 20-mile zone the chain cannot enter.

Burger King's 2007 'Whopper Freakout' adverts filmed real customers being told the Whopper was what?

Discontinued, staff at a Las Vegas restaurant told real customers, and the adverts showed their dismay; later ones in the series served diners a rival chain's burger instead.

In 2016 Burger King sold deep-fried macaroni sticks coated in the orange dust of which snack?

Cheetos lent their coating to Mac n' Cheetos, sticks of macaroni cheese that arrived in June 2016 as a limited offer and proved popular enough to return the next year.

A 2022 class-action lawsuit accused Burger King's adverts of doing what to the Whopper?

Making it look bigger: the suit claimed that from 2017 the chain's photos showed a Whopper about 35% larger than the real one, with double the meat, although the recipe had never changed.

Burger King's 'A Chance for Kids' scratch cards, sold with the Red Sox-backed Jimmy Fund, raised money to fight what?

Childhood cancer research and care at Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute got the money: diners gave $1 for a scratch card that was guaranteed to win a prize, usually food.

To stop franchisees growing too powerful, Burger King's late-1970s contract required new owners to do what?

Live near their restaurants, within an hour's drive, and own no other chains: chief executive Donald Smith wrote the rules after one franchisee had grown big enough to bid for the whole company.

A Burger King executive said its masked King, shelved in 2011, was doing what?

Scaring women and children was the verdict of finance chief Josh Kobza, who said the chain 'got rid of the creepy king' to win back families; trade writers had long called him the Creepy King.