When was burger king created

They also started advertising their business on television and radio stations that also made them get customers beyond the borders of Florida. By , the Burger King and the special one called whopper were already known in the United States of America and most people had already tasted the burgers and the number of customers had also grown.

By , the Pillsbury Company bought Burger King Corporation for eighteen million dollars and made to grow to become the second largest chain store that provided burgers behind the McDonald Company, which was still very strong due to the large capital base they had and the familiarity they had to their customers.

During the market wars between Coke and Pepsi in the year , there was also a battle for supremacy between the McDonald Company and the Burger King Corporation which was now growing at a very fast rate. In , the Burger King Corporation poached the main executive director of the McDonald Company into their company, and this saw them being able to agree on how the franchise will be made between the two companies. This forced the Burger King Company to reach out to children who they saw also as a potential source of a large market that would use to counter the McDonald company that had already dominated the adult market.

Norman Brinker became the person who made what was known as the Burger Wars to be experienced in the United States during that period. Smith left Burger King in June to try to introduce the same kind of fast-food management techniques at Pizza Hut. Ironically, when he left Pizza Hut in he moved into the chief executive position at the franchisee that had given Burger King so much trouble, Chart House. By following in Smith's general direction, Burger King reached its number-two position within two years of his departure, but frequent changes at the top for the next several years meant inconsistent management for the company.

Louis P. Neeb succeeded Smith, to be followed less than two years later by Jerry Ruenheck. Ruenheck resigned to become a Burger King franchise owner in Florida less than two years after that, and his successor, Jay Darling, resigned a little over a year later to take on a Burger King franchise himself. Charles Olcott, a conservative former chief financial officer, took over in Burger King did not stand still under its succession of heads, though.

The company continued to expand abroad, opening a training center in London to serve its European franchisees and employees in Besides developing successful breakfast entries, Burger King added salad bars and a "light" menu to meet the demand for foods with a healthier, less fatty image.

Burger King also completely computerized its cooking and cash register operations so even the least skilled teenager could do the job. Even some of Burger King's post-Smith successes caused problems, though. The company introduced another successful new entree, Chicken Tenders, in , only to find it that it could not obtain enough chicken to meet demand.

Burger King was still bedeviled by the old complaint that its service and food were inconsistent. The company played out its identity crisis in public, changing ad styles with almost the same frequency that it changed managers.

After Smith's departure in , Burger King's old "Have it your way" campaign "Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce. Special orders don't upset us" was no longer appropriate. That ad campaign emphasized as a selling point what many saw as a drawback at Burger King: longer waiting times.

But under Smith's emphasis on speed and efficiency, special orders did upset store owners. So the company turned to the harder sell "Aren't you hungry for Burger King now? The hard sell approach moved the chain into second place, and Burger King took an even more aggressive advertising line.

In Burger King directly attacked its competitors, alleging that Burger King's grilled burgers were better than McDonald's and Wendy's fried burgers. Both competitors sued over the ads, and Wendy's challenged Burger King to a taste test a challenge that was pointedly ignored.

Burger King's subsequent ad campaigns were not as successful. In the company added just over half an ounce of meat to its Whopper, making the 4. All three of the major campaigns that followed "Herb the Nerd," "This is a Burger King town," and "Fast food for fast times" were costly flops.

In , the company faced another kind of threat. Parent Pillsbury, the target of a hostile takeover attempt by the British company Grand Metropolitan PLC, devised a counterplan that included spinning off the troubled Burger King chain to shareholders, but at the cost of new debt that would lower the price of both Pillsbury and the new Burger King shares. Such a plan would have made it highly unlikely that Burger King could ever have overcome its ongoing problems of quality and consistent marketing.

Pillsbury became part of Grand Met's worldwide system of food and retailing businesses with well-known brand names. In Burger King, Grand Met got a company with some problems but whose 5, restaurants in all 50 states and 30 foreign countries gave it a strong presence.

Soon thereafter, in September , Grand Met acquired several restaurant properties from United Biscuits Holdings Plc, including the Wimpey hamburger chain, which included U. By the summer of , Wimpeys had been converted to Burger Kings, bolstering the company's foreign operations, a traditional area of weakness. Over the next several years, Burger King was much more aggressive with its international expansion, with restaurants opening for the first time in Hungary and Mexico ; Poland ; Saudi Arabia ; Israel, Oman, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Peru, and New Zealand ; and Paraguay By , Burger King had outlets in 56 countries, a dramatic increase from the 30 of just seven years earlier.

While Gibbons was successful in accelerating the company's international growth, overall his tenure as CEO which lasted until brought a mixture of successes and failures.

In the new product area, the hamburger chain hit it big with the introduction of the BK Broiler, a broiled chicken sandwich aimed at fast-food eaters seeking a somewhat more healthful meal; soon after introduction, more than one million were being sold each day. Also successful were promotions aimed at children. In the Burger King Kids Club program was launched nationwide, and more than one million kids signed up in the first two months.

The program continued to grow thereafter; by membership stood at five million and the number of Kids Club meals sold each month had increased from 6. Also hugely successful was the long-term deal with Disney for motion picture tie-ins signed in Gibbons also worked to improve Burger King's profitability, under a mandate from Grand Met.

Soon after taking over as CEO, Gibbons cut more than jobs, mainly field staff positions. He also began to divest company-owned stores in areas where the company did not have critical mass, particularly west of the Mississippi. Doing so helped increase profitability, although some observers charged that Gibbons was selling off valuable assets just to improve the company numbers.

Where Gibbons certainly failed, however, was in addressing Burger King's longstanding problem with image.

By , the rechristened Burger King and its signature burger, the Whopper, had begun to spread across the United States. In , Burger King poached executive Donald N. Smith from McDonald's. He restructured the company's franchise agreements so that owners could not own franchises in other chains, thus encouraging loyalty; and so that they could not operate stores more than an hour's drive from their homes, thus cutting down on absentee ownership.

Many unprofitable franchise owners dropped out, trimming the company's fat. It was at this time that Burger King began to reach out to children, by countering McDonald's commercials featuring live-action versions of its characters Ronald McDonald and his friends with similarly themed characters: a Burger King who was also a magician, the Wizard of Fries, and Sir Shake-a-Lot.

Smith took on not only his former employer and Long John Silver's by introducing Burger King's first fish sandwiches, but also Kentucky Fried Chicken and Wendy's by introducing their first chicken sandwiches. Company sales were up 15 percent by , at which point Smith was poached once again, this time by PepsiCo.

After he left, sales began to decline. He started what became known as the Burger Wars, running commercials that said Burger King's burgers were bigger and better than McDonald's; these may be the first political-style "attack ads" in the food industry. As with Smith's efforts, Brinker's worked for a brief time before he left the company, and he went on to build the Chili's restaurant chain. Already having a worldwide focus, Grand Met changed Burger King's distribution methods, switching their soft-drink contract from Pepsi to Coca-Cola, partnering with the Walt Disney Company to tie in with Disney films, and expanding BK around the globe, partially by buying the company that ran British-based burger chain Wimpy.

The company's headquarters building in Miami was destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in , but a proactive response by Grand Met led to a quick rebound. TPG introduced the Whopper Bar concept, allowing customers in some stores to better see the burgers being made, a concept similar to the Benihana steakhouse chain but more familiar to Starbucks customers, with the workers being named "Whopperistas.

Burger King once again revamped its menus and ad campaigns in and was doing well enough that 3G Capital took the company public again in In , the Burger King chain merged with a Canadian chain, Tim Hortons, a Canadian chain of restaurants and coffee shops. The acquisition which further expanded the company's menu offerings beyond burgers and donuts and included fried chicken.