Burger King (NYSE: BKC), often abbreviated as BK , is a global chain of hamburger fast food restaurants headquartered in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. The first restaurant was opened in Miami, Florida in 1954 by James McLamore and David Edgerton, and has since used several variations of franchising to expand its operations. Burger King Holdings Corporation is the parent company of Burger King; in the United States it operates under the Burger King Brands title while internationally it operates under the Burger King Corporation banner. It is a publicly traded company with investment firms of TPG Capital, Bain Capital and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners each owning about 25% of the company.
At the end of its fiscal year 2008, Burger King reported that there are more than 11,550 outlets in 71 countries; 66% are in the United States and 90% are privately owned and operated. The company has more than 37,000 employees serving approximately 11.4 million customers daily. In North America, franchises are licensed on a per store basis, while in several international locations licenses are sold on a regional basis with franchises owning exclusive development rights for the region or country. These regional franchises are known as master franchises, and are responsible for opening new restaurants, licensing new third party operators, and performing standards oversight of all restaurant locations in these countries; The largest example of a master franchise is Hungry Jack's, which exclusively owns, operates or sub-licenses over 300 restaurants in Australia.
The Burger King menu has evolved from a basic offering of burgers, fries, sodas and milkshakes in 1954 to a larger, more diverse set of offerings that includes several variations of chicken, fish, salads and breakfast. The Whopper, a sandwich that has since become Burger King's signature product, was the first major addition to the menu by Mr. McLamore in 1957. Not all introductions have had the success of the Whopper; BK has introduced many products which failed to catch hold in the marketplace. Some products that have failed in the US have seen success in foreign markets, where BK has also tailored its menu for regional tastes.
The company's "Golden Age" of advertising was during the 1970s when it introduced its mascot the Magical Burger King, a memorable jingle, and several well known and parodied slogans. Beginning in the early 1980s, its advertising began to lose focus; a series of less successful ad campaigns created by various agencies continued for the next two decades. In 2003, Burger King set about resuscitating its moribund advertising with the hiring of the Miami-based advertising agency of Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CP+B). They completely reorganized Burger King's advertising with a series of new advertisements centered on a resuscitated Magical Burger King character.
Corporate profile
History
InstaBurger King
The predecessor to what is now called Burger King was founded in 1953 in Jacksonville, Florida as Insta-Burger King. The original founders and owners, Kieth J. Kramer and his wife's uncle Matthew Burns, opened their first stores around a piece of equipment known as the Insta-Broiler. The Insta-Broiler oven proved so successful at cooking burgers, they required all of their franchises to carry the device.
The rights to open stores in Miami, Florida belonged to two businessmen named James McLamore and David R. Edgerton, both alumni of the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. McLamore visited the original McDonald's hamburger stand belonging to Dick and Mac McDonald in San Bernardino, California; sensing potential in their innovative assembly line-based production system, he decided to open a similar operation of his own. Their first Insta-Burger King's opened on December 4, 1954 in a suburb of Miami, Florida, and by 1959 McLamore and Edgarton were operating several locations within the Miami-Dade area and growing at a fast clip when they decided to replace the Insta-Broiler with a mechanized gas grill they called a flame broiler.
Even though the company had rapidly expanded throughout the state until its operations totaled more than 40 locations in 1955, the original Insta-Burger King ran into financial difficulties and the pair of McLamore and Edgarton purchased the national rights to the chain and rechristened the company as Burger King of Miami. The company eventually became known as Burger King Corporation and began selling territorial franchise licenses to private owners across the US by 1961.
Pillsbury Company
In 1967, after eight years of private operation, the Pillsbury Company acquired Burger King and its parent company Burger King Corporation. At the time of the purchase, BK had grown to 274 restaurants in the United States. Even though Pillsbury owned and operated the company, BK was still the object of a series of failed and successful acquisitions and divestitures. In 1973, Chart House, owner of 350 BK restaurants at the time and one of BK's largest franchise groups, attempted to purchase the chain from Pillsbury for $100 million (USD). When Chart House's bid failed, its owners, Billy and Jimmy Trotter, suggested that Pillsbury and Chart House spin off their respective Burger King holdings and merge the two entities into a separate company, an offer Pillsbury also declined. After the failed attempts to acquire BK, the relationship with Chart House and the Trotters began to sour; in 1979 BK successfully sued Chart House for improperly acquiring locations in Boston and Houston. In 1984, Pillsbury purchased Chart House's successor DiversiFoods for $390 million (USD) after a separate, independent $525 million DiversiFoods management-backed leveraged buy-out of the company failed.
Grand Metropolitan
BK, and former corporate siblings, Bennigan's, Steak and Ale, Godfather's Pizza (part of the DiversiFoods acquisition), Quik Wok and Häagen-Dazs ice cream shops, remained under the Pillsbury corporate umbrella until Pillsbury divested its restaurant holdings in 1989 and sold Burger King to British alcoholic beverage manufacturer and distributor Grand Metropolitan PLC. In 1989, under the ownership of Grand Met, Burger King acquired many locations of its major UK rival Wimpy when the parent company bought the Wimpy's brand from its previous owner United Biscuits and re-branded them as Burger King, giving it an even greater presence in that country. While other "Wimpy" locations are still in operation presently, they are now independent from BK and no longer have the presence they once did. In 1997, Grand Metropolitan merged with Guinness to form a company called Diageo. Diageo maintained ownership of BKC until 2001 when Diageo decided to focus solely on their beverage products and divest itself of the chain.
By the time of the sale, Burger King's revenues and market share had declined significantly, and the company had fallen to a near tie for second place with rival Wendy's in the US market for hamburger chain restaurants. For many years leading into the early 2000s Burger King and its various owners plus many of its larger franchises closed many under-performing stores. Several of its largest franchises entered bankruptcy due to the issues surrounding the performance of the brand.
New Owners: TPG Capital and Others
In 2002, a troika of private equity firms led by TPG Capital, L.P with associates Bain Capital and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners agreed to purchase BK from Diageo for $1.5 billion (USD), with the sale becoming complete in December of that year. The new owners, through several new CEOs, have moved to revitalize and reorganize the company, the first major move was to re-name the BK parent as Burger King Brands. The investment group initially planned to take BK public within the two years of the acquisition, this was delayed until 2006. On February 1, 2006, CEO Greg Brenneman announced TPG's plans to turn Burger King into a publicly traded company by issuing an Initial Public Offering (IPO).
Publicly Traded Company
On February 16, the company announced it had filed its registration for the IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission. On May 18, 2006, Burger King began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol BKC and generated $425 million in revenue, the largest IPO of a US-based restaurant chain on record.
International expansion
While BK began its foray in to locations outside of the continental United States in 1963 with a store in San Juan, Puerto Rico, it did not have a large international presence. This situation changed shortly after the acquisition when Pillsbury opened its first international restaurant in Canada in 1969. Other international locations followed soon after: Oceania in 1971 with Hungry Jack's and in Europe in 1975 with a restaurant in Madrid, Spain. Beginning in 1982, BK and its franchisees began operating stores in several East Asian countries, including Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea. Due to high competition, all of the Japanese locations closed by the end of 2001. BK reentered the Japanese market in mid-2007. BK'
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