The BURGER KING® brand’s presence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) dates back to 1992 when the first BURGER KING® restaurant opened in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Since then, the company has steadily expanded its operations to emerge as one of the fastest growing QSR (Quick Service Restaurant) chains in the region, thus bringing significant investment and employment to the local communities in which it operates. Today, there are more than 250 BURGER KING® restaurants in the MENA region across 9 countries.
The BURGER KING® Brand in the Middle East and North Africa is managed by HANA International Company Ltd. HANA International Company Ltd. operates BURGER KING® restaurants around the region through local franchisees who are committed to serving their guests great-tasting, flame-grilled WHOPPER® sandwiches personalized to suit their individual tastes and preferences. All BURGER KING® beef and chicken patties in the region are 100% Halal, and the vegetables used in BURGER KING® products are fresh and locally sourced.
In 1954, James McLamore and David Edgerton opened their first BURGER KING® restaurant in Miami, Florida. These visionaries had extensive experience in restaurant business and a shared belief in the guiding principle of offering reasonably priced quality food, served quickly, in attractive, clean surroundings. Our Vision today honors their original vision.
The great success of the early restaurants made the BURGER KING® concept a natural for selling franchises. The concept spread rapidly throughout the 1960s and in 1963 the first international franchise restaurants opened in Puerto Rico.
While the vision for the BURGER KING® Brand hasn’t changed over time, our restaurants have. The early BURGER KING® restaurants distinguished themselves from others by their self-serve ordering and outdoor patio seating. BURGER KING® Corporation pioneered dining rooms in the fast food industry when it began to enclose its patio seating in 1957. For the first time, fast-food customers could comfortably eat their food at a table inside a restaurant. BURGER KING® Corporation demonstrated its innovation again in 1975 when it began to offer drive-thru service at its restaurants, appealing to increasingly mobile and time-conscious consumers.
Today, more than 50 years after it first rolled out its flagship WHOPPER® sandwich, the BURGER KING® system operates over 12,200 restaurants in 76 countries. More than 11 million guests visit BURGER KING® restaurants worldwide each day, with the BURGER KING® promise of HAVE IT YOUR WAYTM ensuring guests can order their WHOPPER® sandwich in 221,184 different ways.
The success of the BURGER KING® Brand is not hidden in some secret sauce. It is no secret at all that we flame-grill our burgers to perfection. The grill marks are there, just like when you BBQ at home. A burger is only as good as the high quality ingredients that make it: red, ripe tomatoes, fresh lettuce and onions, crunchy pickles. And our quest for perfection does not stop with quality ingredients. Friendly employees, clean surroundings, new and exciting products. It is all about making the BURGER KING® experience the best it can be.
The predecessor to what is now the international fast food restaurant chain Burger King was founded in 1953 in Jacksonville, Florida, as Insta-Burger King. Inspired by the McDonald brothers’ original store location in San Bernardino, California, the founders and owners, Keith J. Kramer and his wife’s uncle Matthew Burns, began searching for a concept to open a new restaurant around. After purchasing the rights to two pieces of equipment called “Insta” machines, the two opened their first stores around a cooking device 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.[4][5] After the original company began to falter in 1959, it was purchased by its Miami, Florida, franchisees James McLamore and David R. Edgerton. The two initiated a corporate restructuring of the chain; the first step was to rename the company Burger King. The duo ran the company as an independent entity for eight years, eventually expanding to over 250 locations in the United States, when they sold it to the Pillsbury Company in 1967.[notes 1]
Pillsbury’s management made several attempts at reorganization or restructuring of the restaurant chain in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The most prominent change came in 1978 when Burger King hired McDonald’s executive Donald N. Smith to help revamp the company. In a plan called Operation Phoenix,[notes 2] Smith initiated a restructuring of corporate business practices at all levels of the company. Changes to the company included updated franchise agreements,[6] a broadening of the menu,[notes 3][notes 4] and new store designs to standardize the look and feel of the company. While these efforts were initially effective,[7] many of them were eventually discarded, resulting in Burger King falling into a fiscal slump that damaged the financial performance of both Burger King and its parent.[8] Poor operating performance and ineffectual leadership continued to bog the company down for many years,[9][notes 5] even after it was acquired in 1989 by the British entertainment conglomerate Grand Metropolitan and its successor Diageo.[10][11] Eventually, the institutional neglect of the brand by Diageo damaged the company to the point where major franchises were driven out of business and its total value was significantly decreased.[12] Diageo eventually decided to divest itself of the money-losing chain and put the company up for sale in 2000.[13][14]
The twenty-first century saw the company return to independence when it was purchased from Diageo by a group of investment firms led by TPG Capital for $1.5 billion (USD) in 2002.[15][16] The new owners rapidly moved to revitalize and reorganize the company, culminating with the company being taken public in 2006 with a highly successful initial public offering.[17][18] The firms’ strategy for turning the chain around included a new advertising agency and new ad campaigns,[19][20][21] a revamped menu strategy,[22] a series of programs designed to revamp individual stores,[23] and a new restaurant concept called the BK Whopper Bar.[24] These changes successfully re-energized the company, leading to a score of profitable quarters.[25] Yet, despite the successes of the new owners, the effects of the financial crisis of 2007–2010 weakened the company’s financial outlooks while those of its immediate competitor McDonald’s grew.[26][notes 6] The falling value of Burger King eventually lead to TPG and its partners divesting their interest in the chain in a $3.26 billion (USD) sale to 3G Capital of Brazil.[27][28] Analysts from financial firms UBS and Stifel Nicolaus agreed that 3G will have to invest heavily in the company to help reverse its fortunes.[29][notes 7] After the deal was completed, the company’s stock was removed from the New York Stock Exchange, ending a four year period as a public company.[30][31] The delisting of its stock is designed to help the company repair its fundamental business structures and continue working to close the gap with McDonald’s without having to worry about pleasing shareholders.[notes 8]
Structure
Company headquarters in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, FloridaBurger King Holdings is the parent company of Burger King and is a Delaware corporation formed on 23 July 2002, shortly before the acquisition of the company by the TPG lead group.[32] A privately held company,[2] it derives its income from several sources, including property rental and sales through company owned restaurants;[notes 9] however a substantial portion of its revenue is dependent on franchise fees.[notes 10] Burger King’s board of directors is co-chaired by John W. Chidsey, formerly CEO and chairman of the company, and Alexandre Behring, managing partner of 3G Capital.[notes 11]
The company operates approximately 40 subsidiaries globally that oversee franchise operations, acquisitions and financial obligations such as pensions.[notes 12] One example of a subsidiary is Burger King Brands, Inc. which is responsible for the management of Burger King’s intellectual properties. A wholly owned subsidiary established in 1990,[33] Burger King Brands owns and manages all trademarks, copyrights and domain names used by the restaurants in the United States and Canada. It also responsible for providing marketing and related services to the parent company.[34]
Burger King is headquartered in a nine-story office tower by Miami International Airport in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida.[35] Elaine Walker of the Miami Herald stated that the headquarters has a “Burger King” sign that drivers on Florida State Road 836 “can’t miss.” In addition the chain planned to build a neon sign on the roof to advertise the brand to passengers landing at the airport. 130 employees began working at the Burger King headquarters on Monday 8 July 2002, with the remainder to move in phases in August 2002. Prior to the moving to its current headquarters in 2002, Burger King had considered moving away from the Miami area; Miami-Dade County politicians and leaders lobbied against this, and Burger King stayed.[36]
The company’s previous headquarters were in a southern Dade County campus described by Walker as “sprawling” and “virtually hidden away.”[notes 13] The former headquarters were located on Old Cutler Blvd in the Cutler census-designated place.[37][38] The former Burger King headquarters as of 2007 houses rental offices for several companies.[39]
Burger King announced in 2008 that it planned to move its headquarters to a proposed office building in Coral Gables.[40] The company reversed its decision in 2007 and renewed the lease in its existing headquarters for 15 more years. Burger King had planned to consolidate employees working at an area near Miami International Airport and at a Dadeland Mall-area facility into the current headquarters by June of that year. Instead Bacardi USA leased the headquarter complex, a 15-story building.
Burger King, often abbreviated as BK, is a global chain of hamburger fast food restaurants headquartered in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States.The Burger King menu has evolved from a basic offering of burgers, french fries, sodas and milkshakes in 1954, to a larger, more diverse set of product offerings