Burger King

Company overview

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 company began in 1953 as Insta-Burger King, a Jacksonville, Florida-based restaurant chain. After Insta-Burger King ran into financial difficulties in 1955, its two Miami-based franchisees, David Edgerton and James McLamore, purchased the company and renamed it Burger King.

Over the next half century the company would change hands four times, with its third set of owners, a partnership of TPG Capital, Bain Capital, and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, taking it public in 2002. In late 2010 3G Capital of Brazil acquired a majority stake in BK in a deal valued at $3.26 billion (USD).

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. In 1957, the Whopper was the first major addition to the menu; it has since become Burger King's signature product.

Conversely, BK has introduced many products which failed to catch hold in the marketplace. Some of these failures in the US have seen success in foreign markets, where BK has also tailored its menu for regional tastes. After the purchase of the company in 2002, Burger King began to aggressively target the 18–34 male demographic with larger products that often carried correspondingly large amounts of unhealthy fats and trans-fats. This tactic would eventually come to hurt the company's financial underpinnings and cast a negative pall on its earnings.

The 1970s were the "Golden Age" of Burger King advertising, but beginning in the early 1980s, the company's advertising began to lose focus; a series of less successful ad campaigns created by a procession of advertising agencies continued