Burger King Listens to Franchisees

The burger chain will debut “fewer, more impactful” products of interest to both franchisees and the company.

November 01, 2013

MIAMI – Burger King will focus more on what its franchisees have to say as it looks to new product launches in the future, Nation’s Restaurant News reports. The burger chain will pick new items that have the backing of both franchisees and its company-owned stores.

The strategy will result in “fewer, more impactful” product debuts, said Alexandre Macedo, president of Burger King North America. The hope is that with more franchise buy-in, the product launches will go more smoothly.

“We’ve been working so much with the franchisees and really getting a better feel for this competitive moment, and we feel very strongly that to be able to have success in this competitive environment, it’s important to focus on the few, right things,” said Macedo. “When you do that, you guarantee the execution at the restaurant level, guarantee that the profitability of the franchisees is good and, finally, you guarantee that you can have a good marketing push on an item to make it relevant.”

Burger King’s first success is with its Satisfries, which debuted Sept. 24. “Everyone in the country knew we were launching Satisfries,” he said, “and it’s the same thing we want to do moving forward with a few additional launches planned before the end of the year.”

The company wants to use more national advertising to bolster the select product launches, rather than upping the number of rollouts and limited-time offers as competitors Wendy’s and McDonald’s are doing. However, Burger King will revamp its value menu to match renovations McDonald’s and Wendy’s both are doing to their lower-cost menus.

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