11 Things You Should Know About Burger King

As its name suggests, Burger King is bonafide fast food royalty. For all its highs and lows — and trust us when we say that Burger King has experienced many, many lows — the chain has been there to dole out convenient servings of flame-grilled meat and carbs for over 70 years, and will likely continue to do so for many more to come.

While its menu may look a little different today than it did back in the 1950s (for one thing, you can't take home a burger for 18 cents anymore), the core offerings at Burger King remain pretty consistent. Even the most infrequent diners know that burgers, fries, and soda are what the King does best. There are, however, some things that even the biggest Burger King fans may not know about the fast food giant. Like all restaurant chains of its size, the story behind Burger King and its products is way more complex — and infinitely more interesting — than you may think. Here are 11 things you should know before ordering your next Whopper.

Burger King is pretty loud and proud about its flame-grilled burgers. It's this technique that gives the burgers their smoky flavor and scent. While it's true that the chain cooks its burgers over an open flame — something that's well documented in the many videos captured in its kitchens over the years — the process is more accurately described as flame-broiling, not grilling. The patties are cooked in a broiler that moves them along a conveyor belt, where they're cooked en masse by flames. Once done, the burger-ready patties roll out the other end onto a tray.

Broilers have been part of the company's operations since its earliest days — back when it was known as Insta-Burger-King — when a device called the Insta-Broiler was used to churn out 400 burgers per hour. Productive though it may have been, the machine was also extremely temperamental. David Edgerton, one of the two franchisees who took over Insta-Burger-King in the 1950s, allegedly grew so frustrated with the Insta-Broiler that he eventually hacked it apart with a hatchet and vowed to come up with a more efficient cooking system. Edgerton went on to create the Flame-Broiler, which used similar technology but cooked the patties over a flame, creating the iconic flavor that gives Burger King its edge to this day.

Multiple fast food chains have an elusive card that unlocks unlimited food. McDonald's once offered customers the chance to win a McGold Card, which grants free meals twice a week for 50 years. Popeyes apparently gave Beyoncé a card for a lifetime supply of chicken (because, you know, it's Beyoncé). Meanwhile, Burger King has the BK Crown Card — an honor bestowed upon its most elite customers, who can reap the benefits of all-you-can-eat Whoppers.

Only 12 people are known to have been gifted with a BK Crown Card. These aren't just regular old VIPs; the cards are reserved for celebs who have a history of being "good friends" with the company (via AdAge). Past recipients include "Star Wars" creator George Lucas, who has partnered with Burger King on multiple occasions, as well as singer Jennifer Hudson, who had her first job at the fast food chain (and would apparently sing into the microphone at the drive-thru). Meanwhile, talk show legend and BK Crown Cardholder Jay Leno told The Times that Burger King employees are often "more impressed with this piece of plastic" than his actual fame and wealth.

Fast food photographers exist for a reason. Niche though the job may sound, it takes a lot of skill and creativity to make a stack of beef, lettuce, and tomatoes look good. The burgers we see on TV are a far cry from the burgers thrust through the window at the drive-thru, all thanks to a few nifty tricks from fast food photographers such as adding a dash of canola oil to make the bun glow, or pumping in steam to keep the cheese extra gooey.

As it turns out, these photographers often do a good enough job that customers feel duped when they get the real thing in store. Burger King was hit by a class-action lawsuit in 2023 that accused the chain of false advertising. Specifically, the lawsuit alleged that the Whopper was made to look 35% bigger in its ads than it is in reality. While Burger King argued that it didn't need to serve burgers that look "exactly like the picture," a judge refused to dismiss the lawsuit. Although he conceded that Burger King had not engaged in false advertising, the judge declared that it was up to jurors to "tell us what reasonable people think" (via BBC).

Fast food catches a lot of flak for its nutritional value (or rather, it's lack of nutritional value). While we're not claiming that anything from Burger King counts as a health food, you may be surprised by the strides the chain has taken to rid its food of certain concerning ingredients.

Back in 2021, the chain decided to permanently axe over 100 artificial ingredients, preservatives, and colors from its menu. "We're confident that our ongoing commitment to real food will not only provide guests with the food they're looking for, but also set a standard for the industry overall," said Ellie Doty, Burger King's chief marketing officer (via QSR Magazine). This came hot on the heels of a divisive yet effective advertisement in 2020 that showed a Whopper growing mold, intended to demonstrate its lack of artificial preservatives.

After announcing its big ingredients exodus, there was a time when Burger King wrapped its Whoppers in packaging that emphasized the "real" ingredients used in its recipe. This may no longer be the case, but the Whopper — and the rest of the menu — remains decidedly free of artificial ingredients, preservatives, and colors to this day.

The thing about fast food is that it's usually, well, fast. That's not always the case at Burger King though. When it comes to the fastest (and slowest) fast food drive-thrus, Burger King has a track record ranking pretty poorly, with the chain named the absolute slowest of all restaurants by QSR Magazine back in 2012. The average total time from entering the drive-thru and leaving with your food came in at 201.33 seconds (3 minutes and 20 seconds), which was considerably slower than the winner, Wendy's, which averaged 129.75 seconds.

Things have improved slightly since then, but the chain still has a reputation for slow service. In fact, the average wait time has grown even longer over the years, with its ranking only helped by the fact that everywhere else seems to have grown slower, too. Per the 2024 ranking by Intouch Insight, the average wait time is 5 minutes and 29 seconds. As if that's not frustrating enough, its orders were also only accurate 88% of the time. Burger King ranked seventh overall, with Taco Bell, KFC, Arby's, Dunkin', Wendy's, and Carl's Jr. and Hardee's (which were ranked as one entity), all serving their customers quicker on average.

Peanut butter and jelly. Macaroni and cheese. Cereal and milk. Some pairs in this world are simply inextricable, and — for better or worse — fast food and salt are no exception. Even when you're ordering a "healthier" dish, such as salad, sodium tends to be the biggest nutritional pitfall of a fast food order, with some menu items even exceeding the daily recommended intake of 2,300 milligrams.

While some Burger King offerings are saltier than others, the menu is still riddled with dishes that take a huge bite out of this daily limit. Experts have wasted no time in using the chain's products as cautionary tales for a healthier lifestyle. Upon the launch of the chain's Impossible Nuggets in 2021, nutritionists pointed out that they contained more sodium than the regular chicken nuggets, packing a third of your suggested daily salt intake into each portion.

That same year, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine included multiple Burger King items (including the Spicy Hand-Breaded Crispy Chicken Sandwich, with 955 milligrams of sodium) on its "Sickening Six" list of dishes to avoid for health reasons. The Center for Science in the Public Interest also singled out Burger King Onion Rings for squeezing a whopping 1,310 mg of sodium into a 142-gram serving. Now that's salty.

A long list of fast food restaurants have added plant-based burgers to their menus in recent years, but a far shorter list has made these offerings permanent. Case in point: the short lifespan of the McDonald's McPlant and the death of the Beyond Burger at both Carl's Jr. and Hardee's. Burger King is one of the few establishments to go long-term with a plant-based menu item, having first introduced its Impossible Whopper back in 2019.

But its time on the menu hasn't been entirely drama-free. While the Impossible Whopper is technically vegan, made from a blend of soy and potato protein, coconut oil, sunflower oil, and heme, this becomes irrelevant to most meat-free customers when they discover that it's cooked on the same grill as beef and chicken and served with mayonnaise. Burger King faced a proposed class-action lawsuit over the matter in 2019, with a customer claiming there was no warning about the possibility of cross-contamination, ultimately tricking vegans into paying more for what they believed was a meat-free product.

This case was dismissed in 2020, with a judge declaring that all Burger King promised was a meat-free patty, which it technically delivered. To avoid future legal mishaps, Burger King also stressed that customers could request their Impossible Whopper to be cooked separately and forgo the mayo to keep their burger totally plant-based.

Fast food faces widespread scrutiny over its ingredients, but the packaging rarely receives the same attention. For those plugged into the conversation around "forever chemicals" — aka chemicals that take thousands of years to break down — you may have heard that several fast food chains have vowed to ditch the likes of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from their packaging materials. This isn't just for the sake of the environment; there are also concerns that these substances may transfer into food (and then our bodies) when the packaging gets wet.

McDonald's and Wendy's were two of the first chains to kickstart plans to phase out PFAS. Burger King followed suit in 2022, pledging to phase out PFAS from its materials by the end of 2025 at the latest. This followed a 2020 study from Toxic-Free Future and a 2022 study from Consumer Reports, which both found that multiple products were wrapped in packaging containing above the screening level for fluorine.

Despite the company making strides to remedy the issue, some customers still weren't satisfied. Burger King was slapped with a lawsuit in April 2022 that took issue with its claim to use sustainable packaging and "real ingredients" (via TODAY). It was the Whopper that caused the most upset, with the Consumer Reports study claiming the packaging contained a PFAS concentration of 249.7 ppm, which is considerably higher than the 100 ppm limit set in California as of 2023.

Burger King is a global force with stores in over 100 countries. In one of them, however, you won't find any trace of a "Burger King" on a map. When the chain first went Down Under in 1971, somebody had already snatched up the "Burger King" trademark, forcing it to open under a different moniker: Hungry Jack's. Within a decade, the chain's Canadian-born franchisee in Australia, Jack Cowin, had opened over 40 locations and built up Hungry Jack's as a fast food stalwart in Oz.

In the 1990s, that original Burger King trademark expired. The chain responded by opening a string of new restaurants under its own name, as well as attempting to sever its agreement with Cowin. The issue was that, by that point, Hungry Jack's was a recognizable name in the Australian cultural zeitgeist. Burger King, on the other hand, was not. After a few years of legal back and forth, Hungry Jack's eventually came out on top. Burger King rebranded its 81 locations to Hungry Jack's in the early 2000s and poured $150 million of investment into building new Hungry Jack's restaurants. Nowadays, Australia is — at least in name — a Burger King-free nation, with Cowin ranked as the 15th richest man in Australia.

Burger King has cycled through many catchphrases in its time, with the most famous being "Have it your way." This was ditched in 2022 for "You Rule," an alternative that Tom O'Keefe, CEO of OKRP the creative agency that partnered with BK, claimed, "invites people in with an approach that recognizes their world, not just sells them stuff" (via QSR Magazine). The chain's gone all in on "You Rule" ever since, to the extent that some employees are required to tell customers that they rule when placing their order. Yes, really. Word of this new rule started circulating the internet in early 2024. Not only do employees at certain franchises need to dole out the compliment, but they also need to ask all customers — regardless of age — whether they want a free cardboard crown. 

As Deborah Derby, CEO of Burger King's largest U.S. franchisee, Carrols Restaurant Group Inc., told Bloomberg, the idea is that this will help create a "positive aura" and lead to more memorable exchanges between customers and employees. "Say it's a guy who's like 38 years old, no kids in the car, and I got to say to him: 'Do you want a crown?'" she said. "You can't help but smile when you say that, and he can't help but laugh back. It forces that extra few seconds of engagement." (For what it's worth, we'll always take the free crown).

If you're ever passing through Mattoon, Illinois, don't count on picking up a Whopper for the road. In 1954, the original Burger King debuted in the city — but it's not the Burger King you're picturing. Instead, it was founded by the Hoots family, and originated as a soft serve ice cream stand known as the Frigid Queen.

Coincidentally, 1954 also marked the birth of another Burger King. Unbeknownst to the Hoots, David Edgerton and James McLamore opened the first location of what would eventually become a global fast food empire in Miami, Florida. Once this empire started to expand beyond the Sunshine State, the founders eventually became aware of Mattoon's OG Burger King. Having planned to also open restaurants in Illinois, a lengthy legal battle ensued between the two parties. This came to a conclusion in 1968 when a judge made an exception to Burger King's trademark and gave the Hoots family the exclusive use of the Burger King name within a 20-mile radius of Mattoon.

While the Hoots family sold Burger King in 2015, the restaurant still lives on to this day, owned by a former employee. The judge's ruling also stays strong, with Burger King (as in the corporate franchise) essentially banned from the city.