Burger King Goes On A 60,000-person Hiring Spree | Fast Five Shorts

Burger King has launched a nationwide hiring push aimed at bringing up to 60,000 new team members on board across its nearly 6,500 US restaurants, citing strong customer traffic driven by its multi year.

This is one of my favorite things to say Reclaim the Flame turnaround plan.

According to the nation's Restaurant News and a Burger King press release, the hiring push is being described by the brand as, quote, an immediate need driven by consecutive quarters of positive sales, same store sales and traffic, and what the company says is category outperformance over the past two years.

The Reclaim the Flame strategy, which was put in place in 2022 and expanded in 2023, included billions of dollars in investment across restaurant restaurants, I should say remodels, operational improvements, menu enhancements, including a first in nearly a decade, Whopper Refresh and the new brand positioning campaign.

There's a new King and it's you, said Tom Curtis, president of Burger King US and Canada.

Quote, we've done the important work of strengthening our operations, modernizing our restaurants and listening to our guests, and it's paying off.

Now.

We need great people to help us keep that momentum going, end quote.

John why is Burger King suddenly the talk of the QSR industry, or at least it appears that way to me.

What is it getting right and how sustainable is its recent success?

It's a great question.

Yeah.

So this is another concept, another brand that I that is obviously doing a lot of interesting things at the moment.

And this is, you mentioned it, multi year turnaround.

This is not anything that, you know, is happening overnight.

But I think, for me, I think about Burger King and I think about them as a, you know, one of the aspects of the restaurant space that, or characteristics of it is this franchisee and franchisor model.

And Burger King I think is doing a lot of the right things and, and if I could say maybe they weren't doing a lot of the right things for some time period, but they've really kind of started focusing on the right things as a franchisor.

And to me, what that is is just really taking leadership and investing in the brand on behalf of all of the stakeholders, the customers and their franchisees and so on.

So there's Reclaim the Flame, which a lot of that is investing in remodels, which if you think back to 10 years ago and kind of the Burger Kings that you went to or you saw in your local markets, you know, I think a lot of people would have experiences say, okay, yeah, a little bit dated, you know, in need of a refresh, not necessarily Always, you know, supported in the way that it, that it should be.

So I think it was in some ways long overdue.

But I think that the, the franchisor Burger King has doubled down on this and has made an investment in kind of what they think that they needed to do to kind of help turn around this brand.

I think the other thing that's part of this story that, you know, there's a Reclaim the Flame, but there's also the acquisition of Carols, which was one of their largest franchisees.

And so it's about 1,000 units of that, 6,000 plus they acquired that franchisee and they're turning around a lot of those units and they're refranchising them to smaller, kind of more local, in some cases better operating franchisees.

So they're just looking at the holistic business from the menu to their build outs and what this store looks like to the operations, to their franchisee, to community and base and basically, you know, making, you know, pulling levers across all of those and doing exactly what a franchisor should do to support the business.

So to me, it's, it's, it's a, it's a lot of that.

So it's the turnaround plan, it's the acquisition of Carols, and then finally, I hate to, you know, hit it too hard, but at the end of the day, a lot of the stuff is just comes down to leadership.

And you mentioned Tom Curtis.

He's been driving that turn, that turnaround.

And I think, you know, in some cases it's just the right leadership in place to drive these types of transformations.

I hit the lottery with you two today.

My God, like some inside baseball on that.

That's why people come to omnitok, because they get the real inside scoop.

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I mean John, like you talked about Tom Curtis like, because that's what I was, I, I was going to ask you, but then you said at the end I was going to, My follow up was my follow up question.

He was gonna be like, how much of this is leadership?

Because it really feels like this guy knows his stuff.

Like he has a true operational background.

At Domino's, I talked to somebody that I know and respect who works there at nrf and I said to him point blank, I was like, you know, because he was doing that whole, like, I'm going to spend four hours a day letting customers call me at the time.

And I think we talked about that with the A and M folks when, when they were on during that month.

And I was like, is this guy for real?

And he's like, dude, this guy is the real deal.

This guy is legit.

And I was like.

And this guy wouldn't blow smoke up my.

You know what?

So I was like, all right, man.

And.

And it seems like that is the case.

So, so.

So you think this is definitely a function of leadership to some degree as well.

So it's the right branding, but also the right operational, right operations, and the right leadership focus, all three kind of intertwined.

Yeah, I think that's right.

I think it's a bit of that trifecta, you know, and you could have the good plan, you could have the Reclaim the Flame, you know, plan in place, but without the right leadership to kind of drive that, you know, you probably want to be as successful.

And, you know, it's.

It's the whole company.

It's rbi, the parent company in general, willing to make these investments.

I mean, they're obviously investing a ton of money in these remodels, you know, but I think, you know, they're seeing, you know, 20% lift, I think sales lift on the model, on the units that they've remodeled.

So, you know, it's.

It's being bold, and that's part of leadership, too.

Being bold and, you know, being willing to kind of make, you know, big bets on certain things.

So I think it's.

Yeah, it's all of those elements, to a certain extent, coming together as a lack of a better word, the perfect storm, to really kind of, you know, do some of these things.

Yeah, no, I mean, I was actually struck by.

I was in a Burger King recently when I was on spring break, and I was struck by just how clean and well run it was.

I went to one at the airport, too.

Same thing, which is a hard business to run.

But, Jen, what.

What are your thoughts here?

Any.

Anything you would add, any disagreements you might have, any.

Any contrarian viewpoints here?

What do you.

What do you think?

I mean, it would be very hard to argue with John here.

I might try, but, no, I think Burger King's doing the right thing.

They're finally investing in the system, not just the brand.

And.

And that's why it's working.

You know, as a former marketer, when I look at it right now, the momentum, it's not coming from marketing.

It's coming from fixing the fundamentals of the system.

And what I think is really different this time, and compared to competitors, you know, McDonald's has always been best in class operationally, and Wendy's has leaned into more menu innovation and pricing.

But Burger King had fallen behind in execution, and now they flipped the switch on the flame.

And so this is about catching up on the basics, you know, And I think the early results are super encouraging.

The question will just be sustainability.

Can.

Can they maintain this level of discipline, or do they drift again over time?