Burger King is now planning improvements to its menu next year. | Photo by Jonathan Maze.
It’s amazing what a square, yellow sponge can do for a king.
Earlier this month, Burger King introduced a Spongebob Menu, as part of a promotion involving the latest movie featuring Spongebob SquarePants.
The menu featured a selection of items named for characters from the Nickelodeon cartoon, including a Spongebob Krabby Whopper and Patrick’s Star-berry Shortcake Pie. Customers who bought them all also received special packaging.
Burger King had every right to expect the menu to do well, as a similar promotion by rival Wendy’s did well a year earlier and such ideas have thrived with fast-food chains of late. Traffic to the chain’s restaurants jumped during the promotion, results that surprised company executives. At some restaurants, supplies of the pie ran out in just two days.
“I think we had a forecast, and we said, ‘Let’s go above that forecast,’” Tom Curtis, president of Burger King in the U.S. and Canada, said in an interview with Restaurant Business. “We blew that away.”
For Burger King, the apparent success of the Spongebob promotion is the culmination of a lot of work and a lot of money. The Miami-based fast-food chain has spent the past couple of years working to improve operations inside its restaurants, while the company and its franchisees invest billions into remodels. It has a new chief marketing officer who has helped advance the company’s long-stated goal of luring families into its restaurants.
The company is now working on its next effort: The food. Burger King has spent the past couple of years on its foundational pillars, but it’s now looking to make improvements to the menu.
Curtis said that the company plans to work on an “elevation of the menu and our core products” that will be followed by a campaign in which Burger King invites customers to come back to the chain’s restaurants.
“We’ve been growing market share versus competitors the last two or three years,” Curtis said. “But I want something breakthrough. We want to see breakout results.”
The company is not ready yet to provide details. But he suggested the company would focus on “innovation” and on improvements to the core menu.
Burger King on Friday appointed Amy Alarcon head chef for Burger King U.S. and Canada, pulling her from Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, Burger King’s sister company under Restaurant Brands International.
Alarcon, known most for creating that Chicken Sandwich, will be responsible for menu innovation, product development and quality standards. Bobby O’Brien, who had worked under Alarcon, will take her place at Popeyes.
Burger King’s Spongebob Movie Menu did better than the company expected. | Photo courtesy of Burger King.
When we asked whether Burger King would change the Whopper, Curtis said no.
“But I think there’s opportunities to treat it differently,” he said. “We get very positive feedback on the Whopper. It’s the best sandwich in the industry. But I think where you can really grow is by making it dramatically different.
“It’s fine to be directionally different and better, but when people say there’s no reason to go anywhere for a burger other than Burger King, then you start to really capture market share.”
Curtis was careful to note that the company won’t go too far. “You have to be strategic for which properties and when you can do this, because they are huge lifts for your operations,” he said. “If you do it too often, you can crush the restaurants with too much change and too much training on new items.”
Burger King has evolved its approach under Curtis. A brand long known for more aggressive responses to competitors has largely avoided matching McDonald’s combo meal price cuts. It is also avoiding a full-fledged jump into the chicken wars, opting instead to focus on its burgers. There’s good reason for that: Its entry into the chicken sandwich wars, the Ch’King, was an operational nightmare.
Curtis was lured to the brand from the pizza chain Domino’s, where he worked in operations, and was tasked with improving that aspect of the business at the burger concept, which had struggled to keep pace with its fast-food rivals.
Curtis said he’s happy with the progress on that operations effort, but that the brand is “not satisfied with the result.”
“We’ve got some consumer metrics to show where we are in the Top 12 restaurant chains,” Curtis said. “When I got here five years ago we were 12th out of 12. We have steadily moved up those ranks over the years. Now we’re fourth or fifth. That tells me we have an OK experience, but it’s not yet a differentiator for us.”
The efforts have helped Burger King outperform the fast-food sector for the past two years. And it helped ready for the consumer reaction to the Spongebob meal. That also gives the company confidence that it can make the sorts of menu changes it has planned for 2026.
“This shows you the latent power of the brand,” he said. “This brand has so much potential. It shows that if you do things the right way and execute partnerships the right way, then the brand can do some amazing things.”
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