Burger King has spent years working to upgrade its restaurants. | Photo by Jonathan Maze.
This is from the weekly restaurant finance newsletter The Bottom Line. To get this in your inbox every Monday morning, click here.
The big news of recent weeks has been the social media mocking of McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski over an allegedly uninspired bite of a Big Arch. Last week we received the first inkling of how that burger war is panning out, and the early winner looks like Burger King.
We provided something like 42 caveats in that piece. But if the company is indeed getting strong traffic now it should prove whether the chain and its president, Tom Curtis, have succeeded in their drive to improve the way its restaurants are operated.
Marketing wins like this can literally come at any time in this social media world. Companies are constantly trying to go viral in one form or another and you often don’t know when that may happen.
If restaurants are being run well, these wins can be game-changers. Chili’s credits much of its current success to the early work it did to ensure its restaurants look and run well, which made them ready for the customers that came in when the chain went viral.
But the opposite can happen if the restaurants aren’t ready. Getting customers to come in is great. But if they come in to dirty restaurants, bad service or poor quality, it’s not only an opportunity lost but it can damage a brand’s reputation.
Marketing is pointless if operations aren’t there.
This week’s financial news
$3 is apparently the new $1.
If I had a slice of pepperoni for every time somebody reported a potential Papa Johns sale I’d have enough for a Shaqaroni.
Oil prices were crazy enough to give observers motion sickness. But they’re a big, big deal. Especially for lower-income consumers already hurt by inflation.
Taco Bell goes Hollywood.
The new CEO of Auntie Anne’s owner GoTo Foods is new to the restaurant industry but he sounded like someone keenly familiar with what works.
SPB Hospitality has started the process of reconfiguring its business with the sale of Logan’s Roadhouse.
Want yourself some 7 Brew or Dutch Bros but hate drive-thrus? You’re in luck.
Number of the week
Per Placer.ai, Burger King’s traffic was well above its average for the previous four weeks in the week following the viral video of Tom Curtis eating a Whopper.
Quote of the week
“I’m talking about improving our chemistry with our guests and also improving the physics of our business.” -Omer Gajial, CEO of McAlister’s Deli owner GoTo Foods, to franchisees at the company’s conference in February.
On the blog
I wrote about gas and oil prices and Papa Johns. Check out all my blog posts on The Bottom Line.
On the podcasts
On A Deeper Dive I spoke with David Maloni about beef costs. On The Week in Restaurants Joe Guszkowski and Lisa Jennings talked McDonald’s, Noma and Uber Eats.
For questions, comments or story ideas, send me an email at jonathan.maze@informa.com. And follow me on Twitter at @jonathanmaze. And also LinkedIn. And TikTok.
