By — just two years after the first Insta-Burger King was opened — the chain had expanded to forty different locations throughout the state of Florida. Despite this initial success, though, Mr. Kramer and Mr. Burns soon ran into financial troubles and were forced to sell the brand to a pair of Cornell alums named James McLamore and David R.
In , Mr. McLamore and Mr. Edgerton purchased the international rights to the chain and renamed the company Burger King of Miami. The name of the company was soon changed again to Burger King Corporation when the new owners started selling territorial licenses to private franchises located all over the United States.
In , the Burger King franchise was sold once again, this time to the Pillsbury Company. Nevertheless, the corporation soon ran into issues regarding the management of its franchisees, which led to wild inconsistencies in its products. Smith to oversee the restructuring of all future franchising agreements. This forced the Burger King Company to reach out to children who they saw also as a potential source of a large market that would use to counter the McDonald company that had already dominated the adult market.
Norman Brinker became the person who made what was known as the Burger Wars to be experienced in the United States during that period. He had been brought into Pillsbury during the time when they bought the company from McLamore and Edgerton, who were the initial owners of the company but sold it off to Pillsbury. Brinker worked for a short time in the company and left to build his own restaurant. The absence of Brinker left the company in decline. He also decided that the company should own its outlets whenever possible, and by had brought the company's share of outlet ownership from 34 percent to 42 percent.
Smith also turned his hand to the food served in his restaurants. He introduced the french fry technique that produced the more popular McDonald's-type fry. Offering the broadest menu in fast food did the trick, boosting traffic 15 percent.
A more radical expansion for the Burger King menu came next. After McDonald's proved that breakfast could be a profitable fast-food addition offering a morning meal spread fixed costs over longer hours of operation Smith began planning a breakfast menu in But Burger King had a problem with breakfast: its flame broilers could not be adapted as easily to breakfast entrees as McDonald's grills could.
Smith urged development of entrees that could be prepared on existing equipment instead of requiring special grills. He began testing breakfast foods in , but it wasn't until the Croissan'wich in and French Toast sticks in that Burger King had winning entries in the increasingly competitive breakfast market. Smith left Burger King in June to try to introduce the same kind of fast-food management techniques at Pizza Hut.
Ironically, when he left Pizza Hut in he moved into the chief executive position at the franchisee that had given Burger King so much trouble, Chart House. By following in Smith's general direction, Burger King reached its number-two position within two years of his departure, but frequent changes at the top for the next several years meant inconsistent management for the company.
Louis P. Neeb succeeded Smith, to be followed less than two years later by Jerry Ruenheck. Ruenheck resigned to become a Burger King franchise owner in Florida less than two years after that, and his successor, Jay Darling, resigned a little over a year later to take on a Burger King franchise himself.
Charles Olcott, a conservative former chief financial officer, took over in Burger King did not stand still under its succession of heads, though. The company continued to expand abroad, opening a training center in London to serve its European franchisees and employees in Besides developing successful breakfast entries, Burger King added salad bars and a "light" menu to meet the demand for foods with a healthier, less fatty image.
Burger King also completely computerized its cooking and cash register operations so even the least skilled teenager could do the job. Even some of Burger King's post-Smith successes caused problems, though. The company introduced another successful new entree, Chicken Tenders, in , only to find it that it could not obtain enough chicken to meet demand.
Burger King was still bedeviled by the old complaint that its service and food were inconsistent. The company played out its identity crisis in public, changing ad styles with almost the same frequency that it changed managers.
After Smith's departure in , Burger King's old "Have it your way" campaign "Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce. Special orders don't upset us" was no longer appropriate.
That ad campaign emphasized as a selling point what many saw as a drawback at Burger King: longer waiting times. But under Smith's emphasis on speed and efficiency, special orders did upset store owners.
So the company turned to the harder sell "Aren't you hungry for Burger King now? The hard sell approach moved the chain into second place, and Burger King took an even more aggressive advertising line. In Burger King directly attacked its competitors, alleging that Burger King's grilled burgers were better than McDonald's and Wendy's fried burgers.
Both competitors sued over the ads, and Wendy's challenged Burger King to a taste test a challenge that was pointedly ignored. Burger King's subsequent ad campaigns were not as successful. In the company added just over half an ounce of meat to its Whopper, making the 4. Smith from McDonald's. He restructured the company's franchise agreements so that owners could not own franchises in other chains, thus encouraging loyalty; and so that they could not operate stores more than an hour's drive from their homes, thus cutting down on absentee ownership.
Many unprofitable franchise owners dropped out, trimming the company's fat. It was at this time that Burger King began to reach out to children, by countering McDonald's commercials featuring live-action versions of its characters Ronald McDonald and his friends with similarly themed characters: a Burger King who was also a magician, the Wizard of Fries, and Sir Shake-a-Lot. Smith took on not only his former employer and Long John Silver's by introducing Burger King's first fish sandwiches, but also Kentucky Fried Chicken and Wendy's by introducing their first chicken sandwiches.
Company sales were up 15 percent by , at which point Smith was poached once again, this time by PepsiCo. After he left, sales began to decline. He started what became known as the Burger Wars, running commercials that said Burger King's burgers were bigger and better than McDonald's; these may be the first political-style "attack ads" in the food industry.
As with Smith's efforts, Brinker's worked for a brief time before he left the company, and he went on to build the Chili's restaurant chain. Already having a worldwide focus, Grand Met changed Burger King's distribution methods, switching their soft-drink contract from Pepsi to Coca-Cola, partnering with the Walt Disney Company to tie in with Disney films, and expanding BK around the globe, partially by buying the company that ran British-based burger chain Wimpy.
The company's headquarters building in Miami was destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in , but a proactive response by Grand Met led to a quick rebound. TPG introduced the Whopper Bar concept, allowing customers in some stores to better see the burgers being made, a concept similar to the Benihana steakhouse chain but more familiar to Starbucks customers, with the workers being named "Whopperistas.
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