The human story is littered with bluffs, fibs, and deceit, even from your favorite fast food chains.
Burger King has been frankly untruthful on a ton of occasions. In fact, they've been
busted so many times that we're about to explore the depths of their known fakery.
In 2019, South African burger chain Steers wasn't wasn't particularly excited about a
Burger King ad. In the commercial that they took issue with, BK exhibited its patties
being cooked above an open flame using a South African style of grilling known as braaing.
Steers didn't like this, as Burger King doesn't actually cook their burgers that way,
but Steers does. So Steers decided to take their issue to the Advertising Regulatory Board.
The board investigated Steers' claim and discovered that Burger King broils
its patties using gas burners. Ergo, the restaurant doesn't braai them. The board
also said that Burger King had told them that this grilling method creates items that aren't
at all different from braaied ingredients. The regulatory body disagreed with the King, saying,
"The fact that there is some contact with a flame, inside a gas broiler system, does not
satisfy the expectations of open flame grilling as portrayed in the advertiser's commercial."
Some April Fools jokes can be pretty funny, and on April 1st, 1998 Burger King played a
massive prank in the US. The company published a one-page spread in USA Today introducing "The
Left-Handed Whopper." In the ad, they professed that their burger had the classic's ingredients,
but everything in it was turned around 180 degrees. On the second of April,
BK disclosed that The Left-Handed Whopper wasn't actually real. But by that point, the damage
had already been done, and thousands of people across the country had tried to order the item.
"Surprisingly people are grabbing things with both hands suggesting
it's not just southpaws in this rampaging mob."
It's also worth noting that in 2019,
Burger King Fiji pulled the same prank. On Facebook, they announced,
"Introducing a Left-handed WHOPPER specially designed for left-handed people!"
But unlike last time, they were less subtle that this announcement
was a stunt. In the fine print of their advertisement was written, "April Fools."
In 2020, New Zealand's Advertising Standards Authority determined that
a Burger King ad was misleading. Burger King stated in a commercial that their
plant-based Rebel Whopper was "100 percent Whopper, zero percent beef."
The problem being that the tag line might lead one to assume that these burgers are vegetarian-
or vegan-friendly when they're really not. The Rebel Whopper's patties are grilled on
the same surface as their regular beef patties, which means beef residue is probably present.
Although Burger King claimed their ad hadn't confused most people, the Advertising Standards
Authority decided that the chain's commercial could be misleading.The King insisted,
"The radio advertisement states that the product is
plant-based but does not claim to be vegetarian."
Burger King also declared that they would respect the board's decision, and terminated the ad.
Artificial intelligence can do a lot of mind-blowing stuff. In 2017,
a program called Libratus beat four professional poker players in a No-Limit Texas Hold'em
competition. And in April of 2018, researchers had created an IKEA chair-building robot. So,
when Burger King attested in a September 2018 press release that an ad campaign of
theirs was written by an algorithm, the declaration didn't come out of the blue.
"Gender reveal bad, tender reveal yum,
it is a boy bird with crispy chicken tenders from burger thing."
However, while Burger King's press release alleged that an ad campaign of theirs was made by an A.I,
this wasn't entirely true. Marcelo Pascoa, the King's global head of brand marketing at the time,
had informed AdAge that some parts were composed by people. He said,
"Artificial intelligence is not a substitute for a great creative idea coming from a real person."
Sometimes, a menu item is bigger on screen than it is in reality. In July of 2010,
Britain's Advertising Standards Authority received complaints that Burger King had
exaggerated the size of its Tendercrisp chicken sandwiches and decided to investigate.
After purchasing a few sample sandwiches, the ASA decided that they were in fact tinier than
the one featured in BK's commercial. The ASA specified that they contained fewer ingredients,
weren't as tall, and appeared smaller in an "average-sized" man's hands than
the advert demonstrated. They stated, "We concluded that the visuals in the
ad were likely to mislead viewers as to the size and composition of the product."
At some point in this ordeal, Burger King stood by their advert. They argued that the
promo's Tendercrisp sandwich appeared as it did to show everything inside the bun. So,
did Burger King's assertion save their commercial?
Nope. The ASA determined that they couldn't play the clip again without changes being made.
Typically "buy one get one free" coupons get you two items for the price of one. Pretty simple,
right? Well, Burger King somehow didn't get the memo. In May of 2017, a woman in Maryland filed
a lawsuit against Burger King claiming they'd created Buy One, Get One Free Croissan'wich
coupons that were rip-offs. She said that she paid $3.19 for a pair of Sausage Croissan'wiches
using a coupon, but just a minute later, paid just $2.16 for one by itself. The woman teamed up with
a private investigator and even the Miami Herald to test the coupons at other locations, and all
of them managed to secure similar bad deals when using Croissan'wich coupons at other Burger Kings.
Months later, Burger King settled the case, admitting they'd released coupons that could
short-change customers through an unforeseen error in their systems.
BK paid the woman $500 and covered $185,000 worth of attorney's fees for her. They even
agreed to provide $5.00 to any person with a coupon that contained the discrepancy.
In July of 2020, it was revealed that multiple Burger King restaurants in
China had sold out-of-date food. Apparently a number of the corporation's restaurants
had wrongly updated the expiry date on the bread that they served. Moreover,
these eateries supplied patrons with old chicken nuggets and unsafe pieces of meat.
After news of this got out, Burger King took to the social media app Weibo to
apologize for what its stores had done. In their response, the company wrote,
"It is our management that has betrayed the trust
of the majority of consumers in Burger King, for which we deeply apologize."
Burger King also expressed that they'd shut down the offending eateries and conduct a
self-examination. The operator of the Burger King locations in question ended up paying
a fine of over $100,000 and had to provide the government more than $400,000 worth of
"illegal income." In total, the Burger King operator turned around $539,600.
Burger King isn't the king of tacos,
and should probably just avoid trying to make Mexican food entirely.
"You say burrito, we say Whopperito."
When BK brought back tacos in 2019, Business Insider purchased some and were severely
underwhelmed by their second undertaking in ten years. Their review said that BK's
tacos not only tasted unimpressive, but they also looked astoundingly different
from the ones in the eatery's promo. In their review, Business Insider said,
"If you go into Burger King with the expectation that what you saw
in promotional photos for the Crispy Taco will resemble what you'll get in real life,
it's likely you'll be disappointed and confused."
So, what were the noticeable differences between King's picture-perfect tacos and
the everyday items the publication ate? Well, in an advertisement for crispy tacos,
the item's shell is sturdy, packed with ingredients, and contains pieces of cheese.
It also looks nothing like the photo Business Insider took of their BK taco.
In the write-up, they critiqued their purchase and remarked,
"It's maybe one-fourth as thick as its advertised counterpart. It's colorless,
and there's no visible beef. The shell is also warped, and the cheese is melted."
The Left Handed Whopper wasn't the last time Burger King had a little fun with
April Fools Day. In 2018, the chain tweeted out a video teasing a new chocolate Whopper.
The burgers were supposedly going to be made of house flame-grilled chocolate patties,
raspberry syrup, white chocolate rings, candied blood oranges, milk chocolate leaves, and vanilla
frosting inside of chocolate cake buns. The King's fake ad ends with a voice-over saying,
"Chocolate Whopper coming soon maybe"
These chocolate Whoppers never debuted in America, confirming that Burger King's announcement
was indeed just a joke. But in 2020, Burger King Taiwan released a Hershey's Chocolate Whopper. The
real burger had different ingredients from the gag meal, and it wasn't entirely sweet. The real-life
version contained a beef patty that was covered in Hershey's Chocolate sauce and peanut sauce.
In 2019, a Burger King in Brooklyn had been claiming it sold meatless Impossible Whoppers,
when in actuality, the restaurant had been giving its patrons regular Whoppers.
"The Impossible Whopper is now available in New York City. Yes, but no."
A vegetarian had consumed two of the location's mislabeled items after getting them delivered
to him, only to discover in-store that what he had ordered wasn't available in his city.
A manager at the location alleged that they'd informed the delivery person when
they swapped Impossible Whoppers for regular Whoppers in a takeaway order. They also
reported that they'd asked the driver to pass along the information. However,
the patron said he and some other customers had never received a single warning. Furthermore,
a receipt he'd received declared that his burger was an Impossible Whopper.
When asked about the situation, a Burger King spokesperson's statement contended that a
technology error allowed the Brooklyn-based restaurant to list the unavailable item.
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