Whopper
The Whopper is the signature hamburger brand of international fast food restaurant chain Burger King, its Australian franchise Hungry Jack's, and BK Whopper Bar kiosks. Introduced in 1957 in response to the large burger size of a local restaurant in Gainesville, Florida, it became central to Burger King's advertising, including the chain's tagline "the Home of the Whopper." Burger King's competitors began releasing similar products in the 1970s designed to compete against it.
The hamburger has undergone several reformulations, including changes to portion size and the bread used. Burger King sells several variants that are either limited-time seasonal promotions or tailored to regional tastes and customs. A smaller version called the Whopper Jr. was introduced in 1963.
History
The Whopper was created in 1957 by Burger King co-founder James McLamore and originally sold for 37 US cents. McLamore created the burger after he noticed that a rival restaurant in Gainesville, Florida, was succeeding by selling a larger burger. Believing that the success of the rival product was its size, he devised the Whopper, naming it so because he thought it conveyed "imagery of something big". Major fast food chains did not release a similar product until the McDonald's Quarter Pounder and the Burger Chef Big Shef in the early 1970s.Initially served on a plain bun, the Whopper switched to a sesame seed bun around 1970. In 1985, the weight of the Whopper was increased to, while the bun was replaced by a Kaiser roll. This was part of a program to improve the product and was accompanied by a US$30 million advertising campaign featuring various celebrities such as Mr. T and Loretta Swit. The goal of the program was to help differentiate the company and its products from those of its competitors. The Whopper reverted to its previous size in 1987 when a new management team took over the company and reverted many of the changes initiated prior to 1985. In 1994, the Whopper sandwich's Kaiser roll reverted to a sesame seed bun, eliminating the last trace of the sandwich's 1985 reconfiguration.
The packaging has undergone many changes since its inception. Unlike McDonald's, the company never used the clamshell style box made of Styrofoam, so when the environmental concerns over Styrofoam came to a head in the late-1980s, the company was able to tout its use of paperboard boxes for its sandwiches. To cut back on the amount of paper that the company used, the paperboard box was eliminated in 1991 and was replaced with waxed paper. For a short time in 2002, the company used a gold-toned, aluminum foil wrapping for the sandwich as part of the 45th anniversary of the sandwich. The packaging was changed again in 2012 when the company moved to a half-wrapped sandwich packaged in a paperboard box, marking a return to the paperboard box for its packaging since 1991.
The Whopper Jr. was created, by accident, in 1963 by Luis Arenas-Pérez, the only Latino in the Burger King Hall of Fame and president and CEO of Burger King in Puerto Rico. Upon the opening of the first Burger King restaurant in Carolina, Puerto Rico, the molds for the Whopper buns had not yet arrived to Puerto Rico from the United States mainland and thus there were no buns to make and sell the company's flagship Whopper offering. Arenas opted for honoring the advertised opening date but using the much smaller regular hamburger buns locally available. The result was such a success that Burger King adopted it worldwide and called it the Whopper Jr.
In 2020, as part of a global advertising campaign showing the company's commitment to dropping all artificial preservatives, Burger King ran the "Moldy Whopper" ad showing a Whopper decomposing and rotting over a period of 34 days. The Moldy Whopper campaign reached a level of awareness 50 percent higher than Burger King's ad in the 2019 Super Bowl.
Competitors' products
Competitors such as McDonald's and Wendy's have attempted to create burgers similar to the Whopper, often nicknamed a Whopper Stopper during the development phase. Wendy's created the Big Classic with similar toppings but served on a bulkie roll, while McDonald's has created at least six different versions, including the McDLT, the Arch Deluxe, and the Big N' Tasty, most of which generally failed and are not sold in most restaurants today.Product description
The Whopper is a hamburger consisting of a flame-grilled beef patty, sesame seed bun, mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, pickles, ketchup, and sliced onion. Optional ingredients such as American cheese, bacon, mustard, guacamole or jalapeño peppers may be added upon request. Regional and international condiments include BBQ sauce and salsa. Burger King will also add any condiment it sells upon request, as per its long-standing slogan "Have It Your Way". It is available with one, two or three beef patties and in a smaller version called the Whopper Jr, or without meat in a version called the Veggie Whopper. The Australian franchise of Burger King, Hungry Jack's, sells its veggie burger sandwich as the Veggie Whopper. Additionally, Burger King has sold several different promotional varieties throughout the years as limited-time offerings. With the addition of hot dogs to the company's menu in February 2016, Burger King began testing its first major variant called the Whopper Dog in May of the same year across various regions within the United States. The new dog featured a grilled Oscar Mayer hot dog with all of the ingredients featured on the Whopper sandwich.In February 2020, Burger King accounted that it would remove artificial preservatives, colors, and flavors from the Whopper by the end of 2020.
There are localized versions of the Whopper in several of its international operations, such as the teriyaki Whopper in Japan or the LTO Canadian Whopper. Following its entry in India, to accommodate cultural taboos of India related to beef, the chain has eliminated beef Whopper from its menu and instead introduced mutton Whopper, veggie Whopper, and the chicken Whopper.
Variants
The ' is a 100% vegetarian burger with a patty manufactured by Impossible Foods of Oakland, California. Burger King began test marketing the Impossible Whopper in April 2019 at locations in and around St. Louis, Missouri. It was accompanied with an April Fools-themed promotional video on April 1, 2019. Later that month, the company announced plans to roll out Impossible Whoppers nationwide before the end of the year. In August, it was made available nationwide.The ' and the ' are other burgers made with a patty made from a plant-based meat analogue rather than meat. In October 2019, Hungry Jack's in Australia introduced the Rebel Whopper which contains a meat-free patty made from protein extracted from legumes, created in partnership with Australian company v2food. Burger King in New Zealand introduced the Rebel Whopper to their range in January 2020. It was introduced to the Philippines as the Plant-Based Whopper in November 2020. In December 2020, it was made available in Japan for a limited time. That same month, the Plant-Based Whopper was introduced by Burger King outlets in China but with a patty made by the Dutch company The Vegetarian Butcher. The Rebel Whopper/Plant-Based Whopper is sold in the UK and Ireland and in various countries across continental Europe including Germany; the patty is made in cooperation with The Vegetarian Butcher.
The ' was sold in Japan for the promotion of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system. The hamburger contained seven stacked beef patties and measured high, weighed almost, and had more than. It was originally planned to be available for only seven days starting on 22 October 2009. Due to its success in selling 6,000 sandwiches within the first four days, Burger King decided to extend the promotion period an extra nine days, ending on 6 November. The campaign was met with unexpected popularity in Japan, sparking multiple YouTube videos and blog posts about the burger.
The ' is a burger sold exclusively at the BK Whopper Bar location in Times Square, New York City, that was introduced in September 2010. It consists of four Whopper patties on a 9.5 inch sesame bun, sliced into six pieces and topped with pepperoni, mozzarella, basil pesto and marinara sauce. The whole burger contains more than the recommended daily allowance of calories for men at 2,520 calories, with 144 grams of fat, 59g of which is saturated, and 3,780 mg of sodium, more than double the recommended daily allowance for adults. However, according to Burger King's Vice President of global marketing, John Schaufelberger, the burger is not intended to feed just one person. Each slice has 420 calories, 24 g fat, and 630 mg sodium.
The ' has jalapeños, "Angry Sauce" and "Angry Onions", pepper jack cheese and bacon. Originally released in Europe, the sandwich made its way to the United States in 2008. A variation called the Angriest Whopper debuted in 2016; The new variant added a red bun with hot pepper sauce baked into the roll. The Angriest Whopper followed a similar sandwich, the A1 Halloween Whopper released for Halloween 2015, which was prepared with black-colored, smoke-flavored buns. The Angry Whopper was released with a viral marketing push created by Burger King's advertising agency at the time, Crispin Porter + Bogusky. The two tiered program, designed to create a word-of-mouth marketing push, featured a webpage that allowed consumers to create an "Angry-gram" that could be emailed to other individuals. The form letter format page would send an insulting email to a recipient of choice from the sender. The second part consisted of a Facebook-oriented program where the company would issue a coupon for a free sandwich if the consumer would de-friend 10 people on their Facebook page. The Angriest Whopper was pitched using advertising similar to trailers for movie sequels, with a movie trailer-style opening screen, shots of lava, a helicopter and flames. The tag line for the ad was "The only way to handle the heat is to embrace it."
The ' was a direct competitor to the Quarter Pounder sandwich from McDonald's. It consisted of a Whopper with only ketchup, mustard, pickle and onions.
The Whopperito is a burrito containing all the ingredients of the Whopper except ketchup, mayonnaise, or mustard, which are replaced with queso sauce. It was first introduced at select locations in Pennsylvania in June 2016, and was rolled out throughout the United States the following August.
In the Philippines, notable variants of the Whopper include the ', which contains three different kinds of meat – bacon, pepperoni and the beef patty itself – as well as another variant, the Meat Beast Whopper, which included ham, and the 4-Cheese Whopper, which contains four different types of cheese: Swiss, American, mozzarella and cheese sauce. For a limited time, the Bacon 4-Cheese Whopper and Cheetos 4-Cheese Crunch were made available, which included bacon and Cheetos, respectively. The Angry Whopper was made available in 2015 and again in 2020.