The Burger King Story – It’s Almost Called Insta-Burger King – Seriously

In 1952, Keith Cramer owned a carhop restaurant in Daytona Beach, FL. He flew to California, on the advice of his stepfather, Matthew Burns, to see the newest innovation in restaurants at the time: McDonald’s.

Cramer was impressed with the speed and automation and he and Burns acquired the rights to Miracle Insta-Machines from George Read. These were Rube Goldberg type devices designed to make fast food really fast. One of the models made several milk shakes while the other, called Insta-Broiler, could cook twelve hamburgers simultaneously. Four hundred hamburgers can be cooked in one hour with a single machine.

In 1953, Cramer opened his fast-food burger restaurant in Jacksonville and named it after the chef: Insta-Burger King.

Their hamburgers sold for 18 cents each (McDonald’s hamburgers at the time were 15 cents each) and were a huge success.

Two franchisors, James McLamore and David R. Edgerton, Jr., liked the concept and launched several Insta-Burger King restaurants in Miami in 1954. Fortunately, as you will see, they failed.

So McLamore and Edgerton began to experiment. They soon got rid of the Insta-Broiler and created

a similar flame rotisserie, which made its renamed Burger King famous. They also introduced a much larger burger, the Whopper, of course, and sold it for 37 cents. At the time, this was considered a very risky business move, but as we know it was worth it. It became their flagship product and their motto became “Burger King, home of the Whopper.”

They soon acquired the Insta-Burger Kings, renamed them, and reconditioned them for their new products. They began mass franchising in 1961 and soon their new restaurants were all over Florida and the rest of the nation.

Burger King was the first fast-food hamburger establishment to install eating areas inside its outlets, in 1967, a year before McDonald’s did the same.

Pillsbury acquired the chain in 1967 and began a massive promotional campaign. The slogans and jingles, such as the well-known “Do it your way,” were a huge success and Burger King grew to become the # 2 burger restaurant in the world.

In 2004, Burger King had more than 11,000 stores in 61 countries and territories around the world, including 7,000 in the United States.