Why Tom Curtis thinks Burger King still has a long way to go

Tom Curtis recently took shifts at Burger King as part of his ongoing effort to improve operations at the chain. But he was mostly kept out of the kitchen.

While the fast-food chain’s president has spent a lifetime in restaurants, he has largely been in the office of late, and so he apparently lost a bit of his touch.

“Mostly I took orders at the drive-thru,” Curtis said. “I can get pretty dangerous with a Whopper. I slow down production in a pretty significant way. So when it’s slow I’ll go and make a Whopper. But mostly I greeted people at the drive-thru and do table touches with the lobby, connecting with guests.”

But that connection is important. Burger King is working to improve hospitality in its restaurants. It turned managers into Your Way Champions, giving them responsibility for greeting customers and making sure their needs are met. In some respects,

Curtis’s work in the lobby or in the drive-thru was a preview of the type of greetings Burger King customers will be getting from now on.

“It’s important for me that when team members see me in restaurants, that I model the correct behavior that I’m looking to create,” Curtis said.

Burger King has been on a journey for years. Curtis, who had spent years with Domino’s, was brought in to lead operations at Burger King in 2021. He was quickly named the brand’s president. And the company has spent the years since working to improve operations.

The company has bolstered this effort with about $2 billion in investment in the form of marketing investments, remodel incentives tied to operations metrics, and the acquisition of Carrols Restaurant Group, which also involves remodels. The company is shifting to smaller operators, 50 or fewer.

Stores are rated based on their operations. The company this year improved its Whopper. Curtis took calls from customers in a bid to hear ideas from customers about what to fix at the chain.

Curtis, however, said that the company still has a long way to go. He told us that the company is just 20% finished. “I just feel we’re scratching the surface,” he said. “There’s still so much to do on the restaurant experience and the restaurant image. And maybe we’re further along than 20%. But I get out there and I visit restaurants and I’m still talking to these guests and there’s still a lot of opportunity.”

That says as much about how far Burger King had fallen as anything else. The chain has just over 40% of the unit volumes of market leader McDonald’s. It has been closing locations in recent years and though profits have improved recently, beef costs have created some headaches.

It’s difficult to fully appreciate just how difficult it is to fix a struggling franchised restaurant brand.

When franchise brands struggle for a few years and profit falls, franchisees cut corners, raise prices or take other steps to improve profitability. That hurts traffic, which can cause franchisors to take more aggressive steps to improve traffic, such as aggressive discounts. That hurts franchisee profitability further, and they cut more corners.

While company-owned businesses can make spending decisions to improve operations quickly, someone like Curtis has to convince franchisees to take these steps. That can be particularly difficult when franchisees are struggling.

Burger King “was pointed in the wrong direction for a series of years,” Curtis said. “The guest experience is where I’m really focused right now, and man, changing culture in a population of about 250,000 employees that aren’t technically even ours, that does not get fixed in one training class or one promotion. You’ve just got to keep hammering if you’re going to get to grade.”

How to fix it? Curtis believes it goes down to convincing operators to convince their workers that the job in the restaurant matters.

“You have to be purpose driven,” he said. “You have to create purpose in your restaurant population that you’re doing something meaningful, not just a job.”

He recalled his experience with Domino’s, which made the 30-minute delivery its purpose. “People are counting on us because we have busy lives,” Curtis said. “If we don’t get there in 30 minutes, we can ruin dinner. So you have to be purpose driven, and you have to find a purpose or a cause.

“You’re trying to motivate franchisees who are the employers of these restaurant workers, and you’ve got to inspire them to inspire others.”