Burger King Slashes Value Menu, Reduces Nugget Count to Battle Inflation

Inflation has been a growing concern for consumers in recent months, but it may have finally gone too far: it’s come for our nuggets.

Burger King announced this week that the QSR franchise would reduce the number of chicken nuggets served in its nugget meals from 10 to eight. It is also removing the iconic Whopper sandwich from its value menu. The brand claims these cost-saving measures are necessary to mitigate the rising costs of goods due to inflation.

Critics might argue that blaming inflation for price increases is a bit of a cop-out for a franchisor who just ten days ago released an earnings claim showing profit and revenue exceeding quarterly forecasts, but global chicken and beef prices have shot up dramatically in 2022, in some cases by as much as 33%.

In an interview with NBC, New York-based Carrols Restaurant Group, the largest operator of Burger King franchise restaurants in the U.S., said that throughout 2021, food and labor costs at their stores rose by more than 10%.

“Domestic food, paper producers and distributors supplying most of our commodities are dealing with labor constraints, along with higher fuel costs and are passing the increases on to us. As a result, commodity inflation overall was approximately 16% this past quarter compared to the prior year period,” said Daniel Accordino, Carrols Restaurant Group’s chief executive said on a recent earnings call.