7 Facts About Burger King You Definitely Didn't Know

[jisansorkar12]

In his autobiographical book "Burger King: How to Build an Empire," co-founder Jim McLamore recalls how he created and expanded his business empire. Megaplan has selected the most interesting facts from there that you probably didn't know. The review will be useful for entrepreneurs, ambitious managers, and all fast food lovers.

Book cover by Jim McLamore

1. Jim got an education without having money for tuition.
Jim dreamed of doing business since childhood. He devoured biographies of famous uk whatsapp list entrepreneurs - John Rockefeller, Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie. After school, he was accepted to Cornell University to study hotel business. When Jim hitchhiked to Cornell, he had $11.34 left in his pocket, and tuition was paid.

His great desire to learn so impressed the professor who interviewed him that he helped him get a scholarship to cover part of the expenses, gave him a loan, and negotiated a loan with the university treasurer. Then he hired Jim to help with the garden and around the house.

2. The cafe that started Burger King was unprofitable
By the age of 27, Jim was already an experienced manager and restaurateur. In 1954, having sold two of his profitable restaurants, he invested $20,000 in the unprofitable fast food cafe Insta-Burger King, which operated under a franchise. The owners of the franchise, experienced restaurateurs Burns and Kremer, had ambitious plans - to bypass McDonald's, the leader in the fast food market, by automating the preparation of dishes. Jim liked everything about Insta-Burger King: the interior, potential partner David Edgerton, the business model. For example, even then you could enjoy burgers and French fries both in the cafe itself and in the parking lot, without leaving your car.

The menu included burgers, French fries, beer and soft drinks. It was built around two innovative machines for those times - for making milkshakes and for baking cutlets. Jim was most inspired by the possibility of scaling a small fast food business through franchises.

Jim was not even put off by the audit results, which showed that the restaurant had been operating at a loss for the first year and a half. The partners opened the Burger King of Miami company and did not use the Insta prefix on the signboards of their establishments. Jim later admitted that investing all his money in an untested business model, relying solely on intuition, was one of the most reckless decisions in his life.

3. Burger King was not profitable for the first three years
Jim and Dave dreamed of scaling the business — they imagined expansion to different cities and states. The partners found investors and opened three more cafes, but all the establishments were operating at a loss. There were few customers, the fast food machines were constantly breaking down, and the service and food left much to be desired.