What does it take to be a great teacher of business?
It's not yet clear what Burger King's new owner, the Brazilian-backed private equity firm 3G Capital, has in mind for the troubled No. 2 fast-food chain. But a total strategic revamp is in order.
Burger King said Thursday that it has agreed to be acquired by investment firm 3G Capital in a deal valued at $4 billion.
The bulls are back on Wall Street. After a bearish August, stocks roared into September with a major rally Wednesday, as investors cheered signs of strength in the manufacturing sector.
U.S. stocks were poised to start September with a bang Wednesday, as investors aimed to put last month's dour performance behind them.
So much for merger mania getting investors excited.
In the popular television series "Sex and the City," brunch was often the war room in which the saucy foursome would debrief about their exploits on the battleground of New York's dating scene.
When it comes to fast food, the big chains can't help going over the top.
Fast-food restaurants that have long catered to the hungry patron with super-sized entrees are now targeting the nibbler, offering smaller, snack-sized portions.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then fast food giant Burger King is paying its longtime industry rival a royal compliment.
It's practically naked, but you won't see any buns on this monster of a sandwich. CNN's Jeanne Moos has the taste test.
Even in good times, the relationship between franchisors and their franchisees tends to be fraught. Toss in an economic downturn and things get downright nasty. Iconic brands are facing revolts in the trenches from owners fed up with their corporate parent.
Fast food joints are scrambling to find alternate sources for one of America's favorite sandwich toppings after a winter freeze took a huge bite out of Florida's tomato harvest.
Hot or iced, with whipped topping or not -- Seattle's Best Coffee fans can soon have it their way.
Burger King Corp. said Friday it plans to open a Whopper Bar in the South Beach area of Miami next month.
In the NFL cartoon skit, characters joked about the star's weight, dating life
Cheap is chic. The recession has proven that.
Haven't been following NASCAR's annual Media Tour down in North Carolina? Not to worry. I can fit a summary into one simple sentence:
GPS on cell phones is a no-brainer for consumers: Find whatever you're looking for, wherever you are. But try to develop software for GPS phones and you'll be stumbling through a maze of programming languages, like J2 and Brew, and standards that vary from carrier to carrier and phone to phone.
At Burger King, flame broiling will never be the same again.
The Hardee's and Carl's Jr. fast-food chains will begin purchasing eggs and pork from suppliers who do not keep animals in cages or crates, spokesmen for Hardee's and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said Wednesday.
Burger King pledged Wednesday to offer healthier fast-food items for children under 12, with plans to sell and market flame-broiled Chicken Tenders and apples cut to resemble thick-cut french fries.
Does God want you to be slim?
U.S. stocks were modestly lower at the start of trading Wednesday as oil prices in record territory and a weaker dollar made investors nervous.
Burger King Holdings Inc. on Friday reported a fourth-quarter net profit, reversing a year-ago loss, helped by longer store hours and its low-cost breakfast menu.
U.S. stocks retreated at Friday's open as jittery investors braced for a fresh reading on housing starts and shrugged off a surprisingly strong jump in orders for durable goods.
Long workweeks -- up to 120 hours -- are common at the Boulder, Colo., offices of Crispin Porter & Bogusky. So the award-winning ad agency, known for inventive campaigns like Burger King's Subservient Chicken website and Virgin Atlantic's mock flight-safety cards, decided to look for an equally creative way to help employees with their work/life balance.
Fast-food chain Burger King announced Friday that it has begun the rollout of transfat-free cooking oil to its restaurants nationwide.
U.S. stocks held close to breakeven at Friday's open, with the June jobs report getting a lot of consideration.
Can buying a Canon camera, a pair of Nike sneakers or a bar of Dove soap help curb global warming?
As long as young and hungry guys continue to crave big and juicy burgers, bigger will always be better as far as fast-food chains Carl's Jr. and Hardee's are concerned.
Stocks took a hit at Wednesday's U.S. open as investors pondered tough news on oil and the economy.
Here are some stocks that were moving in late trading Wednesday:
Building a business takes more time, energy and focus than most small business owners could ever anticipate, and sometimes walking away is the hardest task of all.
Burger King's hot-off-the-grill offering could heat up the IPO market for other companies looking to go public next week.
Investors have gorged on restaurant deals this year, but do they have room leftover for Burger King?
The IPO market could be set to sizzle the next few months as some big-name companies trying to capitalize on the bull market go public.
Burger King expects to raise around $375 million to $425 million through its initial public offering, according to a SEC filing the company made Tuesday.
In February, the defiant Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy predicted a triumphant resurgence for his company to Business 2.0: "Four years ago we told our engineers to throw out everything that doesn't matter." Now, apparently, McNealy has decided that 200 employees are among what doesn't matter. The layoffs came from the company's high-end server group which has recently been giving away computers to anyone who asks for one to test. Indeed, even Sun president Jonathan Schwartz has acknowledged in his blog that the free trial offer has proved a bit rocky, and these cuts make that all the more apparent.
New technology innovations could soon force the restaurant industry to rejigger an often-used acronym -- QSR, or quick-service restaurant -- to SSR, or self-service restaurant, instead.
Any day now, barring unforeseen calamity, Burger King will join the ranks of publicly traded corporations. It marks a first for the home of the Whopper, which since its founding in 1954 has been a ...
NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Burger King Corp.'s (BKG.XX) private equity backers are looking to king-size their returns from the chain ahead of its initial public offering, with plans to collect a $400 million dividend, according to Moody's Investors Services.
[Last month, I visited New Orleans for the first time since the hurricane. I live in Lafayette, about 140 miles west of there, and so missed the wrath of Katrina. My comic strip had been published ...
[MISS] The burghers are revolting! With its arch, ad-driven revamp, Burger King has climbed back atop its throne, with U.S. same-store sales rising 9 percent in the past two years. Yet the enlighte...
Burger King is seeing strong sales gains and could have an initial public offering within the next year, according to a published report.
In pursuit of the ultimate snack food, Burger King will cross a chicken strip with a french fry.
An entertainment watchdog group is asking Burger King to pull its "Star Wars"-themed children's meals because the latest movie is rated PG-13, according to a published report.
America is hungry, dang it, and it doesn't want a salad.
Burger King has unveiled a new breakfast sandwich that's a huge bet that not everyone is dieting.
A burger developed by the winning team in the season premiere of the Donald Trump reality show "The Apprentice" went on sale Friday at Burger King restaurants nationwide.
Burger King really wants its SpongeBob inflatables back, and the burger chain is even willing to offer a one-year's supply of free Whoppers, salads or any other item on its menu as a reward for information leading to their safe return.
The room is white--pristinely white. We're inside the sensory panel room at Wendy's headquarters in Dublin, Ohio, where employees of the $7.3 billion fast-food giant get to taste-test new products ...
If the big investors who own Burger King have it their way, the next CEO of the floundering fast-food chain will be Greg Brenneman, former president of Continental Airlines. The man chasing Brennem...
As if the advertising industry didn't have enough trouble already, a new development is catching on in schools: programs to "ad-proof" children.
Burger King is searching for a new CEO less than two years into the tenure of its current boss, according to published reports.
On a Wednesday morning in late January, as subfreezing gusts blasted the length of Madison Avenue, the temperature was 70 degrees and rising at the red-hot epicenter of the ad universe. Inside the ...
KEVIN MARSHALL Granby, Conn.
The low-carb thing is getting pretty silly.
Is it really only a year ago that a dozen Burger King managers at a retreat burned their feet walking over hot coals in a team-building exercise?
Chances are, if you hear of a "Big Mac Attack" these days, it comes with chest pains. At least at McDonald's headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill., where the bad news tends to be super-sized. When the fa...
Advertisers have made some dubious claims over the years. We've been asked to believe that buying a car is a patriotic act, that Burger King just tastes better (than what?), and that Michael Jackso...
EQUITY MARKETING
ERNEST H. DREW, the amiable CEO of Hoechst Celanese, the chemical giant, remembers exactly when he became an advocate of a more diverse work force. He was attending a 1990 conference for Hoechst's ...
Beef is back -- big and juicy. Since 1976, when annual consumption averaged a stomach-satisfying 88.8 pounds per person, sales of beef have dwindled as cholesterol counts and grazing "lite" increas...
Some years back we took an IQ test (don't ask why). One section was designed to elicit information about one's common-sense understanding of various phenomena in everyday life. Among the questions ...
YOU'RE SITTING ON a bench outside your local Rally's fast-food restaurant, inhaling a Rallyburger with cheese and batter-dipped fries, when a middle-aged man in jeans comes over and joins you. Alar...
WHAT DO KIDS know about the world of work, that mysterious adult realm hidden behind the concrete walls of factories and the reflective windows of office towers? Not much, and not nearly enough to ...
TRUMP, CAMPEAU, Wang, Eastern -- hardly a day passes without news of some business in need of a rescue. ''In the 1980s, LBOs, takeovers, and global competition left a path of destruction out there....
MANAGING/Cover Story 36 THE NEW TURNAROUND CHAMPS When a business is in distress, these company doctors don't leech it like some medieval physician. They find the root trouble and stanch the bleedi...
PERKINS FAMILY RESTAURANTS LP When Donald Smith took over this Memphis chain in late 1985, sales and profits were, well, unappetizing. Its 319 restaurants earned a meager $3 million on revenues of ...
Roy Bostock, president of D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, has more beef in his diet since his team won half of the Burger King advertising account in May -- and topped that off by wresting Kraft Gen...
''My style is to grin when the water is just rising over my lower lip,'' says Barry Gibbons, the Grand Metropolitan executive charged with turning around Pillsbury's Burger King unit. He's got a Wh...
This could be the year for franchisees. Goods and services sold through them reached almost $640 billion in 1988, a 30% increase over 1984, says the U.S. Commerce Department. Franchises now account...
ON THE 40th floor of Pillsbury's corporate tower in Minneapolis, the sounds of hammers and buzz saws echo through the hallways as workmen busily prepare a cavernous office for the return of William...
McDonald's is the leading fast-food retailer outside the U.S., and it keeps on widening its lead. While McDonald's U.S. sales rose 9% to $4.6 billion for the first six months of the year, internati...
IT'S THURSDAY and Jim Wronski, director of recruitment for Chicago's Andy Frain Services, is frantic. The town will be jumping with cultural and sports events over the weekend, and Frain should hav...
Fresh lettuce and tomatoes -- or more precisely, ''cool'' lettuce and tomatoes -- are making a comeback in fast food. For years Burger King, Wendy's, and Roy Rogers have tried to bite into McDonald...
In reaction against what threatens to become a never-ending pitch from advertisers, yuppies seem to be tiring of all the adulation, and some marketers seeking all those upwardly mobile dollars are ...
ANNISTON, ALABAMA -- Dexter Gooden said he was laid off for three days for drinking a Pepsi at the Coca-Cola bottling plant where he works. He said his wife brought him a Burger King lunch on Monda...
Getty Trust: War and Pieces The $4-billion Getty family trust sparked a war among the heirs of J. Paul Getty, who demanded that Getty's son Gordon be removed as sole trustee, and haggled over who s...
Jay O. Darling Darling's rise should inspire burger flippers everywhere. He joined Burger King Corp. (1984 sales: $1.2 billion) 14 years ago as an assistant manager trainee at a branch on his nativ...
With a sizzling reputation from top jobs at McDonald's, Burger King, and PepsiCo, fast-food whiz Donald N. Smith moved on to beef up Chart House Inc. (FORTUNE, November 14, 1983). But his record fi...

