Last Wednesday I had burgers and a brownie for breakfast and I’m still trying to recover.
I was in Miami, at Burger King headquarters, to hear about new menu items and marketing plans. It was a little before 10 a.m. when they rolled out the “Heritage” Whopper — thicker pickles, better mayo, tastier bun. Not five minutes later they served Veggie Burgers, ice cream shakes, hot fudge brownies, and Back Porch Burgers (with bacon, no less).
Now, I grew up in a large family where we cleaned our plates as a matter of self-defense, not just principle. Imagine staring down a white china plate with three full-sized burgers on it, flanked by a vanilla shake and a brownie. For the first six bites, I was in heaven. After that, I was on a mission.
It’s hard to eat and take notes at the same time. Consummate professional that I am, I forsook the bun for the pen. That didn’t go over well with the guy sitting beside me: franchisee Steve Lewis.
“You should eat that while it’s hot,” he whispered. I bit into the Veggie Burger to make him happy, and then I couldn’t stop. Write, or eat? Write, or eat? I turned on my tape recorder and gave in.
The Veggie Burger was good, but I had been waiting for that Whopper almost a week. While researching the story, I suffered from an occupational hazard familiar to trade journalists. A colleague used to call it McDonald’s Syndrome: When you’re writing a story on McDonald’s, you crave a Big Mac. I’ve been known to crave Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Oreos, and Ben & Jerry’s (although that last one may not be job-related, come to think of it). One day I even lit out for my local BK between phone calls, but a freight train turned me back.
Thank God I’ve never worked the fast food beat. I’d be a walking heart attack.
At BK’s headquarters, head chef Peter Gibbons orchestrated the sampling from the back of the room. He’s a rotund fellow with a cheerful smile — just who you’d picture as the Keeper of the Recipe for the Whopper. Marketing chief Chris Clouser ribbed him (“Work on this brand every day, and you get to look like Peter”) and Gibbons grabbed his belly and laughed, “This is a big investment.”
Around noon, we all traipsed to the test kitchen to make our very own Whoppers. Each reporter there had a BK pro to talk us through it. “Mayo on the top bun,” said my coach. “Now, four pickles.”
“Nope,” I said. I hate pickles.
She couldn’t say “Have it your way” fast enough.
Lewis was across the room when I took my first bite.
“How’s your first Whopper?” he hollered.
I tried to bluster my way through as an old hand behind the Burger King counter, but Lewis had me dead to rights: I grew up a McDonald’s girl. I worked there as a kid, I met my high school sweetheart by the fries bin, I memorized the menu on family trips. I can tell you where all three McDonald’s were in the town where I grew up, but I can’t picture one Burger King. I don’t think I even tasted a Whopper until long after college.
Apparently I am making up for lost time. In Lenten fashion, I’ve been steering clear of junk food for several weeks. I even bought into Kellogg’s “Jump Start” suggestion: Replace lunch or dinner with a bowl of cereal, and lose up to six pounds in two weeks.
I’m not one to miss a meal, but I did swap ice cream for Cocoa Puffs as a late-night snack. I was feeling pretty virtuous.
Until Miami. Since then, I’ve had burgers on the brain. I ate a Whopper just before starting this column, freight trains be damned. I am astounded at the intensity of this attack.
It would be a long haul to convert McDonald’s customers one by one, but if my personal consumption is anything of a barometer, Burger King’s best marketing plan might be inviting everyone in America to Miami to sit down with Peter Gibbons.
That hot fudge brownie with a spoonful of vanilla shake is killer, by the way.
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