It reminds me:storewanderer wrote: ↑May 28th, 2023, 2:05 pm
All of that- is perfect analysis.
Sometimes the best chain doesn't win. And this is one of those cases.
What I find interesting is how they have been able to STAY in business over the years. They have had franchisee issues/medium/large size franchisees going bust at a higher rate than various other concepts. Back in the 90's they lost Sacramento as the franchisee had some kind of problem (IRS or something maybe) and many of the locations ended up going to competing concepts, some even ended up as McDonalds. Sacramento was obviously not a market you wanted to be absent from so Burger King corporate went in there and opened up a couple dozen new build corporate units throughout the area to save the market (those units have since been refranchises). I suspect this pattern has been repeated across multiple markets over the years to save the chain and keep it as one with a national presence.
From 1956 to 1995, Edmonton, Alberta (Canada) had its own Burger King, totally unrelated to the US chain. When the Whopper announced its intention to enter Canada in the 1960s, the Edmonton Burger King came to an agreement allowing the US chain to use the Burger King name everywhere in Canada, except for the northern two-thirds of Alberta (where Edmonton is). In 1995, the Edmonton Burger King went out of business, selling the naming rights to the US Burger King, allowing them to immediately enter Northern Alberta, the last region of North America they were barred from operating in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burger_King_(Alberta)