Most fast-food executives improve their flagship burger by convening focus groups, commissioning market research, or bringing in a food scientist.
Tom Curtis did it differently
The president of Burger King published his phone number and waited for the calls to come in. What happened next shows up in the chain’s latest earnings report. “We’ve been listening to our guests a lot lately,” Curtis told Jim Cramer on CNBC’s Mad Money on May 8. “I’ve personally taken 1,800 calls from guests, and we got over 70,000 incoming calls.” The calls were not a marketing stunt that stayed in the marketing department. They fed directly into product decisions.
Customers told Curtis what they thought of the Whopper, what was missing, and what needed to change. The result is what CNBC describes as the “Elevated Whopper,” a new glazed bun, creamier mayo, and clamshell packaging that CEO Joshua Kobza said is “driving positive guest feedback and the highest Whopper average unit volumes in over three years.” Curtis took so many calls that on weekends his wife banned him from taking them inside the house. “My wife wouldn’t let me in the house and take calls for hours on end,” he said. He took them on the porch instead.