Business
Top 10 Worst Burger King Menu Items
Burger King created the Whopper so it has had its share of successes, but even the most successful fail sometimes. The popular fast food chain also came up with a taco and a moldy Whopper. These are a couple of Burger King’s worst menu items.
10. Por Que?
Why would one of the top 3 fast food chains want to sell tacos? Burger King debuted $1 tacos in July 2019 in a bid to…nobody is really sure what they were trying to do because cheap, tasty tacos were already readily available at a number of fast food chains. Several chains already exist that make it their business to provide Mexican food options like – tacos! Taco Bell comes to mind as well as places like Del Taco even Jack in the Box. While Jack isn’t a Mexican chain, it has had success with its tacos – 2 for .99 – a deal that Burger King had a hard time beating. Then there is the question of taste. Did Burger King produce a tasty taco that will appeal to its customers? Reviews suggests they have not. Thrillistm used terms like “sludgy” and “overly processed” to describe them and opined that the taco sauce lacked sufficient heat. This very mediocre review begs the question – what was Burger King thinking anyway? Doesn’t the fast food chain have a pretty good thing going with it’s Whoppers, fries, onion rings etc? There was really no compelling reason to jump into the taco race. 2019 wasn’t Burger King’s first bite at the taco; they were put on the menu back in 2010 as well and if you didn’t know that you’re not the only one.
9. Dog King
“Dog King” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as Burger King. However, if you’re interested, there actually is a restaurant in Brazil called Dog King. Anyway, Burger King decided to start offering grilled hot dogs in 2016 because, even though the fast food chain had done fine without them for about 60 years, this was the brilliant move that would rocket the company past rival McDonald’s. Actually, for a short time in its early days, Burger King did in fact sell have a hot dog on the menu, but they dropped it. It probably should have stayed dropped because, like the name says, they are the king of burgers. Hot dogs aren’t burgers – If you want a hot dog we have Wienerschnitzels for that. According to some of the reviews such as a very smarmy one by the New York Post, Burger King’s hot dogs are barely fit for human consumption. But what do you expect from a city where you can go to Coney Island and get a fresh Famous Nathan’s? Not surprisingly, Burger King hot dogs were discontinued in the United States in 2017 because of lackluster sales. However, as late as 2019 you could still find Burger King hot dogs in a few places such as the Caribbean Island of Aruba.
8. Burger Wrap
This doesn’t necessarily sound like a terrible idea or does it? Burger King’s Whopperito features most of the ingredients of a Whopper inside a soft tortilla wrap. The usual ketchup and mayonnaise is replaced by a queso sauce. execution is key and according to many of the reviews Burger King flubbed this 2016 offering one as well. Newsweek made its opinion clear when the magazine went with the headline: “Burger King’s New Whopperito Is As Disgusting As It Looks.” The Whopper is Burger King’s signature menu item so they probably should be careful how they mess with it. Maybe it would have been better to come with burrito from scratch that didn’t try to shoe horn the famous whopper flavors into a wrap. Instead Burger King defiled the beloved Whopper just to run a short term campaign with what they clearly thought was a winning product with a catchy name. Apparently burger chains sometimes forget that customers come to their restaurants for the burgers. Burritos aren’t hard to get elsewhere. Why would Burger King set its sights on the Chipotle chain? Doesn’t it have enough to worry about competing against the likes of McDonald’s, Carl’s Jr. and Jack In The Box? Of course Chipotle wouldn’t be out done so it tried selling burgers in 2016 with its restaurant called Tasty Made. If you’ve never heard of this place you’re probably not the only one. Better that Burger King and Chipotle stay in their corners.
7. Darth Whopper
As a concept the Black Whopper isn’t nearly as bad a the moldy whopper concept, but the reality of it turned out to be not very good. Was anyone asking for a Whopper with a black bun? Whether they were or not they got one in 2015 to celebrate Halloween. Apparently the Black Whopper tastes ok – the bun is made black with a combination of artificial food colors. These food colors is what caused Burger King a lot of problems. The cocktail of colors made scary black buns, but when customers eventually eliminated their meals their poop was often an alarmingly brilliant shade of green. Burger King was forced to respond tho this strange circumstance and reassure customers that there was nothing unsafe or unhealthy about the state of their stool. Regardless, some customers chose not to help themselves to another Halloween Whopper after experiencing Day-Glo poop. There is a lesson here for Burger King: no matter how clever your marketing campaign is or even how delicious your burgers might be it all can be undone by stories about bright green poop. A fast food chain either has decent food or it doesn’t. Burger King has enjoyed a good reputation for the overall quality of its food so gimmicks like these can offer more risk than reward. Unfortunately, the debut of the Black Whopper, to paraphrase the Dark Lord of the Sith, will not be a day long remembered by Burger King.
6. Double Fungus Burger
Burger King, like the other fast food chains likes to experiment with different flavor combinations. A mushroom and Swiss cheese burger is a staple of alternative burgers in the fast food industry. On a good day it seems like mushrooms are just a gooey mass of gray fungus. But if that’s what you want topping your flame grilled burger than so be it. The Burger King version of the mushroom and Swiss burger was billed as a limited time offer in 2014 and this was just as well because it met with bad reviews for mushy mushrooms, gravy and mayo slathered all over a perfectly good burger. A reviewer on Grubgrade.com was disappointed that he had to “taste the odd funk of rubbery mushrooms.” We can be pretty sure that this isn’t the reaction the good people at Burger King were hoping for when decided to offer this particular burger to the public. canned mushrooms just aren’t very appealing no matter how you try to spin it. But maybe if the fast food chain had used fresh grilled mushrooms instead of canned the reaction would have been a lot different. The Swiss cheese isn’t get very high marks either. Some complained that the burger cooks were stingy with the Swiss cheese and its flavor tended to get lost within the mixture of mayonnaise and gravy that tended to dominate the burger.
5. Impossibly Disappointing
Burger King offers decent burgers such as their flagship sandwich the Whopper as well items like the Big King and the Bacon Cheeseburger. In a bid to appeal either to vegetarians or the consciences of meat eaters (which seems odd for burger place) Burger King decided to offer the Impossible Whopper. This is a meatless patty is made with a whole list of ingredients such as textured wheat protein, soy protein, coconut oil, and yeast extract. The Burger King commercials show excited customers raving about the Impossible Whopper, assuring viewers how much it tastes like actual beef. healthiness.com reviewed the Impossible burger and found that the list of ingredients doesn’t really add up to a healthy alternative to beef. Some people might actually like the taste of it – that’s fine, but Burger King should be upfront about the faux burger’s nutritional content. The Impossible patty has the same number of calories as the beef burger and 1 more gram of fat. The Impossible burger does have some fiber, but it also has 10 fewer grams of protein than a beef burger. Perhaps most concerning is that the Impossible burger has a significant amount of sodium – 16% of your daily allowance, while the beef burger only contains 1%. Given these numbers Burger King can’t argue that the Impossible Burger is a healthier alternative to its traditional sandwiches. This means this faux burger must appeal to vegetarians or people who are concerned that beef production is bad for the planet.
4. Extra Gimmick With Cheese
Did Burger King go out of its way to make a strange looking burger that people wouldn’t want to buy. Maybe the fast food company had a glut of hoagie rolls so it decided to slap a pair of burger patties on them? These are the questions raised by Burger King’s decision to offer a menu item called the Extra Long Cheeseburger. You can get two cheeseburgers, you can get a double cheeseburger so what is the point of an extra long cheeseburger? This burger feels way to much like a gimmick that wasn’t thought through very well. Burgers are round and burger buns are round to accommodate them. Everyone is happy with this classic set up because it works so well. So if it’s not broken don’t fix it. Not only did Burger King try to fix something that wasn’t broken they committed another unforced error by marketing a variation of this burger that is slathered in butter. Even though burger fans aren’t necessarily the most health conscious bunch, adding greasy butter for no reason seems, well – dumb. You might say “Jack In The Box did it.” That other fast food chain does have a Buttery Jack burger, but it has a reputation for doing things its own way. What’s Burger King’s excuse? The Extra Long Cheeseburger just seems a little lazy and uninspired. If Burger King was intent on using the hoagie rolls then why not a steak sandwich?
3. Ultimate Flopper
Many people enjoy a hearty breakfast. An actual knife and fork meal can be a lot more satisfying than a granola bar or a bowl of cold cereal with some milk. However, there should be some middle ground between an unsatisfying nibble and a gluttonous pile of carbohydrates and fat. The Burger King Ultimate Breakfast Platter includes eggs, sausage patty (some have bacon,) pancakes, hash browns and a biscuit. This is a full breakfast for sure, but based on some of the reviews Burger King relied too heavily on quantity at the expense of quality. Unfortunately for Burger King, McDonald’s has had a similar breakfast platter for a long time. Burger King’s middling effort is overshadowed by the McDonald’s platter which generally gets good marks. If the Ultimate Breakfast Platter was a culinary home run than you could rationalize the hefty calorie count. Burger King’s menu lists it at 930 and calorie king.com put the calories at 1230. With this calorie count comes 70g of fat and 122g of carbs. For all the fat and carbs you also get 29g of protein. Calorieking.com helpfully points out that you’d have to jog for 141 minutes to burn off the this Burger King calorie bomb. While its true that most customers aren’t really thinking about calorie counts when they go to fast food restaurants it seems that Burger King went out of its way to create a gluttonous breakfast with the belief that more is necessarily better.
2. A Nightmare On Burger Street
The Nightmare King features a green bun, but unlike the Halloween Burger that featured a black bun, the Nightmare doesn’t turn your poop green. Burger King marketed this sandwich claiming the scary sandwich could actually give customers nightmares. In case you thought they were just kidding: “It’s the combination of protein and cheese that leads to vivid dreams, according to Dr Jose Gabriel Medina, a somnologist and the study’s lead doctor…” If you think you need to quote somnologists to market a sandwich maybe you need to put more effort into the sandwich? The sandwich itself doesn’t seem like an obvious miss with a beef patty, crispy chicken fillet, bacon, cheese, onions and mayonnaise, but all the attention is on the green bun. Some of the online reviews were pretty decent, but most of them were a little put off by the green bun which one person described as “reptilian.” When you’re in the hamburger business it seems like you’d want the focus to be on the tasty, flame broiled meat instead of the gimmicky color of the bun. But with competition in the fast food industry being so fierce companies like Burger King feel like they have to do something flashy to get attention. Like the Halloween Burger with the black bun, the Nightmare Burger came and went and you have to wonder if the next Halloween burger’s bun will be orange.
1. Unbelievable Whopper
Burger King rolled out a meatless Whopper called the Impossible Whopper, but the fast food chain should be kicking itself for its “unbelievable Whopper.” Ok, Burger King doesn’t really have a burger with this name, but what it does have is an ill-conceived marketing campaign that features time lapse footage and photos of a delicious Whopper decaying into a gross, moldy mess. Why? Because the marketing department decided this was the best way to boast about the fact that Whoppers and other Burger King menu items were being made without the usual preservatives. Does Burger King really want its burgers associated with green fungus? It seems like all the billions of dollars restaurants spend on marketing is to get you to think about anything other than their burgers being associated with green fungus. Perhaps there is it a bit of genius in it: Burger King calculated that because everyone else is content to show off their delicious burgers in their full glory, we’ll jumpstart our sales by going completely against common sense and good judgment? Some people believe there is no such thing as bad publicity and this notion may have figured into the fast-food chain’s calculations to go ahead with making commercials about moldy Whoppers. Highlighting moldy Whoppers seems like something a competitor like McDonald’s would do, seeing as if they are the ones who’ve received the most backlash over the years for using preservatives, and burgers that would just never get moldy or show any signs of decay for that matter. But McDonald’s knows better than to show their food in a moldy state, that would not sign the best light on them, regardless of the point they would be trying to make. Burger King did it to itself on this one – unbelievable.