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Burger King

Burger King

The predecessor to what is now the international fast food restaurant chain Burger King was founded in 1953 in Jacksonville, Florida as Insta-Burger King. The original founders and owners, Kieth J. Kramer and his wife's uncle Matthew Burns, opened their first stores around a piece of equipment known as the Insta-Broiler. The Insta-Broiler oven proved so successful at cooking burgers, they required all of their franchises to carry the device. After the original company began to falter in 1959, it was purchased by the Miami, Florida franchisees James McLamore and David R. Edgerton who renamed the company Burger King. The duo ran the company as an independent entity for eight years, eventually expanding to over 250 locations in the United States, when they sold it to the Pillsbury Company in 1967.

Under Pillsbury, the company underwent several attempts at reorganization or restructuring in the late 1970s and early 1980s. While these efforts were effective in the short term, many of them were eventually discarded resulting in Burger King falling into a fiscal slump that damaged financial performance of both Burger King and its parent. Poor operating performance and ineffectual leadership continued to bog the company down for many years, even after it was acquired in 1989 by the British entertainment conglomerate Grand Metropolitan and its successor Diageo. Eventually, the institutional neglect of the brand by Diageo damaged the company to the point where major franchises were driven out of business and its total value was significantly decreased. Diageo eventually decided to divest itself of the money-losing chain and put the company up for sale in 2000.

In 2002, a troika of private equity firms led by TPG Capital, L.P with associates Bain Capital and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners agreed to purchase BK from Diageo for $1.5 billion (USD), with the sale becoming complete in December of that year. The new owners, through several new CEOs, have since moved to revitalize and reorganize the company, the first major move was to re-name the BK parent as Burger King Brands. The investment group initially planned to take BK public within the two years of the acquisition, however this action was delayed until 2006 due to several reasons. On 1 February 2006, it was announced that TPG planned to take Burger King public by issuing an Initial Public Offering (IPO). Between March 2004 and March 2009, the company experienced a score of consecutive profitable quarters that were credited with successfully re-energizing the company, however with the slowing of the economy during the financial crisis of 2007-2010 the company's business has declined while its immediate competitions, McDonald's, has grown. On September 2, 2010, Burger King Holdings Inc. announced it will sell out to private equity company 3G Capital for $24 per share, or $3.26 billion.