Wednesday, March 18, 2009
The winner writes the history
I saw some line similar to that in something recently. I also recently saw a program on the two fast food leaders, Burger King and McDonalds. The biggest part of the program was the innovations these two giants had brought to the fast food industry. I guess the post baby boomers would assume it was fact, after all it IS television, and carry the assumptions on. No, neither of these two giants (or winners of the fast food race) were as innovative as one might believe. To me the show's biggest accomplishment was to show how history is re-written by those that survive.
If you're old enough, and not from Hawaii, you may remember Burger Chef. A little younger than McDonalds, it came along in the same year, 1954, as Burger King. Burger King's biggest innovation and what makes it stand out from the others is of course the flame broiled burger. The flame broiler was patented in 1954 and used to start the fast food restaurant Burger, umm, Chef? Yep. Though still in use today by Burger King, they didn't invent it.
Although today it's more "have it our way" 30 years ago there was a much friendlier and well known slogan Burger King used, "Have it your way." Burger King no longer has to suffer with you demanding a burger your way because you can't go to Burger Chef, order a burger "without" and wander over to the works bar and put on a dozen pickles and a stack of onions if that's what you want on your burger. The "fixins bar" (I think that was what they called it) that Burger King grudgingly put out was of course quickly snatched back from under your nose when they no longer had to indulge you because of the competition. Oh, and the salad bar mentioned in that Burger Chef commercial - they were the first with that too.
Supersize me! Umm, no, Burger Chef didn't innovate blubbering America, McDonalds can have the credit for that one, or whoever else wants to claim it. Burger Chef did however create the first "value meal". Oops, "value combo", "value meal" is of course McDonalds' renamed stolen idea. McDonalds was no less "innovative" than Burger King in swiping Burger Chef ideas and repackaging them as their own. Burger Chef's frustration finally boiled over into a lawsuit when McDonalds dropped the "Happy Meal" on the public. Note the Wikipedia link not only has no mention of the lawsuit, but in the History section says it was the "brainchild" of a St Louis advertising manager named Dick Brams. I thought maybe Dick went into politics and changed to a stage name of Al Gore. There was not one original idea with this theft including the mentioned tying it in with a movie (Star Trek) as Burger Chef had already done that with their Funmeal using Star Wars.
Burger Chef eventually lost the lawsuit and went on to be sold to Hardees who converted most of the stores to Hardees and those that were near a Hardees the franchisees given a limited time to change their name to something else. In only a generation we are already giving the credit for these innovations to the current giants and it probably won't be too much longer before Burger Chef is written out of history altogether. Although I guess it is much more difficult to do now with things like the web, what matters the most is it will be written out of people's memories as time passes, so the end result is the same. The real lesson is probably to learn what went wrong for a company that was truly the innovator and went from being second only to McDonalds to oblivion in a single generation.
If you're old enough, and not from Hawaii, you may remember Burger Chef. A little younger than McDonalds, it came along in the same year, 1954, as Burger King. Burger King's biggest innovation and what makes it stand out from the others is of course the flame broiled burger. The flame broiler was patented in 1954 and used to start the fast food restaurant Burger, umm, Chef? Yep. Though still in use today by Burger King, they didn't invent it.
Although today it's more "have it our way" 30 years ago there was a much friendlier and well known slogan Burger King used, "Have it your way." Burger King no longer has to suffer with you demanding a burger your way because you can't go to Burger Chef, order a burger "without" and wander over to the works bar and put on a dozen pickles and a stack of onions if that's what you want on your burger. The "fixins bar" (I think that was what they called it) that Burger King grudgingly put out was of course quickly snatched back from under your nose when they no longer had to indulge you because of the competition. Oh, and the salad bar mentioned in that Burger Chef commercial - they were the first with that too.
Supersize me! Umm, no, Burger Chef didn't innovate blubbering America, McDonalds can have the credit for that one, or whoever else wants to claim it. Burger Chef did however create the first "value meal". Oops, "value combo", "value meal" is of course McDonalds' renamed stolen idea. McDonalds was no less "innovative" than Burger King in swiping Burger Chef ideas and repackaging them as their own. Burger Chef's frustration finally boiled over into a lawsuit when McDonalds dropped the "Happy Meal" on the public. Note the Wikipedia link not only has no mention of the lawsuit, but in the History section says it was the "brainchild" of a St Louis advertising manager named Dick Brams. I thought maybe Dick went into politics and changed to a stage name of Al Gore. There was not one original idea with this theft including the mentioned tying it in with a movie (Star Trek) as Burger Chef had already done that with their Funmeal using Star Wars.
Burger Chef eventually lost the lawsuit and went on to be sold to Hardees who converted most of the stores to Hardees and those that were near a Hardees the franchisees given a limited time to change their name to something else. In only a generation we are already giving the credit for these innovations to the current giants and it probably won't be too much longer before Burger Chef is written out of history altogether. Although I guess it is much more difficult to do now with things like the web, what matters the most is it will be written out of people's memories as time passes, so the end result is the same. The real lesson is probably to learn what went wrong for a company that was truly the innovator and went from being second only to McDonalds to oblivion in a single generation.
