Business
In 1954, Burger King started out with the name Insta-Burger King. During the first five years in business, the company opened five restaurants, all in Florida area, Miami. A few years later, the company’s name shortened to Burger King. The company expanded to 274 restaurants franchised locally. After several years, Burger King had different other owners as it continues to expand internationally.
When Burger King was sold to the Grand Metropolitan British Company, Burger King expanded in the United Kingdom. Grand Metropolitan merged Guinness in year 1997 to establish Diageo. A few years later, Diageo parted from restaurant operations, and sold Burger King to an association of private equity corporations managed by Bain Capital Partners, TPG Capital, and the Goldman Sachs Funds. In May of year 2006, Burger King accomplished its first public offering, becoming a widely traded corporation on the New York Stock Exchange. However, in year 2010, 3G Capital, together with Brazilian investors, got the company private again with the vision that management could focus on medium and long-term operations, instead of being topic to shareholder reactions to short-term performance. After two years, the company went public again and changed its name to Burger King Worldwide, Inc. to express its concern in future global expansion.
Changes in weight for Burger King became a result of transformed ownership in three years. Burger King’s interests also have sometimes been lesser to those of its principal company. Despite the deriving ownership, Burger King managed to expand internationally, and started its expansion in few countries like Puerto Rico and Bahamas, and after a few years in Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Some of these expansions became greatly successful, but a few did not. Burger King expanded and retreated from operations in countries like France, Columbia, Israel, Oman, and Japan.
Most of Burger King’s initial international expansions drew back because of some major issues. Two of the issues were either because someone in a different country approached someone in the company, or because someone in the company was familiar with a specific country and thought it would propose opportunities. There are also two reasons that have been widespread in Burger King’s decisions to retreat from markets, which are the franchisee is not performing effectively in a way that the franchisee is not making supreme payments or investing adequately in the business; and the market is too small to sustain the required infrastructure like slaughterhouses and beef-grinding facilities. These are the common risks, which an international restaurant company such as Burger King would have by expanding abroad, instead of focusing on the operations domestically.
The Burger King Headquarters, which is located in Miami, developed a presence in the Caribbean group and the Latin America group that have countries with very small populations. The company expanded its location to these regions before it entered the countries with many larger populations because most of the people from these regions come to Miami. The Burger King Headquarters location has become focused in its international expansion. This location has both strengthened and weakened its competitive position. This location has strengthened its competitiveness because of the fact that Burger King had successfully expanded its company worldwide. Throughout its extensive history, Burger King has consistently focused on growing its global name into existing and new markets. On the other hand, international expansion has weakened its competitiveness because of several issues in some countries, wherein franchising has been primarily difficult because prospective franchisees and suppliers did not know the corporation well enough.
