Bus 223: Operations Management Overview
Fast Food Industry- Burger King Analysis
Susanna Adame-Rozbruch
Karen Espinoza
Shauna Kimball
Monique Roberts
Mount St. Mary’s College
Jan. 25.2014
Introduction
Although there are numerous factors that contribute to the efficiency of fast food
establishment operations, the ultimate goal for Burger King is customer satisfaction. In
order to satisfy customers Burger King must decide how to provide their services, what
their facility will look like their production capacity and even something as simple as
where to locate their restaurant. All of these factors contribute to the quality of their
service and food by understanding their Operations Processes.
Company Overview
Burger King is mostly known as the home of the Whopper, but it also is the world’s
second-largest restaurant chain. BK has grown substantially since selling the first Whopper
(for $0.37) almost half a century ago. (Corporation, 2013) Today, there are 11,200 BK
restaurants in fifty-eight countries, and they employ three hundred fifty thousand people.
Almost eight million customers visit BK each day, generating annual worldwide revenues
of $11 billion. (Corporation, 2013)
Burger King’s Strategy focuses on four pillars Menu, Marketing, Image and Operations.
For their Operations sector, Burger King announces:
“We have restructured our operations teams through our “field optimization project.” We
believe that this reduction in the number of restaurants will improve all aspects of
restaurant operations, including food quality, guest service, and speed of service. We have
also launched standardized operational metrics to evaluate restaurants that focus on those
core competencies that we believe will maximize the guest experience.” (Corporation,
2013)
Operation Processes
Process
Managers must decide how to organize equipment and labor to achieve the competitive
goals of their organization. Typically within the Fast Food Industry, it is common to see a
repetitive process. The repetitive process is used to hopefully produce identical or very
similar products in high volumes in a short amount of time for the fast food customer.
Equipment and labor are organized in line flow arrangements to meet very specific
customer or product processing requirements.” (Heizer, 2010) The best example of this
would be your traditional assembly line process. Burger King similar to other fast food
places has a “high volume process with low prices, limited menus, fast and courteous
service.” (Rao, 2009) Something every exclusive to Burger King is their encouragement of
customization, which is seen from their “Have It your Way” slogan. “The customization of
Burger King’s product is centered on pickles and lettuce – the dressing of the burger not on
a fundamentally wider menu choice.” (Rao, 2009) Most other fast food restaurants find
customization hard to do without increasing the customers wait time and slowing down
other production processes. Although, the option of customization is present at Burger
King the process follows the same production steps to produce a standardized outcome
using the make to order process.
Burger King follows a specific make to order process, which means an order must be
prepared before it can be delivered to the customer. Orders must be conveyed, instead of
just being filled, in order to accommodate the customization of special orders. The wait
time including your service time is about 4 minutes, 5 seconds for Burger King. (Rao,
2009) Burger King can customize products because it builds sandwiches one at a time
rather than batch-process them. For example, “A burger patty will go from the grill to a
steamer for holding until an order comes in. Then the patty is pulled from the steamer and
requested condiments are added. Finally, the completed sandwich chutes to a counter
worker, who gives it to the customer.” (Jeston & Nelis, 2006) The ability to customize their
food process is a competitive advantage Burger King has over their competitors. Most of
Burger Kings competitors, such as McDonald’s and Wendy’s use a make-to-stock
approach instead of make-to-order. The make to stock process allows numerous
hamburgers to be made at the same time with the same condiments as every other
hamburger. The food is then stored until a customer orders that particular hamurger or
combo option. (Hezer & Render) Using make-to-stock method, “if a customer wants, a
hamburger without onions from McDonald’s, he would have to wait for a new batch of
patties to be made. The procedure could take up to five minutes, whereas Burger King can
process a special order in thirty seconds.” (Collins, 2012) This process does not allow the
flexbility of customization without a long wait time compared to Burger King.
Compared to other fast food companies Burger King’s process is very unique and has a
highly specialized conveyor–broiler. For Instance, “Raw hamburger patties are placed on a
moving conveyor that runs through a flaming broiler. In exactly 90 seconds, the patties are
cooked on both sides with a unique broiler taste. Due to the fixed time for a patty to move
through the conveyor–broiler, the thickness of the patties must be the same for all the
hamburger products. The buns are also warmed on a conveyor.” (Jeston & Nelis, 2006) As
a whole Burger Kings system results in a unique, highly consistent product, customized
individually for every single customer.
An example of Burger King’s Make-to-Order Flowchart is seen below:
Burger King has introduced a number of changes that have helped make their company
develop a more efficient process. Burger King actually was the first fast food restaurant to
offer drive-through service, which now accounts for 58% of their sales.” (Collins, 2012)
The operations process does not only include food, but also drinks and the actual
