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In April 2012, Good Times Burgers & Frozen Custard hired Heathcote Capital LLC, many assumed the Golden, Colo.-based regional QSR was seeking a buyer. But President-CEO said that on the contrary Good Times was looking to buy. This week 39-unit Good Times announced deals with Charlotte, N.C.-based Bad Daddy’s Burger Bar. BurgerBusiness.com spoke with Good [...]

Steve Easterbrook, the the former president of McDonald’s Europe who left the chain in 2011 to head PizzaExpress (and who then went on to be CEO of Wagamama Limited), rejoined McDonald’s Corp. as EVP-Global Chief Brand Officer. He’ll oversee marketing, menu development and consumer and business insights. It’s a post Easterbrook previously, if very briefly, [...]

When it launched new advertising this week that teased “Exciting things are happening at Burger King,” it wasn’t clear that the burger chain meant the boardroom as well as the dining room. Privately held Burger King Worldwide Holdings and publicly traded UK investment vehicle Justice Holdings Limited announced a business deal late Tuesday that will [...]

Don Thompson was named chief executive officer of McDonald’s Corp., effective July 1, 2012, following the announced retirement of Vice Chairman-CEO Jim Skinner. Skinner, 67, has worked at McDonald’s for 41 years and has served as CEO since November 2004. Thompson has been with the company for 22 years. A graduate of Purdue University with [...]

That was the sound of the other shoe dropping. When Burger King installed new management last October following the chain’s acquisition by 3G Capital, the question asked here was, “Will Crispin Porter + Bogusky hang on to Burger King’s $300 million-plus ad account?” It did for awhile, but when UK Marketing Director Sarah Power exited in [...]

Burger King’s owners have continued the housecleaning they began by installing Bernardo Hees as CEO last fall. Now the 3G Capital ownership group has reorganized the global brand management and operations functions. The most visible shakeup is the immediate departure of EVP-Global Chief Marketing Officer Natalia Franco after just nine months on the job. And once again [...]

There may be more grilled sandwiches and new chicken items in Jack in the Box’s menu future, while burger and salad LTOs could be downplayed as a result of rapidly rising costs for many commodities. Jack in the Box reported positive same-store sales for both company (+1.5%) and franchised stores (+0.9%) for its first fiscal [...]

The agency that gave us bikini-clad Audrina Patridge lounging on a beach with a Teriyaki Six Dollar Burger, Kim Kardashian in her bathtub eating a salad and Padma Lakshmi’s erotic moment with a Bacon Western Thickburger now will have to eat its lunch all by itself, in the words of the Eagles song. Mendelsohn Zien has [...]

Welcome to 2011. It’s a friendly place where burgers still haven’t gone out of favor or style. C’mon in. Burgers may, however, have gone up in price, at least at m:brgr, Jeff Dichter’s hip burger bar in Montreal. The highlight of the restaurant’s new menu is a $100 Kobe burger. Gimmick or reality? “It’s for real; sold [...]

A generation ago, farm life was considered about as uncool as life got. Now upscale restaurants list the names of the farms where the pork or potatoes or cheese comes from. Farms are hip. You can’t keep ’em down on Wall Street after they’ve dined at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. And Bob Evans is [...]

McDonald’s this week has escalated the burger battle in Europe with a bold one-two-three menu punch that competitors will be hard-pressed to match. In France, the chain’s “World Tour” promotion simultaneously adds three innovative new platforms: ● There’s a bit of cumin added to the ground beef and a slightly spicy sauce that give the [...]

McDonald’s Corp. is again looking for someone to oversee global marketing following its surprising announcement today that Steve Easterbrook will become president of McDonald’s Europe on December 1. This follows the equally surprising resignation earlier in the week of European operations chief Denis Hennequin to become CEO of Accor Hotels Group. Little more than two [...]

Tom Dentice and Ed Rensi opened Tom & Eddie’s, an upscale burger joint, this summer at Yorktown mall in Lombard, Ill., outside Chicago. The menu is a bit pricier than McDonald’s— with which both men spent their working careers and from which thy retired 13 years ago (Rensi as president-CEO of McDonald’s USA and Dentice [...]

Will Crispin Porter + Bogusky hang on to Burger King’s $300 million-plus advertising business? Today’s reorganization of the chain’s top makes the question unavoidable. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTUac13I_PI The reorganization comes less than a week after 3G Capital completed its $4 billion acquisition of Burger King Holdings. Six new executive vice presidents were named today. Leaving the company are [...]

Elevation Burger, based in Arlington, Va., stakes its claim to a share of the “better burger” category by offering a very limited menu of  freshly ground, 100% USDA-certified organic, 100% grass-fed, 100% free-range beef burgers and fresh-cut fries cooked in olive oil.  The basic, single-patty hamburger is about $3.59; the double-patty Elevation Burger is $6. [...]