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Quick-service restaurants’ critics need to meet K&N Management, owner of the three-unit Mighty Fine Burgers, Fries & Shakes chain in Austin, Texas. This month it became the first foodservice company to receive the Texas Award for Performance Excellence (TAPE) award from the nonprofit Quality Texas Foundation. It’s no small achievement, and one that began with [...]

O’Charley’s is the latest casual-dining chain to call on a lineup of improved burgers to headline a new marketing effort and reverse declines in sales, average check and guest counts. The Nashville-based chain of 244 restaurants this week is making a newly christened line of  “Fresh Burgers” the focal point of its advertising as it [...]

Ξ There are surprises and an interesting regionalism to this year’s BurgerBusiness.com Burger Brackets Final Four. Cheeseburger Bobby’s of Kennesaw, Ga., squares off against Blanc Burgers + Bottles of Kansas City, Mo., in one match, while Irvine, Calif.-based In-N-Out Burger battles New York City’s Rare Bar & Grill in the other. Several hundred votes have [...]

[March/2011 Update: Click here to read about the McBox in Czech Republic and Breakfast Boxes in Malaysia.] McDonald’s is trying the “boxed value meal” tactic that KFC and others have used successfully for years. In Australia, McDonald’s has launched Family Dinner Boxes, a tiered-price series of Happy-Meals-for-four available from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. in a [...]

“And like that, poof. He’s gone,” Verbal Kint famously says of the evil Keyser Söze in the film “The Usual Suspects.” Perhaps he referencing my NCAA brackets after the Kansas loss. Ξ Or did he mean Wendy’s Bacon & Blue Burger? Because it’s gone.  This is the heart-breaking meaning of “limited-time offer.”  Judging by the largely [...]

Publicly committed to improving the performance of its morning daypart, Jack in the Box is testing Breakfast Pita Pockets, a new spin on a platform it has used before. The item tucks traditional breakfast foods—scrambled egg, ham, cheese and bacon; similar to what is in included in its current Meaty Breakfast Burrito—in pita bread. Menu price [...]

After re-engineering the burger into the Mac Snack Wrap last year, McDonald’s Canada is back with another twist. This time it’s taking on the chicken sandwich, which it has scaled down into the McMini, a two-item line joining its menu in Canada on March 30, a company spokesperson confirmed. Just as the Mac Snack Wrap includes [...]

You have to love the global burger scene. No sooner does McDonald’s unveil burgers named for New York and other American cities in Scandinavia than Burger King counters with a series of burgers named for mountains. The Mountain Burgers are now on the menu in extremely unmountainous The Netherlands, where BK previously offered XL Burgers and, before [...]

McDonald’s ♥ New York. And bacon. The world’s biggest restaurant chain has created its third bacon-topped burger bearing the New York name with the launch of its “Great Tastes of America” promotion in Scandinavia. In Denmark and Sweden, consumers can order the New York Supreme, a burger crowned with crisp bacon, Cheddar cheese and onion [...]

You (both of you) asked for it, so here are the BurgerBusiness.com 2010 Burger Brackets! The rules are the same as with last year’s wildly successful brackets: The grid has 64 great burger brands. Are they the 64 best? You tell me. I just seed them in four regionals named for the four legendary burger-chain entrepreneurs: Carl Karcher [...]

Burger King’s Whopper Bar opening next week in Málaga International Airport in Spain won’t offer travelers beer, but it will have its own specialties, including a breakfast menu. That’s surprising because Spain’s Burger Kings have almost no breakfast foods on offer beyond a chocolate BK Muffin. That item is on the Whopper Bar airport menu [...]

The Counter, the upscale fast-casual burger chain built around the idea of giving customers more choices, has given operators of its 21 U.S. restaurants more latitude in setting menus and in purchasing what’s fresh and popular. After a January test, the Culver City, Calif.-based concept has rolled out a Market Selection program that increases unit [...]

[March 9 update: Hungry Jack's has met the throwdown and responded already with a "$4.95 Extra Value Brekky": The deal includes one of 3 muffin sandwiches (including Eggs Benny) plus hash browns and cappuccino. The muffin's in your court McDonald's!] Ξ Don’t think discounting is done. Checkers/Rally’s has expanded its $1 offerings with the addition of “Unbelieva Burgers”: [...]

When it comes to over-the-top spectacle, Las Vegas is the champ, and LBS: A Burger Joint believed it had one in its the Extreme burger. It turned out that in the current super-hyped world of burgers, “extreme” no longer is enough. LBS, in Vegas’s Red Rock Casino Resort and Spa, offers a variety of tasty [...]

McDonald’s new relationship with Weight Watchers in its 150 New Zealand stores is drawing heat from critics who question the nutritional value of many of the chain’s foods. Under the agreement announced this week, McDonald’s uses the Weight Watchers logo to promote three meals it says each have only 6 ½ points under the diet program’s [...]