Burger King eyes highway stop-overs as key drivers of its growth in India

After setting up 212 restaurants across 50 cities in the country, Burger King is focussing on expanding its restaurant chain across the upcoming world-class stopovers on the highways and sees them as a major growth avenue for the company.

"Significant investment is being undertaken to develop the country's highways and a lot of these are coming up with nice built-in stoppages and rest areas that are being now auctioned off. That is becoming a major development for us especially in the northern parts of the country. We are eyeing this avenue of growth," Burger King India's chief executive officer, Rajeev Varman told Business Standard.

The company will collaborate with stop-over management consolidators who will participate in the bids to develop food courts and rest areas along the highways. Such stop-overs will house multiple brands of restaurants and will have modern amenities for passengers and travellers to halt and rest.

This expansion will be funded internally by investors in the Indian entity of Burger King. Everstone holds around 87 per cent in the company while the US-based brand parent, Burger King Corporation, holds around 12 per cent. Varman also holds a stake.

The new focus area follows the company's recent decision to enter east India, after finalising its distribution centre and setting up several restaurants across high traffic locations such as malls, airports, standalone eateries and others.

Since its entry into India in 2013, Burger King, known for its whoppers, has build its network chain across prominent malls either as full restaurants or as food courts. It as has also tapped high streets and metro station locations in Delhi and Mumbai, and is present in some of the software parks as well. Burger King has also set up outlets in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Cochin airports and is aiming to increase its presence in more airports.

Varman said despite the surge in cloud kitchens and online food delivery, Burger King will continue to focus on the brick-and-mortar model. In the last fiscal year, it had opened 58 new outlets and this year, it has so far opened 26. Thirty more will come up by the end of December.

"We have a massive brand and are present in over 100 countries around the world. We are not interested in hiding this brand and prefer high-traffic locations that offer high visibility -- that is more exciting for us. For us, the real experience is to have customers come in to a Burger King restaurant and feel the ambience and experience the products," he told this newspaper.

Asked if the company sees any looming issues with the vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes it is offering, Varman said such incidents continue to happen and the industry has to deal with it. In the recent past, some delivery agents of Zomato had resorted to a strike in Kolkata after they refused to deliver non-vegetarian food to customers.

Burger King is already profitable at the store level, and Varman is of the view that in the last fiscal year, the company has turned EBITDA positive.

The meatless Whopper is here: Burger King just went vegan

For decades, fast-food giant Burger King has been the undisputed Home of the Whopper -- the chain's signature sandwich featuring one of its flame-grilled, "no nonsense" 100 per cent beef patties.

So, what happens when the Whopper doesn't actually have any meat? BK is going vegan.

That's right, folks: enter the Impossible Whopper, a meatless version of "America's favorite burger."

Made up of mostly soy and potato protein, and featuring coconut oil, sunflower oil and heme -- an iron-rich protein that simulates the texture, color and taste of actual meat.

For years, Burger King has offered a veggie burger on the menu at its thousands of restaurants, but it was not marketed as anything even remotely resembling a juicy, tender slab of meat.

So far, the Impossible Whopper is only available at several dozen restaurants in the Midwestern city of St Louis.

But Burger King's chief marketing officer Fernando Machado told The New York Times that the company expects to quickly expand availability nationwide if all goes well.

"I have high expectations that it's going to be big business, not just a niche product," Machado told the paper.

Burger King's tie-up with start-up Impossible Foods is the latest, perhaps boldest move by a power player in an industry seeking to make inroads with customers on plant-based diets.

On Tuesday, Nestle announced plans to roll out "cook from raw" plant-based burgers in Europe -- under the Garden Gourmet brand -- and in the United States under the Sweet Earth label.

In December, Nestle competitor Unilever said it had bought up Dutch brand De Vegetarische Slager (The Vegetarian Butcher) to position itself in the expanding sector.

Impossible Burgers are already on the menu at US chain restaurants White Castle and, as of Monday, Red Robin.

The Silicon Valley company, founded in 2011, is planning to launch its products in supermarkets later this year.

While soy burgers have existed for quite some time, several companies have taken the product up a notch by using sophisticated technology to make it taste, look and smell like meat.

Beyond Impossible Foods, other start-ups in the United States like Memphis Meats and Just, or Mosa Meats in the Netherlands, are working to develop meat from animal cells, not actual animals.

Nestle's new products are made from soy and wheat proteins, with plant extracts such as beetroot, carrot and bell pepper.

The Swiss food giant goes so far as to say their veggie burger "hardly differs from a traditional burger."

"They even make the sizzling sound of a regular beef burger during cooking," it says.

In the US, Sweet Earth -- the California-based subsidiary bought by Nestle 18 months ago -- will sell its product as the "Awesome Burger."

According to Nestle, consumers are looking "at different ways to enjoy and balance their protein intake and lower the environmental footprint of their diets."

"We believe this trend is here to stay," it says of plant-based food.

Indeed, a survey carried out by Nielsen for the Good Food Institute and published in September last year showed that sales of plant-based foods grew 17 percent over the previous 12 months.

The trend is reflected in so-called "flexitarianism" -- a plant-based diet with the occasional inclusion of meat -- and veganism, which means the abstention from consumption of any animal products including dairy.

A vegan diet has major health benefits, reducing risks of diabetes and heart problems, but some health professionals say that vegans run the risk of not consuming enough of certain nutrients like protein and iron.