In
Australia, fast-food giant
Burger King once only existed in very few locations, (for instance, the sole
Melbourne store was situated in
Tullamarine Airport), and the only chain
hamburger store to rival
McDonald's was the oddly-named Hungry Jack's. Featuring the same
menu and even the same name-between-a-bun logo as the
U.S. company, many have pondered why a name change was used at all. After all, McDonald's,
Pizza Hut and
KFC all survived the transition to the
land down under with their monikers intact, why not Burger King? Don't hamburgers sell well unless the vendor has an
apostrophe in their name? Franchising laws?
Actually, the real answer is somewhat unnerving; thankfully I can explain without any fear of repercussion as no one knows who I am on this system. I used to work for the Australian subsidiery of Burger King, and I was involved in
polls that were run on the Australian (Melbourne in my case) population. The
Burger King Corporaton (In the U.S. it's
Burger King Brands Incorporated) decided that Australian people would not want to buy fast-food from a company that would appear to challenge the
Monarchy (ie. the 'King' of Burger King). Hence, groups of people were selected at random and asked if they knew what the
Queen of England's name was. When the percentage of people who could correctly answer the question became low enough(personally, I did not know what the exact figure was), Burger King decided that they could start building stores here under that name without fear that the public would turn against them. The truth is stranger than fiction.