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Burger King to Offer Beer/Burger Combos

Posted 24 months ago|16 comments|11,533 views
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Chris D
Seattle, WA
Who doesn’t like a beer with their burger?

In Miami Beach, one entrepreneur wants you to “have it your way” by enjoying a frosty cold one with your Whopper and fries. (For a mere $7.99.) It’s part of a new Burger King attempt to reinvent the fast-food restaurant’s look and feel.

The restaurant will be called the “Whopper Bar South Beach” which, to me, sounds a little hokey. But maybe the name will work just fine in Florida.

The long-term goal is to make people want to hang out in their local Burger King. Beer is a good way to motivate people, especially the coveted 21 to 30-year-old male market share. In other countries, like Germany, fast food joints have been offering cans of beer with burgers for over a decade. But here in the U.S., very few fast food restaurants offer alcoholic beverages.

I’m torn on this story. On one hand, I love the idea of getting a beer with my Whopper, especially if it’s sunny and there’s outdoor seating available. But since the new burger/beer deal is exclusive to Anheuser-Busch or MillerCoors products, I’m not 100 percent thrilled. Couldn’t they find a local microbrew to promote?

As one of my friends likes to say, “life’s too short to drink crappy beer.”


(Photo via TravelBlog Barcelona)


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COMMENTS
24 months ago: Content Removed by The Cypress Gang
24 months ago: My badness.

Can you drop the fries for a second brew?
markbyrn
markbyrn
 Moderator
24 months ago: Great, you can be drunk and have the runs at the same time.
everthecynic
everthecynic
24 months ago: "Couldn't they find a local microbrew to promote?"

I agree, but then I'm spoiled to the local stuff I had in Minnesota and now with Pike's in Washington. I'm not completely convinced that non-domestic type beer would make cheap food taste better. That is assuming that they have tied in the drink promo idea to selling more food like a lot of other restaurants would. I'm wondering if the place will still be a part of the big corporate chain or a privately owned "franchise"?

I will quit over analyzing now. : )
Siempre Solo
Siempre Solo
Auburn, NY
24 months ago: Seriously? How could that possibly be a good idea? I don’t drink beer and even I realize that if I wanted beer I wouldn’t go to BK!
24 months ago: I don't think it is a bad idea. Not a great one but surely a money maker and depending on where the fast food joint is located, it might make more sense than requiring the customer to feed the kids FF and the adults next door at a more upscale place that sells alcohol. Jr is screaming for a kid’s meal and all mom wants is a draft in a cold mug, wait time at the upscale place is 30 minutes just to get a table and less than 5 at the FF joint to have your order. I'm going for speed because smacking Jr's butt for screaming is frowned upon in some places and the faster we can both get what we want and relax for a few minutes the better both our stress levels will be.

Now those who frown upon alcohol consumption will chime in with all the reasons adults shouldn't drink in front of the kids. I'm going to point to the last few thousands years of human history and say "We didn't turn out so bad so what's your point". AND it wasn't until over educated, childless nut cases started "claiming" that the mere sight of an adult consuming a brew was damaging to a child's psyche that the act of doing so got a bad rap.
24 months ago:
It was not so many years ago that employers paid their workers with alcoholic beverages as part of their wages AND that all members of a family consumed a portion of that beverage or something created with or from it as part of their normal daily diet. That or they died of starvation. Even today many cultures still serve wine at nearly every meal and the children get a diluted serving as well. Of course they don't start serving it to them from the womb, but even babies can sometimes be calmed with a finger dipped in wine or other alcohol containing beverage and rubbed on teething gums or just allowed to suck on it. We are talking minute quantities here, not bottles or sippy cups full of full strength wine, beer or whiskey. Common sense plays a big role here and if you don’t have any, PLEASE use some caution, remember the “drunken baby” CGI video? That is not the goal here.

Anyway, if you serve FF and want to cater to the “adult” crowd, offering alcoholic beverages is a good idea and if you want both adults and children to visit your business, make sure the atmosphere is more of a fun place to eat than a bar to get drunk in. It worked for the first couple of hundred years in this country and it can work again. Yeah I know they weren’t considered fast food joints, they were the taverns and inns and saloons that everyone went to to eat in all the little and big towns all across the country, your entire family could have an enjoyable meal and beverages for a fair price and no one raised a stink about it until Prohibition allowed religious fanatics to take control of private and public morality.
Casanova
Casanova
Santa Fe, NM
24 months ago: You can go to BK for a burger and a cheap beer and spend $7 or so, or go to a local pub and have a nice atmosphere, have a burger and fries on a glass plate, and drink a good microbrew out of a glass. Maybe you'll get to hear some music too! Who is going to enjoy, or at the very least catch a buzz of a Miller or Bud? They have a market though. BK is not trying to appeal to the people who already know how much better the experience is at a local joint. They are appealing to another crowd...and you know who this crown is! There's probably nothing better in the morning for some people than to have a cheep beer and burger before starting the day. I'm sure that even a cheep beer will help somewhat with the hangover from the night before. 70% of Americans hate their jobs so why not start the day off with a cheep beer!
24 months ago: Burger King, Mcdonalds, Taco Bell, KFC, Wendy's etc.

Sh*t holes!
I wonder if the CEO's or the families of the CEO's eat the sh*t they make billions on.

I would love to watch on youtube the CEO of Mcd's being force fed "ba da ba ba bahhh I'm lovin it" big mac's and fries until he literally explodes.

FU exploiters!!!
24 months ago: What ever you do Chief Observer. Don't hold back on what you think!
24 months ago: Casanova, I don’t doubt that it is more enjoyable to do it your way; it is also more expensive because just the burger meal is going to cost seven bucks and the beer is going to be another three, now take the kids and grandkids and see how well your trip to the pub is going to go. Remember, I’m not talking about a trip to eat and get drunk; this is purely enjoying a brew with the meal. And no matter what you think of burgers and fries as a meal, it is still beef, vegetables, grain and potatoes, the method of preparation is what generally makes it unhealthy.

I feel your attitude toward alcohol consumption is peeking through in your “appealing to another crowd…” comment. I drink beer, I like to have a beer with many types of meals (not breakfast foods), I see no problem with it and millions of people before me and after me were/are perfectly capable of consuming a beer and a meal without going off the deep end and abusing alcohol. I think you would be surprised how many world affecting decisions by world leaders were made with a few ounces of alcohol in their systems, decisions that are lauded to this day as great ideas, and that is just the tip of the iceberg on alcohol use throughout history.
24 months ago: observer, you've got a long list of "exploiters" to rant at so please, write a good one. Just ease off on the explicative’s so we don't have to see all those characters. We could talk in person, just not online.
markbyrn
markbyrn
 Moderator
24 months ago: Chief Observer,

Calm down man - relax and have a nice tall glass of corporate beer, and take a few tokes from the prescription leaf.
Rudi Stettner
Rudi Stettner
 Moderator
24 months ago: What's wrong with a beer with lunch? Beer. It's not just for breakfast anymore
scotmanster
scotmanster
24 months ago: Yea I agree with Rudi what is wrong with a beer at lunch. I personally drink NA Beer.
everthecynic
everthecynic
24 months ago: I don't really think there's anything wrong with the idea. I just can't stomach fast food unless there's no other option. One thing is for sure, it certainly changes who can work the front line at BK.

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