Ukraine war: Burger King still open in Russia despite pledge to exit
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66739104Open linkView original on lemm.ee836
Comments95https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66739104Open linkView original on lemm.eehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66739104Open linkView original on lemm.ee
Restaurant Brands International owns Burger King, Tim Hortons, Popeye's Chicken, and Firehouse Subs
Fuck RBI, they are lying war profiteers putting tax revenue in the hand of the Kremlin which it uses to fund it's war of genocide in Ukraine. Do not eat in any of their restaurants
Especially with firehouse subs having such a purpose washed image/mission, you think they'd be smarter.
War profiteer is an interesting way to look at it. If a company doesn't cut ties with warmonger countries, they are war profiteers ?
They should also get away from US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and most of the "developed" countries that are historically exploiting poor countries ?
They sell fucking burguers, if they manage to not put too much garbage in the food to save money, they are doing enough.
Are you also telling us how much they own of those Burger King franchises in Russia they are supposed to shut down?
They are getting paid 100% of the franchise fees of their Russian businesses.
You don’t own franchise partners by definition. They are individually owned restaurants that pay you a fee to use your brand (name, menu, marketing, etc.).
„Shutting down“ here means: Don’t renew these franchise contracts. The restaurants will continue to exist, but they will have to rebrand and be less lucrative.
And what do you do if those Russian franchise owners refuse to rebrand and continue using the BK name, supplies and signage?
Do you stop providing logistical support? Do you cut them off the BK supply chain (shut that down too) and not provide any new menu items / marketing materials?
Has BK done that?
Yes, obviously you should cut supply lines, duh. Why would you supply products to someone who isn't paying for them.
So what is burger king doing wrong here?"
Edit: At least 10 people didn't read the fucking article, BK did cut the supply line. This place is just like Reddit, all hurr durr without reading the article.
They are telling you, literally. They should revoke the branding licence, cut every supply lines, and sue them if they continue using the brand (as they would surely do if I just started to have a Burger King without a licence). They don't do these things. Which is wrong. And that's what they are doing wrong.
This is how I know you didn't read the article.
BK did cut the supply chain logistics. It's mentioned in the article.
Sue the franchisees? Where? In Russia? In the middle of an economic war with the west? Even if the suit proceeded for some reason, who do you expect the court to rule in favor of?
BK did everything to severe ties. The only thing that remains is to sell their share of the franchise. If they sell now (even if they find a buyer), they likely won't be paid in anything other than rubles which is useless.
What imaginary supply line are you talking about? Do you think that any food there is not supplied locally? That they import paper wrappings with a logo from the US? Actually the ones probably importing their stuff are sitting in the US, even if it's just plastic trash from China.
It's a name. And if they got told not to use it anymore or they just don't pay anything anymore... what is supposed to happen? Someone goes to Russia and sues them there?
Nothing, because you just hallucinate supply lines. The franchise pays for the fucking name and that's it. And if they are not allowed to do so anymore, who's going to Russia and sue the owning oligarchs there?
They continue operating in russia as if everything's fine.
I thought burger king staying was the punishment
Capital Scum doing capitalist scum shit.
There has been a lot of debate on this. Is it cruel and unusaul punishments. Have the russiand done things so bad to deserve burger king. only time will tell.
Don't like it, don't go there. Tell them why.
Personally I'm boycotting them. Not because of any moral justification, but because they sell overpriced disappointing mulch.
Literally worst fast food joint and the only people I've met who claim otherwise have objectively bad taste.
Like no joke, objectively, "I love a butter and cheese sandwich on wonderbread", British, wouldn't know flavor if it ripped their tongue out.
I have to make my own burgers now. Most places serve fast food swill, and the only nice place has switched to brioche buns.
Brioche buns are not load bearing buns! They fall apart at the slightest contact with moisture. I will die on this hill forever.
Surely most untoasted buns will fall apart if dealing with anything outside of a basic burger?
If you use a small, cheap bun, you can't expect toppings to not break it apart.
Dying on a hill forever sounds really painful. Ouch.
As opposed to dying in a valley forever, totally painless.
I'm curious about dying on a hill temporarily though.
You rank BK as worse than McDonald's? I only ask cause I've worked at both, and I would put McDonald's just the tiniest bit lower than BK. Wendy's is barely better than both BK and McDonald's.
McDonalds has good fries and the McFlurry. Bk has zero redemption.
Back when i used to have fast food, I liked BK over McD because i preferred their fries and i liked their jalapeño poppers.
Here he is boys, the psychopath who prefers BK fries
McD fries are too soft and when they get cold they are absolute garbage. They almost seem soggy, without getting wet. BK have a crunch to them. At least this is the case in the UK.
Not going to say they're good, but it is wild as fuck how much of a difference franchises can make. There are several BKs in my city, but a select few are owned by a different franchise than the majority of the others. Their food is WAY better, consistently, than the others, and it's usually a lot fresher tasting.
True that. Forgot about the Mcflurry. Probably cause the machine was down
I sent my sister a bottle of fry sauce that she's been trying to find for years (she never thought to check Amazon lol), this is what she sends me back. Told her she was supposed to use it to enhance good food, not make terrible food tolerable.
Bitch that "food's" barely been touched
And yet they invented the sticky toffee pudding. Two extremes
Every hexbear comment reads like AI trained only on the Tumblr accounts of 14 year old boys with Stalin body pillows.
Have some lemme.ee gold friend
Fucking savage 😂
Absolutely brilliant description.
Say anything remotely negative about Dictatorship 1 and Dictatorship 2, and they come scrambling out of the woodwork with a long rant full of lies, stupidity, and revisionism and a couple of those cringe ass, unnecessarily large emojis to go with it. Honestly sick of them. Individual instance filtering can’t come fast enough.
Yuuuuup.
I just clicked the rainbow pentagram to see that version of this comment thread. Wow. So glad we defederated from those assholes.
What's the deal with the rainbow pentagram next to the username?
Clicking it seemed to just take me to another lemmy instance?
It takes you to the version of the comment on the commenter's instance.
Thanks!
That's one way to defeat Russia. Have them eat garbage food.
when you see right, support that, when you see wrong, fight that. simple.
I'm already trying my best to bring about the US' demise! C'mon!
Slow news day I assume?
No news means good news. Maybe that's just me being pessimistic tho.
AFAIK, the situation with Burger King, is that unlike McDonalds, BK doesn't have much leverage over Russian franchisee's. They can try and say "close the stores, we're leaving", but the actual store owners would just say "no" and re-brand them back to "Rostik's". They don't really have any assets in Russia so there's nothing really to sell either, but they do still receive the franchise fees. So pulling out would only benefit Russia
Rostik's is actually what KFC was, and the funny thing about it is KFC has the similar franchise structure in Russia, they officially left, told all franchisees to change names back to Rostik's, but the biggest one just said "no" even to that, as KFC's contract that includes the rights to use the name expires only in 2035.
Burger King will never see a single cent from me, fucking traitors
Extend that to all companies and capitalism is over party.
Good.
I simply don't get this mentality. I'm sure you do realize, that companies such as Microsoft still operate in Russia. You think all people over there are running Linux? Aside from how unbelievably stupid your take is, guess they are traitors too. But you'll still keep using their OS and Office suite for millenia to come.
MS stopped selling licenses last year and blocked the ones operating this year (non renewal). But I get your point, only not all the big companies stayed
What exactly did they block? You can still buy any Microsoft product in Russia, your online subscriptions are still billed in rubles, you can pay them from any card Visa or Mastercard accept. As of now there are no problems at all with Microsoft products in Russia.
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-microsoft-suspends-licenses/32543751.html
Sorry, don't get your point. A company may say one thing like Burger King said they will dump Russia. The reality at least currently with both Burger King and Microsoft is another thing.
Since I'm not living in Russia I can't tell you what exactly is happening there but I can read what they told the world (with no one telling it's false)
MS stopped selling licenses last year
They're making too much money. Corporations are not beholden to nations, silly Americans.
My condolences to the Russians.
Спасибо за поддержку. Мы стараемся держаться и попытаемся пережить это неописуемое горе.
On all the shorts etc showing sanction life in Russia, not one has mentioned burger King is still there.
Can Burger King pull out of the US first? Absolutely the worst fast food chain ever. The only reason anybody goes to BK is if McDonald's is on fire.
Personally I prefer Burger King over McDonald's. Haven't been since the first BK opened in my city.
Why is that vs McDonald's?
if your older there was a day when mcdonalds was extremely bad. The whole heat lamp thing you might see in movies came out of the way mcdonalds was in the 80's. At that time BK was riding high. They mostly cooked to order (that sorta fell apart at rushes) so your burger was always fresh from the broiler conveyor. One thing about places when they are popular is the food is fresher because they go through it fast. At some point that all fell apart and they started having their patties sit in these plastic warming pans with some sort of oil to keep them moist. I have noticed that this seemed to happen mostly in city burger kings while ones in the boonies still seemed to do alright.
When's the last time you purchased something from either?
My experience now is McDonalds has slipped significantly, whereas BK is just better in most ways. McDonalds prices have even gone up quite a bit yet the food has just gotten worse.
Yes they do!
At least for vegetarian options they are way ahead of McDonalds
Can't speak for the rest of the menu though
Yeah, in Finland at least the vegan Whopper is waaaaaaaay better than what McD or other similar franchises offer.
McD has zero vegetarian options, besides some very sad salad.
Technically the apple pie is vegetarian. Fries, in the US, are not vegetarian.
Looks like they're vegetarian but not vegan, because flavouring includes milk.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
David Shear, RBI's president, said in March 2022 that Burger King's main operator in Russia had "refused" to shut the outlets following the first attacks on Ukraine.
Steven Tian, part of a team of researchers at Yale University who track what companies have done in response to the Ukraine war, argued using franchise agreements as an "excuse" was a "convenient smokescreen".
Mark Dixon, founder of the Moral Rating Agency, which campaigns against firms doing business in Russia, called for RBI to disclose what specific actions it had taken in its attempts to leave.
David Bond, partner at law firm Fieldfisher, said RBI's 15% stake meant it could not simply "dictate terms" to its fellow shareholders to require them to close Burger King branches.
He also suggested companies that franchise out their brands would be reluctant to simply walk away from deals as it could lead to "dire consequences", including being sued for breach of contract, as well as reputational damage.
But he said consequences aside, there was nothing stopping RBI from terminating the franchise arrangement if it was adamant it wanted to do so, though added it might not result in the Burger King brand ceasing to exist in Russia.
The original article contains 671 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 70%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Ukraine: Have it Russia's way.
I’ve already boycotted Burger King just for how aggressively bad their advertising song is.
I boycott burger king because it's disgusting
If BK food in the US is any indication of the quality in Russia, let them stay open. Worst of the worst as far as fast food goes. It's economic warfare with none of the war crimes! /s
Every time someone complains about hexbear they make their emojis 1 pixel bigger
Their burgers are trash compared to what they used to be - so fine - feed the Russians trash. About not keeping their word to leave Russia... does anyone here believe anything corporate has to say?
and even the taste remained the same - shit with sauce
let them eat that poison idgaf
I know the answer to my question, don't bother. But let's all try to come back to the really basic common sense. Burger king topic in a war news channel? For real?
Yo those chips look fresh
Who the fuck cares who is still open in Russia. Theres plenty of companiess still open in Israel where's the outrage over that?
You know you can care about multiple things at once, right?
OK?
So you say I should ignore all the injustice in the world just because I cannot care about all of them?
That's just stupid
why can't you care about all of them. Also how is burger king selling burgers injustice?
Ah, classic case of whataboutism. Go troll somewhere else.
Uhh you're on my server dummy