Burger King goes bun-less, adds high-protein salads
From wire reports
NEW YORK — Burger King is joining the low-carbohydrate parade by offering bunless Whopper hamburgers and, soon, salads featuring steak, chicken and shrimp.
The bunless sandwiches, which will be available nationwide beginning Tuesday, will come in plastic salad bowls, with knife and fork.

Dieters also will be able to order Whopper meals that substitute salads for French fries and bottled water for soft drinks.

Burger King, the nation's No. 2 hamburger chain behind McDonald's (MCD), suggests that its restaurants charge the same for burgers with or without the bun. Because most of its stores are franchised, the company cannot mandate prices in them.

While bunless burgers will be available in all 8,000 U.S. restaurants immediately, the new salad line will debut in phases. Those featuring chicken and shrimp will roll out in February and March, but steak versions won't appear systemwide until May.

"It took us a little longer to get the quality we wanted," Russ Klein, Burger King's chief global marketing officer, said of the sirloin steak strips option.

Burger King's introduction of low-carb fare follows that of some competitors. CKE Restaurants (CKR) Hardee's and Carl's Jr. chains feature burgers wrapped in lettuce.

McDonald's restaurants in New York City have posters and brochures advising customers how they can lower their carbohydrate intake by modifying what they order. Wendy's International (WEN) has similar nutritional information posted on the Web.

Burger King also is debuting a Web site, www.haveityourway.com, that shows how many carbohydrates, calories and fat each meal component contains.

One Midwestern Burger King franchisee who asked not to be identified said customers had been coming into his restaurants for years ordering Whoppers without the buns, "so all we're doing is formalizing a process."

Burger King is owned by a group of investor firms, including Texas Pacific Group, Bain Capital and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners.

Privately held Burger King is trying to improve sales and reverse a 22% decline in customer traffic over the previous six years.

The menu changes reflects similar measures taken by McDonald's, which credits its meal-size salads with turning around sales at its struggling U.S. restaurants.

In the wake of the popular protein diet wave, Burger King continues efforts to capitalize on its fire-grilled image, setting itself apart from restaurants that fry meat.

By spring, Burger King will add a one-third pound Angus beefburger to its menu, in addition to the steak strip, shrimp and chicken strip salad offerings.

"We may not have been the first, but we feel like we're now clearly offering the preferred burger in the industry," both for meat lovers and low-carb dieters, said Russ Klein, the company's chief global marketing strategist.

Burger King added three low-fat chicken baguette choices to its menu in September, each containing less than five grams of fat.

Like McDonald's and Yum Brands (YUM), which operates the KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell chains, Burger King faces growing competition from fast-casual chains that are responding to consumers' desire for fresher, healthier foods.

Burger King had $11.3 billion in systemwide sales in fiscal 2002.