Burger King to Market Bunless Whoppers

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Burger King Corp. 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, 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 Inc.'s Hardee's and Carl's Jr. chains feature burgers wrapped in lettuce.

McDonald's Corp. 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 Inc. 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 that 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.



01/13/04 10:18 EST

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press.