Burger King’s President Answers the Phone | Fast Five Shorts

Burger King president Tom Curtis is taking calls and texts from customers. According to the nation's restaurant news, starting February 17th, Burger King president Tom Curtis was personally fielding calls and texts from customers at his work phone number, which we are giving on this podcast, 305-874-0520, for at least four hours every day, including nights and weekends. Curtis, who leads Burger King U.S. and Canada, said the initiative will run intensively for two weeks with calls recorded for a marketing campaign and then continue on a lighter schedule indefinitely with other leadership team members rotating in. BK has outperformed the broader fast food sector for nine of the past 12 quarters, with U.S. same-store sales rising 2.6% in Q4. This initiative builds on the successful Whopper by You platform, which has won over women and Gen Z customers since its July 2025 launch. Curtis said the goal is to find priority areas across the restaurant experience, technology, image, accuracy, and marketing, and that feedback will directly inform franchisee remodel decisions and value platform adjustments. Chris this is also the A put you on the spot question Anna wants to know when a senior executive personally fields customer complaints how do you ensure that you both role modeling customer centricity while not overreacting to loud squeaky wheel one Oh, wow. That's a really thoughtful question. Wow. Yeah. I mean, having done this firsthand, like I can remember as a district manager at Target, I would oftentimes have to field customer complaints that made their way up to me. And, you know, sometimes you're just like, you're just listening, you know, you're just listening and you can't act on everything. And that's because you'll drive your teams absolutely crazy if you do that. So I think, you know, my advice to Mr. Curtis would be listen, be empathetic, and then, you know, take notes and process everything that you took away from each of these phone calls and have a system for recording it and recapping it and finding the themes that you're doing. that matter most and then you know have an outlet to discuss them with your team too of like here's what i heard do you feel like this is in line with other things you all are hearing and then it sounds like he's going to broaden this out throughout the organization too for for further um to in an attempt to put people in further connection with the customers directly too so i think you know you got to design the process around it but for both him and then for the other burger king team members that end up doing this as well so i mean i just i i think it's a brilliant brilliant move here too i mean you get it puts you close to the customer you get the pr you also align your whole organization around the customer being important like you can imagine you you can imagine some of the execs out there fielding phone calls it's it's enough just to try to get them to work in stores. You know, that's hard enough, but to get them fielding phone calls, like that's a pretty bold move. And so, you know, I've always said on this show that I'm a big advocate of working in the store of working in the call centers. I think those should be mandatory activities. So kudos to Mr. Curtis for eating what he's cooks. And that's my big takeaway on this. Yeah. I mean, I, I agree. I love the ideas, the idea of executives spending more time in front of the customers or on the phone with them. I will always be a proponent of that. But this is 100% a marketing play and a really smart marketing play. That's what this is more than anything else. Do I think this is going to be a thing ongoing beyond two weeks from now? Maybe to get a soundbite from a customer and then turn that into a campaign to say Joe you know wanted more Whopper sauce on the side So now we have a new product because they show that they listening to their customers So wonderful brilliant marketing strategy Do I think this is really the key to executives hearing and responding to what the actual Burger King customer thinks for an ongoing basis? No, I don't. I think they're going to get much more value from actually being in the stores, having executives work a shift in the store, maybe listening to a few phone calls here and there. But this is 100% a really smart. And when Adweek gives awards at the end of the year, this is going to be a campaign that absolutely wins. I think customers are going to love it and they'll get more traffic to Burger King because of it. But is this the, we're listening to our customers ploy and we're going to make our executives listen to them? No, no, no. So you think a year from now, he's not doing this anymore. That's your take. Two weeks from now. He's only doing this for two weeks and then he's going to do it on a random basis like no this is a hundred percent you're in a two-week marketing you know experience and then we're then we're gonna figure this out like i said he could be in the stores that that would be great if that comes to this i just i don't see that happening well if that happens then i hate it because then you're just then you're just pissing me off as an employee i'm like if you're gonna do this stick by it make it make it part of the culture that's that's my take, but wow. All right. Hot take coming in from Ann at the end of the show.