Gone are the days when you could order 10 chicken nuggets at a time at Burger King. As recently confirmed by Carrols Restaurant Group (one of the biggest franchisors for the chain in the U.S.), the number of nuggets per customer will be reduced from 10 to 8 to combat inflation.
This news derives from a transcript of a recent earnings call obtained by MarketWatch. Carrols Restaurant Group has also removed the Whopper as a value option. Naturally, with the news of receiving less nuggets, some Burger King customers began voicing their disappointment and airing their grievances on Twitter over the past two weeks.
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“Burger King is shrinking the chicken nuggets meal size because of inflation but will the price remain the same?” questioned one user (who later found that the answer was yes). Another wrote, “Burger King sneakily made an unbelievably stupid change to chicken nuggets.” Someone else added, “Hey @BurgerKing, reducing chicken nuggets from 10 to 8 but still paying your CEO 20 million a year is… Inflation? What does he do that’s worth $36 per minute? Asking for everyone that spends more at your establishment.”
Regarding the matter, Carrols CEO Daniel Accordino released a statement seeming to blame inflation for the nugget amount downgrade and other BK menu changes. “As you may have recently read, the Burger King brand has about a dozen menu and promotional initiatives, some of which have already been implemented and some that will be implemented over the course of this year,” Accordino began.
“Recent actions in this regard from our franchisor[s] include lifting price caps on value menu items and reducing the number of nuggets [in] meals from 10 pieces to 8. The Whopper, the brand’s most popular product by a wide margin, has also been removed as a core discount item and is no longer available in the two-for-six or two-for-five promotions.”
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He then dove into the topic of inflation; “Domestic food, paper producers and distributors supplying most of our commodities are dealing with labor constraints, along with higher fuel costs and are passing the increases on to us. As a result, commodity inflation overall was approximately 16% this past quarter compared to the prior year period […] While we cannot predict when these inflationary cost pressures will end, we can say that we believe that in the back half of 2022, the year-over-year percentage increases for labor and commodity costs will moderate. We also intend to continue to move pricing to partially offset inflation to the extent possible without impacting traffic.”
Economics professor Isabella Weber weighed in on the topic of inflation in an NPR All Things Considered interview, saying, “What we have seen is that profits are skyrocketing, which means that companies [like Burger King] have increased prices by more than cost.” In the earnings reports, she explained, “companies have bragged about how they have managed to be ahead of the inflation curve, how they have managed to jack up prices more than their costs and as a result have delivered these record profits.”
Oof! As another customer put it, if chicken nuggets are your go-to at Burger King, expect to pay the same for less bites.
