Dive Brief:
- Burger King and its operators are hiring as many as 60,000 workers across the brand’s 6,500 U.S. units in a push to staff up restaurants, the chain announced Thursday.
- The hiring push spans positions from hourly labor to salaried managers, per the press release.
- The hiring push follows years of investment in the chain’s operations, physical stores and marketing meant to revive its fortunes, and updates to core menu items like the Whopper.
Dive Insight:
A major hiring campaign signals that Burger King is likely confident in the continued health of its core consumers, despite the macroeconomic headwinds that have hit restaurant consumers, including inflation and looming fuel price hikes related to the war with Iran.
Burger King said the hiring spree was made necessary by the success of the Reclaim the Flame program, which has helped the chain post comparable sales growth in three out of the last four quarters.
Restaurant remodels, new advertising programs and investments in operations are bringing more customers back to restaurants, leading to immediate labor needs, the brand said in a press release.
While an increase in traffic is necessitating short-term hiring, Burger King may also look to use the hiring push to set itself up for longer term growth, especially if the brand focuses on labor retention in addition to hiring.
“We've done the important work of strengthening our operations, modernizing our restaurants, and listening to our Guests,” Tom Curtis, the brand’s president for the U.S. and Canada, said in a statement. “We need great people to help us keep that momentum going.”
A national hiring campaign for a franchised QSR may be more difficult to pull off than similar initiatives in company-operated systems, because franchisees, technically, are the direct employers of hourly workers. Getting franchisee buy-in is necessary for the success of any major labor initiative.
Burger King said the push to hire workers represents a “collective investment,” by its operators. The brand currently operates a much larger proportion of its restaurants than it did before acquiring Carrols Restaurant Group in 2024. Per Restaurant Business International’s latest 10-K filing, there are 1,005 former Carrols Burger Kings, or about 15% of its U.S. store system, counted among the company’s holdings. However, RBI is trying to refranchise these units and get to a level where its U.S. Burger King operations are 99% franchised.
Restaurant chains with high seasonal variability often undertake substantial hiring campaigns. Chipotle has several times announced hiring initiatives for tens of thousands of workers. But the scale of Burger King’s hiring spree is significant. Where Chipotle sought 15,000 workers in 2023 and 20,000 in 2025 for its burrito seasons, Burger King is looking for several times that number.
To give a greater sense of scale, the entire foodservice and accommodations sector hired 749,000 workers in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Burger King’s labor demands are equivalent to about 8% of the total hiring for the entire industry in a single month, though it’s likely Burger King’s hiring will be spread over a much longer period.
