Burger King Is Remodeling 400 Restaurants in 2025, With More To Come
Burger King is giving some of its stores a facelift.
Burger King has been one of the most popular fast-food restaurants in the country. McDonald’s rival, however, is aware that many of its stores are in dire need of repair, and as such, it has decided to remodel over 400 locations in 2025. Is a location near you on the list?
Burger King Restaurant Remodel Revealed in Earnings Call
According to USA Today, Burger King plans to renovate roughly 400 locations this year.
According to a transcript from S&P Global Market Intelligence, Joshua Kobza, CEO of Burger King’s parent company, Restaurant Brands International (RBI), stated during a May 8 earnings call that the fast-food chain is in the middle of a multi-year plan to modernize its restaurants and has seen sales at remodeled locations increase in the mid-teens.
“We still have a lot of remodels to get done,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of restaurants that aren’t at the modern image.”
While Kobza didn’t disclose the locations of the 400 stores that would undergo an overhaul, by 2028, the restaurant is anticipated to have finished over 2,000 remodels. By that time, over 85% of restaurants in the United States will have adopted the new “Sizzle” modern image, which emphasizes drive-thru and digital ordering, thus catering to the modern consumer.
This program is a component of Burger King’s “Reclaim the Flame” strategy, which was unveiled in September 2022 and aims to improve and update its restaurants across the United States. As part of its strategy to reinvigorate Burger King, RBI, based in Miami, intends to invest up to $700 million through 2028.
“Burger King U.S. continued to outperform the broader burger QSR (quick service restaurant) category, reflecting the ongoing progress of our ‘Reclaim the Flame’ plan in capturing share,” Kobza said.
RBI also owns Tim Hortons, Popeyes, and Firehouse Subs.
A New 40,000-Square-Foot Innovation Center
Facelifts at different stores aren’t the only thing the fast-food giant is undertaking in terms of construction.
Last month, the chain unveiled its newest innovation: a 40,000-square-foot Royal Innovation Center in Miami, near its headquarters.
First conceived in the summer of 2022, the testing center’s construction started in 2023. Before officials could use the space, it took over a year to finish. The site enables the fast-food juggernaut to improve restaurant design and image, develop AI and technology, and streamline front-of-house and back-of-house processes.
At the center of the building, a full-scale replica of Burger King’s most recent restaurant design, the Sizzle prototype, sits. This area enables personnel to conduct simulated operations before implementing different layout configurations throughout the brand’s sites.
“We started with an empty warehouse and we just went broadly across the organization to our development team and our technology groups and our operations innovation team and we tried to figure out, OK, how can we transform this empty warehouse to a place where we can think about equipment innovation, where we can think about process and technology innovation, but also we needed a space that was big enough to allow us to have a full-sized Sizzle restaurant so that we can test what would a full drive-thru operation look like and really get a feel for that space in three dimensions,” said VP of Operations Marc Aust to QSR.
He continued: “That process took some months, and then we just went to work and what we ended up with is a really engaging space again that’s inviting for our franchise advisory boards. We’re just bringing everyone together to really think about what the future of that guest experience looks like.”
