Why 86,000 Consumers Called Burger King’s President
Most brands ask for feedback through a survey at the bottom of a receipt. Burger King gave consumers its president’s phone number. In February, Tom Curtis, president of Burger King U.S. and Canada, invited customers to call or text him directly. By July, more than 86,000 responses had come in. People called about the fries, the Original Chicken Sandwich, inconsistent service, and experiences at individual restaurants. Others just wanted to share a Burger King memory.
Curtis personally returned as many calls as he could. His leadership team handled the rest, routing specific problems to the people responsible and organizing the feedback through a mix of AI, spreadsheets, and human analysis. Entrepreneur’s recent profile of Curtis describes a surprisingly sophisticated research operation behind what could easily have been dismissed as a social media stunt.
As a consumer behavior researcher, I spend a lot of time thinking about the gap between what people do and what they mean. A dashboard can show that someone stopped visiting a restaurant; it cannot always tell you about the cold fries, the unfriendly interaction, or the disappointing meal that quietly ended a relationship with a brand. It also cannot fully capture the nostalgia in someone’s voice when they describe going to Burger King with their parents as a child.
Those details are messy. People ramble, contradict themselves, and bring years of memories into what seems like a simple conversation about a hamburger. That is often where the richest insight lives.
In the academic article “The Impact of Perceived Listening Behavior in Voice-to-Voice Service Encounters,” researchers Ko de Ruyter and Martin Wetzels identify three dimensions of listening: attentiveness, perceptiveness, and responsiveness. Their study found that attentiveness helped drive satisfaction, while perceptiveness was closely associated with trust.
Consumers want to know someone heard them; they also want evidence that the company understood what those words meant. Burger King appears to be using these conversations diagnostically. Callers have helped the company identify inconsistent hospitality across locations, demand for better fries, and affection for products that might otherwise be overlooked. Specific complaints can also be traced back to individual restaurants, giving leadership a view of the customer experience that becomes difficult to see from headquarters.
The calls have revealed something else: many consumers still feel emotionally connected to Burger King. Curtis has spoken about the “latent love and nostalgia” surrounding the brand. The phone response supports that observation. Consumers rarely spend time helping repair a brand they feel nothing toward. Calling its president to defend a sandwich, recognize an employee, or describe a disappointing visit requires some level of investment in what the brand becomes.
That willingness to participate has value in itself. In the Journal of Consumer Research article “Bringing Us Together or Driving Us Apart: The Effect of Soliciting Consumer Input on Consumers’ Propensity to Transact with an Organization,” Wendy Liu and David Gal found that asking consumers for advice can create a greater sense of intimacy with an organization and increase subsequent engagement.
Burger King’s “Have It Your Way” positioning gives the strategy a natural fit. Consumer participation has been part of the brand’s language for decades. The phone line turns that familiar promise into action. Social media made the behavior visible far beyond the people who called. Curtis has appeared in casual videos, spoken openly about the company’s problems, and even went viral after taking an enormous bite of a Whopper. His willingness to look slightly unpolished works because it reinforces the role he has taken on at Burger King: a leader willing to be publicly accountable for what happens in his restaurants.
His background also lends credibility to that role. Curtis spent 35 years at Domino’s, first as a franchisee and later in senior operational leadership. He witnessed the company’s well-known turnaround and understands that a restaurant brand cannot advertise its way out of an experience problem. Listening also creates expectations. Once a company invites consumers to participate so publicly, it has to show them where their input went.
In July, Burger King introduced Your Way Champions and a Whopper Guarantee after customers asked for greater consistency, accuracy, and hospitality. The Your Way Champion gives guests an identifiable person inside the restaurant who can resolve a problem, while the guarantee promises to remake an unsatisfactory Whopper and provide another one free.
These initiatives are part of a much larger turnaround. Burger King has spent several years investing in restaurant remodels, operations, marketing and improvements to the Whopper. Its U.S. comparable sales rose 8.5% during the second quarter of 2026, and the chain has regained significant competitive ground. The phone campaign cannot take credit for those results, but it gives the turnaround a recognizable human voice. The Wall Street Journal recently documented the broader operational work behind that momentum.
One important research limitation remains. The 86,000 people who called are a self-selected group; their opinions cannot be treated as representative of every Burger King customer. But their comments can still be enormously useful. Qualitative research helps surface language, experiences, and tensions that can later be tested across broader samples. Burger King can combine what it hears through these conversations with surveys, transaction data, social listening, and restaurant-level performance. Each method answers a different kind of question.
Curtis offers a compelling model for executive visibility. His presence on social media makes leadership accessible, gives accountability a face and shows consumers that their experiences can travel beyond a customer-service inbox.
More than 86,000 people cared enough about Burger King to pick up the phone. Now I want to see how clearly their voices show up in what the brand does next.
Dania Khalife
