In 1957, James McLamore and David Edgerton Jr. were struggling. For three years they’d been partners in a franchise in Florida for a fast food company called Insta-Burger King. But that year they bought the company, invented a new type of broiler for their burgers, dropped the “Insta” from the name, and introduced a burger that would change the game: the Whopper. They’d hit on the idea for the new, larger burger after visiting a Whatta Burger in Gainesville (a different restaurant from Whataburger) that was outselling them. The Whopper featured a quarter-pound beef patty with lots of fixings.
The idea of a bigger burger was a fairly new idea — McDonald’s wouldn’t release its Quarter Pounder nationally for another 16 years — but it came with a cost. The price tag on the Whopper was, for the time, a whopping 37 cents (the equivalent today of $4.18), while McDonald’s was selling its burgers for a mere 15 cents. If you think fast food is expensive now because of inflation, imagine the sticker shock faced by consumers in the 1950s used to getting burgers at less than half the price.
A bold move that really paid off
James McLamore and David Edgerton Jr. took a risk pricing the Whopper at 37 cents, but the gamble paid off and the Whopper ended up saving Burger King. Even with the higher price, the new burger became an instant hit. Both men would later lay claim to naming the Whopper, but there doesn’t seem to be a dispute that McLamore came up with the idea of giving the burger its due by installing signs at Burger King locations proclaiming “Home of the Whopper.”
By 1959, Burger King began expanding quickly and was now selling the Whopper for 40 cents. McLamore and Edgerton sold the company to Pillsbury in 1967. While some Burger King menu items didn’t last — like the incredibly short-lived Whopperito, which was just a burrito with a fancy name — the Whopper is still king. It remains the chain’s signature sandwich. Burger King sells more than 2 billion of the burgers each year, per EnterpriseAppsToday. McLamore and Edgerton made a risky move when they priced the Whopper so much higher than the competition’s burgers, but it paid off, and continues to do so almost 70 years later.
