Food
There’s a real whopper here, and not the kind you can eat.
June 19, 2026 10:00 AM
Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Evan Agostini/Getty Images for Jimmy Kimmel, Chris Kleponis/Pool/Getty Images, and Getty Images Plus.
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Love, according to the 1970 novel and film Love Story , means never having to say you’re sorry. Fast food, though? Fast food apologizes all the time. The industry loves a mea culpa, returning to the apologetic well often enough to put it on a menu. Consider Domino’s “ Sorry for Sucking” campaign , KFC’s U.K. chicken crisis , or the occasional innovation that makes you wonder what sort of screwup spurred the change, like McDonald’s early-aughts proclamation that its McNuggets were now made with white meat . The latest instance of corporate self-flagellation comes from Burger King, which spent the spring rocketing past the competition (and sister brands) after launching its own apology tour that began with firing the King mascot and revamping its Whopper to feature fancier packaging and fresher toppings.
This is a novel quirk of the industry, one that is all the more notable in an era when vice signaling and platform decay (more widely known as “enshittification”) are increasingly the rules of the game. Our biggest businesses, as the A.I. boom has shown, are completely removed from providing anything people need or want . Happy shareholders and happy customers are often diametrically opposed parties. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, for example, has done a lousy job of running a media conglomerate, if you define the gig as “making things people want to watch.” But if the job is pleasing shareholders (which it is), Zaslav is killing it .
Fast food, however, has the unfortunate burden of still needing to make a popular product, one that can be created with brutal efficiency and consistency. It’s the whole point of the model, a business school aphorism: You get a Whopper or Big Mac in Duluth, Minnesota, and that burger needs to taste the same as it does in Los Angeles, in New York City, in Tokyo. Of course, profit margins must also be maintained, so, like a toddler testing their limits, corners get cut, quality dips, and customers go somewhere more consistent. Hence the fast-food apology cycle, an unofficial industry standard.
This was the predicament Burger King found itself in as American fast-food chains sorted out their place in a post-COVID landscape that upended consumers’ lives and buying power. Burger King’s U.S. and Canada president, Tom Curtis, described the scenario as “dire” when he joined the company in 2021, telling the press that the very next year the company would launch a 20-year plan called “Reclaim the Flame,” the first fruits of which are the revamped Whopper and dining rooms in select locations. (And, yes, firing the King—his oversized plastic grin and far-too-casual robes were always a little creepy.)
The effort has not gone unnoticed, thanks to some social media–friendly competition, with Curtis taking a thinly veiled shot at McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski after Kempczinski seemed a little timid in how he bit into his company’s then-newest offering, the Big Arch burger. Although Curtis performed the same task as Kempczinski—taking one bite out of a burger on camera—he did so with relish, getting a little messy, a canny move that even the Atlantic felt compelled to weigh in on (with displeasure).
After the chicken sandwich wars of 2019–21, American fast-food chains are back to waging war on burgers, and it couldn’t be happening at a more precarious moment. Kempczinski, along with the CEOs of Kraft Heinz and Whirlpool, has recently been quoted about the escalating cost-of-living crisis for American consumers as a disastrous war on Iran applies pressure on spending at home. “They’re literally running out of money at the end of the month,” said Kraft Heinz CEO Steve Cahillane .
Even before one takes into account the extraordinary economic stress brought on by war’s cascading effects on the global economy, cost was already a grave problem for fast-food chains. Inflation, tariffs that sent beef prices skyrocketing , and a lack of economic mobility have left low-income Americans nearly priced out of fast food . In an effort to stop the bleeding, value options like Wendy’s Biggie Deals have made a comeback in the interest of providing options that cost less than $10.
Fast food occupies a nebulous position somewhere between vice and necessity, an indulgence that’s positioned as accessible to all but the most unfortunate. It’s not healthy, but it should be enjoyable, at least while you’re eating it. The world has shifted around the industry, and now its vulnerability to—and dependence on—consumer feedback makes it one of the last bulwarks against our corporate immiseration.
That doesn’t mean the industry doesn’t distribute its own…
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