What’s next for the battle of the burger brands?
We look at the creative ways in which fast food brands are appealing to our tastebuds and standing out in a saturated market – from piggybacking off the vegan movement to embracing the allure of nostalgia
It’s been a whirlwind year in the world of burgers. Some brands’ pre-existing issues have only been exacerbated by the pandemic, with Byron closing 31 restaurants across the UK and Gourmet Burger Kitchen shuttering 26 sites, while both Burger King and McDonald’s looked to design and creativity to recapture consumers’ hearts and minds. The McDonald’s packaging overhaul by Pearlfisher took a simple approach to spotlighting its iconic menu items, while Burger King’s nostalgic rebrand made waves in the design community and beyond. And only this month another American fast food titan, Wendy’s, returned to the UK after a two decade hiatus.
In the ultra-competitive landscape of fast food, it’s unsurprising to see developments like these all the time. But to really understand some of the more recent changes, it’s worth looking back at how the UK’s food scene has developed more broadly over the last decade. Back in 2011, as well as being a writer at Creative Review, Gavin Lucas was eating his way around London’s nascent indie burger scene via his aptly named blog, Burgerac.
“There were different things happening ten years ago that were really interesting to me as a carnivore, I suppose, and someone who was interested in brands,” Lucas tells CR. “Supper clubs were a thing, street food told us you could have totally delicious food without paying restaurant prices, and social media was emerging as a brand new way of communicating. I had some mind-blowing burgers and started talking to people about them, then thought, rather than just repeating that information to people, I can start a blog.”
So successful was the indie burger scene at that time that Lucas ended up curating a burger-related art show called Burgermat, which he subsequently developed into a book with independent publisher Nobrow, and even opened his own pop-up restaurant, Burgerac’s Burgershack. Creativity was key to the success of the indie burger brands at that point. Among the major players was Byron, an indie-brand-turned-multi-million-pound-business in part thanks to the work of former NB Studio founder Ben Stott, who took an ‘anti-branding’ approach to its visual identity and worked with up-and-coming illustrators including Jean Jullien and Mr Bingo.
Then there was the mouth-watering aesthetic of Yianni Papoutsis and Scott Collins’ MEATliquour venture, which demonstrated that anyone can move up from a food truck to bricks and mortar if they have the right brand proposition. “At that point, the Burger King’s and Wendy’s of the world were probably looking to London and going, this is an exciting time, the burger is a thing right now,” says Lucas.
2013 marked a big turning point, when two major US brands, Shake Shack and Five Guys, crossed the pond within the space of a week of one other. “Both of them had very different approaches to how they did that. Five Guys simply turned up and said, ‘We’re just going to take what we do in America and we’re going to do it here’. In contrast, Shake Shack’s branding was by Pentagram, and they were totally amazing in terms of how they looked and their vibe,” says Lucas.
“I would say that 2013 or 2014 was probably peak burger,” he continues. “It also coincided with peak Instagram, it was just before Instagram really got appropriated by advertising. We were at a particularly gluttonous phase in the trend cycle, and it really worked. The more cheese, the more it looked like you might wear your burger rather than eat it, the better it looked on Instagram.”
Fast forward to 2021, and burgers might not have quite the same heart attack-inducing appeal of the early 2010s, but they remain an enduringly popular option everywhere from chain restaurants to street food stalls and bistropub menus. And there’s clearly enough of a demand for American brands to continue eyeing up the UK market, most recently Wendy’s, which has relaunched with a British-specific brand platform: All Beef. No Bull.
For the agency behind the relaunch, VMLY&R London, the challenge was to establish Wendy’s position two decades on from the last time they set foot on UK soil. “There may be a lot of options but there aren’t really a lot of options that get it absolutely spot on,” says Laurent Simon, the agency’s CCO. “We genuinely think that Wendy’s has got something different to offer, because the burgers don’t sit in drawers, they’re not frozen, the salads are freshly cut, and all the rest of it. So when you do have a product that is genuinely better, that’s your way in. In order to make it absolutely relevant to the UK scene, you have to truthfully expose the failings of the industry, because that makes your arguments even more powerful.”
One of the more interesting recent developments among big burger brands has been the wave of nostalgia that is making its mark on everything from branding to communications. Burger King’s rebrand by JKR in particular is rife with nostalgia, ditching its glossy buns logo for a nostalgic reboot of its burger symbol from the late 60s. “Burger King cannot offer an amazing beef epiphany. That’s what happens in street food markets, and that’s still brilliant, but Burger King can’t compete on that front, so nostalgia is their strongest card in the deck. Because in a way, they’re delivering the taste of yesterday today,” says Lucas.
“It’s the same with McDonald’s, they won’t have a complete rebrand because nostalgia is too important in what they deliver. The things that are exciting about the food industry when I was blogging about burgers, it was all aimed at adults, and street food is an adult thing. Whereas McDonald’s very much marketed itself to kids, and now those kids have grown up, which is why nostalgia is important.”
While Wendy’s has a lot of heritage in the US in particular, being founded by self-made businessman Dave Thomas and named after one of his daughters, the brand was conscious of not tapping into the current nostalgia trend when it came to its UK relaunch. “For us, it wasn’t necessarily about telling the story of coming back, it was telling the story of Wendy’s coming to the UK,” says Simon. “There’s a whole generation that would never have experienced what the restaurant is, or what its food is, and all the rest of it, so it didn’t feel that relevant. It was more about transferring what’s happening across the pond as opposed to what people would remember from 20 years ago.”
So what’s next for the burger brand wars? Given the huge success of vegan brands such as Impossible Foods – whose Impossible Burger is now stocked in 20,000 stores around the US – and the more mindful approach people are taking to their consumption in general, Lucas believes that the plant-based share of the market will only continue to grow in the coming years. And in addition to this, plans by the UK government to ban junk food advertising online and before 9pm on TV from 2023 will also bring changes to how brands approach the market. “The thing about the burger game is it’s not massively sustainable,” says Lucas. “When you have a business like Byron’s or McDonald’s, and you start to visualise the conveyor of cow going into that business, you sort of have to worry.”
But for Simon, fast food – and burgers in particular – will never not be a crowded market, and with a competitive landscape comes great creative thinking. “When you look at the entire category, it probably is one of the most awarded sectors you can think of. McDonald’s do some cracking work, Burger King does some cracking work, same for KFC,” he says. “So as a creative, it’s a brilliant place to be in. In order to cut through or to be effective, you have to up your game, particularly when you are a challenger brand. It’s the best kind of competition.”