Burger King has recently closed some stores, but it is not closing “for good,” as social media users claimed.
“Fast food giant says it’s closing its doors for good,” a May 29 Facebook post with a Burger King logo said.
But neither Burger King, nor its parent company Restaurant Brands International, has made such an announcement. We also searched Google and the Nexis news database and couldn’t find any credible reports of the company saying it will shutter all locations.
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Ashley McGowan, a Burger King spokesperson, told PolitiFact that the Burger King brand has not announced that it is shutting down all its stores.
Restaurant Brands International CEO Josh Kobza said on an earnings call last year that the chain typically closes “a couple hundred” stores each year, and would likely close 300 to 400 U.S. stores in 2023.
Restaurant Business magazine reported that Burger King closed nearly 300 locations in the fourth quarter of 2023. As of March, the company has more than 6,000 restaurants in the U.S., according to HasData, which scrapes data about Burger King locations from Google Maps.
Burger King made plans to update its U.S. stores this year. Restaurant Brands International announced in May that it had acquired more than 1,000 Burger King restaurants from Carrols Restaurant Group.
The home of the Whopper said it plans to invest $1.05 billion to modernize stores, including 600 of the stores acquired from Carrols. Restaurant Brands International said Burger King plans to increase the number of U.S. franchisees by about 100 to 200 over the next five years.
We rate the claim that Burger King is “closing its doors for good” False.