The Birthplace of Burger King - Jacksonville Florida

Back in 1953, Keith Kramer and his wife’s uncle Matthew Burns were searching for a business concept,  when they purchased the rights to two pieces of equipment called “Insta” machines.

They opened their first restaurant in Jacksonville, Florida called Insta Burger King,  around the cooking device known as the Insta Broiler, which was very effective at cooking burgers.

It proved so successful that as they grew through franchising they required all of their franchises to carry the device.

While the Jacksonville chain kept  expanding,  two friends in South Florida, Jim Mc Lamore and David Edgerton, both graduates of the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration were looking for a new business opportunity.

They had visited the Original Hamburger Stand belonging to Dick and Mac McDonald in San Bernardino, California and sensed the potential in their innovative assembly line based production system.

They acquired a license to operate an Insta Burger King franchise in Miami in 1954.

By 1959 they had several locations in the Miami-Dade area and they discovered the insta broiler units’ heating elements were prone to degradation from the dripping of the beef patties.

They eventually created a mechanized gas grill they named a “flame broiler” that moved the patties over the flame vertically on a chain link conveyor, which left grill marks on the patties similar to those on a charcoal grill.

Although the original Insta Burger King had expanded its operations to 40 locations throughout Florida, the group ran into financial problems.

McLamore and Edgerton purchased the national rights to the chain in 1959 and renamed the company Burger King.

The Whopper debuted in 1957 when co-founder James McLamore noticed that a rival burger joint in Gainesville, Florida was having success with an extra large burger.

He chose the name “Whopper” to automatically conjure thoughts of something big.

Over eight years the duo ran the company as an independent entity out of Miami to over 250 locations until they sold it in 1967 for $18 million to the Pillsbury company.

Today Burger King is one of the world’s most recognized and best loved franchises around the world.

Their marketing slogan from 1974 “Have it your way” still exists in their 18,700 locations in more than 100 countries and US Territories,  with revenue’s approaching 2 billion dollars a year.