Burger King Restaurants Across the US Make Major Change to Favorite Menu Item

Your next order of Burger King chicken nuggets may look a little different. Carrols Restaurant Group, which is Burger King's largest franchisee in the United States, has reduced the number of chicken nuggets in meals from 10 pieces to eight. The news broke during an earnings call on Thursday, Feb. 24, during which Daniel Accordino, chief executive of Carrols, told investors that the move was in response to inflation.

Speaking on the call, Accordino noted that "the Burger King brand has about a dozen menu and promotional initiatives, some of which have already been implemented and some that will be implemented over the course of this year," according to FactSet transcript viewed by MarketWatch. Among those initiatives, Accordino confirmed, "reducing the number of nuggets [in] meals from 10 pieces to 8." Accordino cited inflation and labor constraints for the reduction.

"Domestic food, paper producers and distributors supplying most of our commodities are dealing with labor constraints, along with higher fuel costs and are passing the increases on to us. As a result, commodity inflation overall was approximately 16% this past quarter compared to the prior year period," he said. "While we cannot predict when these inflationary cost pressures will end, we can say that we believe that in the back half of 2022, the year-over-year percentage increases for labor and commodity costs will moderate. We also intend to continue to move pricing to partially offset inflation to the extent possible without impacting traffic."

That's not the only change hitting the Burger King menu. It was also revealed during the earnings call that BK has pulled the Whopper from the discount menu and entirely dropped the famed burger from its Two for $6 and Two for $5 promotions. This means fans of the Whopper will have to shell out more cash the next time they place their order. Accordino told investors that the ongoing menu and promotional initiatives include "lifting price caps on value menu items... The Whopper, the brand's most popular product by a wide margin, has also been removed as a core discount item and is no longer available in the two-for-six or two-for-five promotions."

The decrease in chicken nuggets per meal and the removal of the Whopper from the discount menu will not affect all Burger King restaurants. The menu revamps will only impact those restaurants operated by Carrols. According to CNN, Carrols Restaurant Group operates 14% of Burger Kings' roughly 7,000 U.S. locations.