Burger King's 'flame-grilled' claim leaves bad taste in rival's mouth

One of SA’s big fast-food chains has flame-grilled a rival by forcing it to withdraw a TV ad.

Steers, whose own advertising insists that flame-grilled meat “just tastes better”, was outraged when a Burger King ad showed burgers cooking on a grill above open flames.

“It cooks its patties using a gas broiler,” Steers owner McCann Worldgroup SA told the advertising watchdog, and this was a “far cry” from the open-flame gas burners in its own restaurants.

Burger King was fired up by the criticism and insisted its broiler, consisting of a conveyor that transported patties over gas burners, was just as much a flame-griller as the Steers equipment.

But the Advertising Regulatory Board said its “lengthy research” into Burger King’s broiler had left it cold.

“While there appears to be some contact with a flame during the course of the gas broiling process, the impression and expectation created by the commercial is not that the patties come into a contact with a flame,” it said in its ruling last week.

“The visual in the commercial cannot, it appears, have been shot in [Burger King’s] actual cooking process.”

The board advised members not to accept Burger King’s ad, but it dismissed the rest of Steers’ complaint, which alleged that the ad wrongly showed fresh ingredients going into its rival’s burgers.

Steers alleged that while the ad showed onions and tomatoes being sliced, and lettuce, cheese and gherkins being prepared in the store, this was inaccurate.

McCann told the watchdog: “Steers’ understanding is that [Burger King] does not use ingredients that are prepared fresh in-store, but rather uses lettuce, onions and tomatoes that are pre-prepared and then delivered to stores.

“Chips and buns, they believe, are delivered frozen to the store.”

Burger King said tomatoes and onions were chopped and prepared in-store every day, but the watchdog said in the absence of any evidence to support each chain’s claims, it could not rule on the basis of “bare allegations”.