Hungry Jack's - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Hungry Jack's Pty Ltd, often colloquially abbreviated to HJ's, Hungry's or Hungie's, is the exclusive Australian master fast food

Fast food

Fast food is the term given to food that can be prepared and served very quickly. While any meal with low preparation time can be considered to be fast food, typically the term refers to food sold in a restaurant or store with preheated or precooked ingredients, and served to the customer in a...

franchisee of Burger King

Burger King

Burger King, often abbreviated as BK, is a global chain of hamburger fast food restaurants headquartered in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. The company began in 1953 as Insta-Burger King, a Jacksonville, Florida-based restaurant chain...

Corporation. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Competitive Foods Australia

Competitive Foods Australia

Competitive Foods Australia Pty Ltd is the largest franchiser of restaurants in Australia. It is owned and operated by Jack Cowin. Its units include Hungry Jack's, KFC and Domino's Pizza.- Holdings :...

, a privately held company owned by Jack Cowin

Jack Cowin

Jack Cowin is an Australian businessman who owns Hungry Jack's, the Burger King franchise in Australia and is the Executive Chairman of Competitive Foods Australia, one of the country's largest privately held businesses...

. Hungry Jack's currently owns and operates or sub-licenses all of the Burger King/Hungry Jack's restaurants in Australia. As the master franchise for the continent, the company is responsible for licensing new operators, opening its own stores and performing standards oversight of franchised locations in that country. With over 300 locations across Australia, HJ's is the second largest franchise of Burger King in the world, second only to Carrols Corporation

Carrols Corporation

Carrols Restaurant Group is a fast-food restaurant operator. It is the largest Burger King franchisee in the world; Carrols owns and operates about 330 Burger King locations across 12 U.S. states....

History of "Burger King" in Australia

When Burger King moved to expand its operations into Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, it found that its business name was already trademarked by a takeaway food shop in Adelaide

Adelaide

Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...

. As a result, Burger King provided the Australian franchisee, Jack Cowin

Jack Cowin

, with a list of possible alternative names derived from pre-existing trademarks already registered by Burger King and its then corporate parent Pillsbury that could be used to name the Australian restaurants. Cowin selected the "Hungry Jack" brand name, one of Pillsbury's US pancake mixture products, and slightly changed the name to a possessive form by adding an apostrophe 's

S is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent...

' forming the new name Hungry Jack's. The first Australian franchise of Burger King Corporation was established in Innaloo, Perth

Perth, Western Australia

Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....

on 18 April 1971, under the auspices of Cowin's new company Hungry Jack's Pty, Limited. "Jack" has since been adopted as the name for the Burger King himself in the company's main franchise.

2002 to the present day

After Burger King Corporation lost the case, it decided to terminate its operations in the country and in July 2002 the company transferred its assets to its New Zealand franchise group, Trans-Pacific Foods (TPF). The terms of the sale had TPF assume oversight of the Burger King franchises in the region as the Burger King brand's master franchisee. Trans-Pacific Foods administered the chain's 81 locations until September 2003 when the new management team of Burger King Corporation reached an agreement with Hungry Jack's Pty Ltd to re-brand the existing Burger King locations to Hungry Jack's and make HJP the sole master franchisee of both brands. An additional part of the agreement required Burger King Corporation to provide administrative and advertising support as to ensure a common marketing scheme for the company and its products. Trans-Pacific Foods transferred its control of the Burger King franchises to Hungry Jack's Pty Ltd, which subsequently renamed the remaining Burger King locations as "Hungry Jack's".

Facts and figures

Many new Hungry Jack's restaurants have a 1950s theme. Music from this era may be played within the restaurant (occasionally through a '50s-style jukebox) with associated contemporary pictures and memorabilia utilized as part of the decor. In the larger sit-down style restaurants, the seats and tables are laid out in a 1950s diner

Diner

A diner, also spelled dinor in western Pennsylvania is a prefabricated restaurant building characteristic of North America, especially in the Midwest, in New York City, in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey, and in other areas of the Northeastern United States, although examples can be found throughout...

style.

Redesign

In late 2011, it was announced that Hungry Jack's will undergo a complete overhaul of it's menus, restaurants, staff uniforms and advertising. The 'Burgers are Better' slogan has been replaced with 'Hungry Jack's makes it better'. The current '70s style restaurants will be renovated, new Asian styled meals & Organic beef options have been added to the menu and a new website & mobile application have been created. The full redesign is expected to be completed by the end of the 2013 financial year.

Products

The only Burger King trademarks that are sold at Hungry Jack's are the Whopper

Whopper

The Whopper sandwich is the signature hamburger product sold by the international fast-food restaurant chain Burger King and its Australian franchise Hungry Jacks. Introduced in 1957, it has undergone several reformulations including resizing and bread changes...

and the TenderCrisp

Tendercrisp

The TenderCrisp is a chicken sandwich sold by Burger King, an international fast-food restaurant chain. It is one of their "indulgent" products....

sandwiches. All other Burger King products go by more generic naming schemes, such as "Hamburger", "Veggie Burger", or "Grilled Chicken Burger'.

Hungry Jack's breakfast menu, introduced in late 2005 in three states (Queensland

Queensland

Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...

, Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

, and Northern Territory

Northern Territory

The Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions...

) and the other states the following year in 2006, bears little resemblance to Burger King's US breakfast menu. The main breakfast sandwich is served on either an English muffin

English muffin

A muffin or English muffin is a small, round, flat type of yeast-leavened bread almost always dusted with cornmeal, which is commonly served split horizontally, toasted, and buttered. Muffins are eaten either as a snack alone or as part of a meal.- History :An old English nursery rhyme, "The...

and a wrap (breakfast burrito) instead of a croissant

Croissant

A croissant is a buttery flaky pastry named for its distinctive crescent shape. It is also sometimes called a crescent, from the French word for "crescent". Croissants are made of a leavened variant of puff pastry...

; the hash browns are served as patties as opposed to Tater Tots

Tater Tots

Tater Tots, a registered trademark for a commercial form of hash browns made by Ore-Ida, are a side-dish made from deep-fried, grated taters. Tater Tots are widely recognized by their crispness, cylindrical shape and small size....

and the restaurant features pancakes.

Advertising

Hungry Jack's in Australia has trademarked the new slogan, 'Oh Yeah', which was featured in commercials that ran late 2005/early 2006. Other changes at Hungry Jack's include a new salad line and deli-style baguettes. While Burger King has updated its logo to the "blue crescent" design in all other markets, the Hungry Jack's logo is still based on the previous 1996 revised Burger King bun-halves logo, employing the simpler bun-and-filling motif.

Hungry Jack's Kid's Club mascots are unique to the Australian franchisee, as opposed to other international locations that use one the two existing BK kid's mascots, the Burger King Kids' Club or the Honbatz. HJ does have a Kid's Club program similar to the US offering, offering themed birthday parties at its restaurants along with its Kid's Club Meals. One other noticeable difference between the HJ and BK children's programs is the placement of the apostrophe in the name: HJ places it before the "s

" while BK places it after.

Hungry Jack's retains strong links with Perth, with the city's first team in the Australian Football League

Australian Football League

The Australian Football League is both the governing body and the major professional competition in the sport of Australian rules football...

, the West Coast Eagles

West Coast Eagles

The West Coast Eagles are an Australian rules football club which plays in the Australian Football League. The club is based in Perth, Western Australia. The club was founded in 1986 and played its first games in the 1987 season. Its current home ground is Subiaco Oval...