Consumers Push Burger King to Bring Back Old Recipe

13 Aug 2014 --- Burger King Worldwide has announced it will resurrect the recipe for Chicken Fries, which were originally launched in 2005, following “overwhelming” consumer demands for the product to return to the restaurants’ menus. The demands, which were made via Twitter, Change.org petitions, Tumblr and Facebook pages and phone calls from fans, represent the latest in a string of consumer moves to make their voices heard in the food and drink industry.

Since Chicken Fries were taken off the Burger King menu in 2012, the ongoing guest outcries reached a point where they could no longer be ignored, the company said. Chicken Fries are made with premium white meat chicken coated in a light crispy breading seasoned with savory spices and herbs. Shaped like fries, Chicken Fries are perfect to dip in any of the BK dipping sauces including BBQ, Honey Mustard, Ranch, Zesty, Buffalo and Sweet & Sour.

“Our fans have spoken, and we had to listen,” said Eric Hirschhorn, Chief Marketing Officer North America, Burger King Corporation. “On peak days we’ve seen one tweet every forty seconds about Chicken Fries, many of them directly petitioning, begging, for us to bring them back. When you have guests who are this passionate about a product, you have to give them what they want,” he said. “We want to do right by our guests by bringing them back for a limited time.”

This activity follows other online petitions from consumers this year, which tended to call for the removal or label clarification of food ingredients and products, rather than reinstating a product such as Burger King’s Chicken Fries.

An online petition was directed at Coca-Cola earlier this year, which led to the beverage giant removing an ingredient (Brominated Vegetable Oil) from some of its drinks. 

The decision by producers to remove BVO was partially triggered by a Change.org online campaign, started by US teenager Sarah Kavanagh. In her campaign, which requested that BVO is removed from drinks, she stated: “I found out that this ‘BVO’ is a controversial flame retardant chemical that is in some Gatorade drinks! Who wants to drink that? Not me!”

Kavanagh’s petition reached more than 200,000 signatures, prompting Pepsi to remove BVO from its Gatorade product. This led to a new campaign by Kavanagh against Powerade (by Coca-Cola), accompanied by the statement: “I was excited to hear that Gatorade removed BVO after my Change.org petition, and I think its main competitor Powerade should do the same thing. Why would anyone concerned about sports and health want to drink a controversial chemical that’s not safe enough to use in Europe or Japan?”

Also this year, a consumer petition urging Tesco to stop using blanket ‘may contain nuts’ labels has reached more than 13,500 signatures in two weeks. The petition was started in response to the retailer’s decision to dramatically alter its labelling policy, adding the ‘may contain nuts’ label to many previously safe foods.

And at the start of this year one blogger, Vani Hari, who runs the site FoodBabe.com, began a petition against Subway to remove from its bread the chemical azodicabonamide – which is also found in non-food products such as shoe rubber.

The activity resulted in a widespread uproar of 75,000 signatures on the petition, which then led to an announcement from the sandwich chain that the ingredient would be removed from the four bread types that were found to contain the chemical.

While the petition also targets other chains that use the chemical, including McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s, the chemical is still approved for use in the US as a dough conditioner and flour bleaching agent, up to a certain limit, although Europe and Australia have banned it as a food additive. 

And not only did Hari’s petition provoke Subway into changing its bread recipe, it also led to the non-profit Center for Science in the Public Interest lobbying for the USDA to consider barring the chemical altogether.