By Jacob Bunge and Christopher Kuo
Burger King's social-media managers had spent months cooking up stunts to make their president an online sensation.
They coached Tom Curtis on talking in front of a camera. They recorded videos of him promoting the new Whopper. A few weeks ago, they even posted his phone number online -- then met over iced teas on the back porch of his home near company headquarters in Miami as he proceeded to answer 1,400 calls and messages, including one from his son, who asked how to fix the garbage disposal.
Curtis was ready to go viral. He didn't expect it to come at the expense of archrival McDonald's.
McDonald's Chief Executive Chris Kempczinski had taken what social media mocked as a paltry nibble in a video promoting the chain's new Big Arch burger, or "product," as the CEO called it. The video circulated, and, this week, views spiked into the millions.
Burger King pounced. Thanks to their work in Miami, the social-media team had the perfect video of Curtis to work with. They clipped 13 seconds of him tearing into a Whopper, sauce and a grin splayed across his face, and posted it.
"Thought we'd replay this," Burger King wrote in the caption.
To people across the internet, this was a guy who knew his way around a fast-food restaurant. Videos split-screening the executives' bites created an online sensation. Soon Wendy's, A&W and other burger chains were posting their own taste-test clips.
"The combination of doing the right thing and luck can be a magical thing," Curtis said in an interview.
Curtis, 63, has spent his entire career in restaurants. He got his start delivering Domino's pizza to help cover his tuition at Emory University in Atlanta. After graduating, some classmates went into finance, and he promised his father he'd find a serious job. But he stuck with Domino's.
"It was a little bit embarrassing when I'd go and deliver pizza back to the Emory campus," he said. "They'd be like, 'Sorry it didn't work out for you,' and I would say, 'No, I really love this.'"
"You're cleaning grease traps and taking out trash at 2:00 in the morning."
Curtis worked his way up to managing several Domino's in Atlanta, and in 1987 struck out on his own as a franchisee near New Haven, Conn. He joined the company's corporate operations in 2006 and by 2020 was leading Domino's U.S. restaurant operations.
Burger King was struggling when, in 2021, it recruited Curtis to lead its American operations.
After decades as the second-biggest U.S. burger chain by sales behind McDonald's, it had just been surpassed by Wendy's as well as chicken sandwich kingpin Chick-fil-A, according to market-research firm Technomic.
To fix the chain, its parent Restaurant Brands International installed new executives to overhaul operations, marketing and menu items. The company had often promoted from within, but was looking for new ideas.
Upon joining, Curtis toured U.S. Burger Kings. Many looked dated. Hard-to-make menu items gummed up operations. Part of his answer was streamlining and simplifying. A hand-breaded chicken sandwich was dropped, and the chain standardized processes so cheese was layered onto all the chain's burgers the same way.
"He wasn't just an executive with a fancy degree," said Alex Sloane, a former director at Carrols Restaurant Group, which franchised more than a thousand Burger King locations. "He learned the business the hard way by actually being in the stores and operating them."
Burger King is about halfway through the revamp, Curtis said, and ready to start talking about the progress. Which is partly how he came to share his cell number online.
The purest form of feedback, he said, comes from one-on-one interactions in real life. When Burger King staff travel, he encourages them to wear logo merchandise -- he wants strangers to chat them up. "Those one-on-one interactions will give you more insight than any spreadsheet or PowerPoint," he said.
Burger King decided to apply the same idea at the scale of social media, putting up a mid-February post with Curtis's cellphone number, inviting anyone to call him with their takes. (He keeps a different cellphone for personal use, and puts the work phone away at night.)
More than 20,000 calls and texts came in. Some questioned whether they really had the president on the line. "Let me check my driver's license real quick," Curtis tells one, in a video Burger King posted last week.
Burger King's chicken nuggets? "They can get extremely soggy," lamented one customer in a video posted this week. Curtis is shown jotting down notes and telling staff: "I've been talking to a lot of guests and the feedback on the nuggets is frankly not good."
A fix is on the way, Curtis said in the interview, likely involving sauce -- "always important if you're going to do something with your nuggets."
Another video posted this week included Burger King employees reading off messages critiquing the chain's app, employees and even Curtis's haircut. "You should grow your hair out more," the customer said.
In another video, Curtis responds to complaints about Whoppers getting smushed at the bottom of bags. A new cardboard box for the sandwiches will help, he said.
But his big break would be the 13-second Whopper-chomp snippet. Burger King last weekend had posted a video featuring Curtis debuting an upgraded Whopper. All the social-media team needed was the bite and one line.
"Only one thing missing," Curtis said, wiping at his mouth with his hand. "A napkin."
Curtis said the world learned what his wife has long known. "I don't own a tie or shirt that doesn't have a particle of food on it," he said. His wife told him: "'It's about time people recognize what a messy eater you are.'"
Write to Jacob Bunge at jacob.bunge@wsj.com and Christopher Kuo at chris.kuo@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 06, 2026 19:00 ET (00:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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