Food

Our Approach

Food is the foundation of our business; our restaurant owners are passionate about serving guests safe, high-quality and great-tasting food they will love, every day. Areas of focus within the food pillar are: food safety, improving choice, nutrition & transparency, and real ingredients. Our commitment and progress for each of these areas can be found in the dashboard below.

Food Safety:

Serving food that our guests love starts with serving food they can trust, always. Food safety is our number one priority at Restaurant Brands International. Food safety is proactively managed through our industry leading food quality assurance program including robust vendor and restaurant audits to ensure compliance with food safety guidelines and policies We also work with industry, academia, and regulatory agencies on advancing food safety standards and practises globally.

Improving Choice, Nutrition and Transparency:

It's important for guests to feel good about our food. Our team of nutritionists and food innovation professionals drive our strategy to provide guests with balanced menu options and to equip them with the information to make educated choices about their meals to fit their individual lifestyles.

Real Ingredients:

We believe affordable meals should also include high-quality ingredients, and knowing these are wholesome, simple, and familiar is more important than ever to our guests. For us, real ingredients means no colours, flavors, or preservatives from artificial sources. That's why our brands are working to remove ingredients from artificial sources from food menus.

Highlights

  • 100% of Tim Hortons, Burger King and Popeyes restaurants worldwide are subject to rigorous food safety inspection on a regular schedule.
  • At Burger King in the US, the Whopper sandwich and 90% of the permanent food menu are now free of colours, flavours, and preservatives from artificial sources, and we’re striving to reach 100% by the end of 2021. We’ve also made similar ingredient changes to the Whopper across more than 10 other countries so far, and over 90% of the permanent food menu in 17 European markets as of January 2021.
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Looking Forward

Our goals over the next year:

  • We will work towards expanding the ingredient and nutrition policies for each brand, and setting targets for improving the nutrition profile of menu options served at our restaurants around the world.

  • At Popeyes, we’re starting by removing colours, flavours, and preservatives from artificial sources from our core chicken menu items in the US by 2022, and have updated our recipes in two other countries.

  • We will continue to remove colors, flavors, and preservatives from artificial sources from core food ingredients in Canada and the US.

Performance Summary: Food

Food Safety

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Provide our guests across the globe with safe, high quality and great-tasting food, by maintaining rigorous industry-leading standards for vendor quality assurance and restaurant food safety.

Ongoing

100% of Tim Hortons, Burger King and Popeyes restaurants worldwide are subject to rigorous food safety inspections on a regular schedule.

In response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, we’ve implemented proactive and comprehensive measures to protect the safety of our food, team members, and guests in Burger King, Popeyes, and Tim Hortons restaurants around the world.

Improving Choice, Nutrition & Transparency

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We are targeting a 10% sodium reduction across our permanent à la carte Burger King US menu items that contain more than 2,000 mg sodium. We will also set forward-looking targets to reduce fat, sodium, and sugar across existing entrees, meal combinations, and side dishes at our Burger King, Tim Hortons, and Popeyes restaurants globally.

Ongoing

In 2019, we reviewed all of our permanent Burger King US menu items and identified those that contained over 2,400 mg sodium, then developed new recipes achieving a sodium reduction of up to 18% on those products. As of February 2020, all of our permanent à la carte items on the Burger King US menu contain less than 2,400 mg sodium.

Working with our global teams and industry partners, we are also in the process of collecting menu data, engaging our suppliers, and conducting ingredient research to improve the nutritional profile of menu options served at our restaurants around the world.

Continue to make nutrition information increasingly accessible within our restaurants, as well as our mobile and online platforms, so guests around the world will be better able to make informed decisions about their food and meal choices.

Ongoing

In December 2019, Burger King US launched a new online nutrition information platform (www.bk.com/nutrition-explorer) to provide guests with the ability to search, filter, and identify the menu options they’re craving that fit their dietary restrictions and needs. We are working to extend similar functionality to other applications and across our brands.

Remain committed to ensuring we advertise menu items that provide families with nutritionally balanced options suitable for even our youngest guests.

Ongoing

As an original member of the U.S. Children’s Food & Beverage Advertising Initiative and European Union (EU Pledge) programs, Burger King Corporation and participating European affiliates in those territories only advertise meals and products to children under the age of 12 that meet established uniform nutritional criteria for calories, saturated fat, sodium and added sugar.

Real Ingredients

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Continue to remove colors, flavors, and preservatives from artificial sources from branded food ingredients in Canada and the US.

2021

At Burger King in the US, the Whopper sandwich and 90% of the permanent food menu are now free of colours, flavours, and preservatives from artificial sources, and we’re striving to reach 100% by the end of 2021. We’ve also made similar ingredient changes to the Whopper across more than 10 other countries so far, and over 90% of the permanent food menu in 17 European markets as of January 2021.

At Popeyes, we’re starting by removing colours, flavours, and preservatives from artificial sources from our core chicken menu items in the US by 2022 and have updated our recipes in two other countries.

Tim Hortons Canada introduced freshly cracked eggs across the country as of February 2021. In 2020, we removed artificial colours, flavours, and preservatives from the English Muffin and Biscuit and will extend this across the permanent food menu in 2021.