Talkin’ Bout A Whopper

Thunderstorms have been building here all afternoon, offering me a reminder that there’s another connection between Miami and Gainesville besides me and Almost-Tom-Petty: Burger King. 

You may have heard of them.

What you probably haven’t heard is the real story of their signature meal, “The Whopper”. 

One of the two owners of what was then a small franchisee operation in Miami is credited with its creation. He actually stole it.

Back in the mid-1950’s, David Edgerton and James McLamore operated a few “Insta-Burger King” stands in Miami. The hook was the beef was broiled, not grilled. Business was good, but not great. Their three restaurants paled compared to the forty strong Royal Castle Hamburger locations in the city. 

Fortuitously for them, James was a University of Florida football fan (football widows take note). One fall Saturday in 1957, McLamore was in Gainesville to see a home game when he happened by the local What-A-Burger stand on 13^th Street (a.k.a. Highway 441 that Tom Petty sang about in “American Girl”). The que was over a block long, unusual even for a game day. He got in line and watched as everyone pretty much ordered the same item, a jumbo burger loaded with salad fixings on a huge bun the owner had gotten a local bakery to produce. The rest, as the cliché goes, is history. 

Shortly after James’s return and armed with his discovery their Miami eateries took off. Within two years they were successful enough to purchase the rights to their franchise and rechristen it “Burger King”. Once they hit 250 locations nationwide, they sold out to Pillsbury, retiring as multi-millionaires. At last count, there were 12,000+ locations world-wide selling over 2.5 billion burgers annually.

I wonder what the guy with the little What-A-Burger stand back in Gainesville thought about this theft. In the 1970’s, I ordered often from that same take-out window as James McLamore did back in 1957, having no idea of its place in culinary history. I assume it was already forgotten by then.

Business is business as we all know and ideas get “borrowed” all the time; but there may be a little karma at work here. In the late 1980’s, Burger King constructed their massive, new world headquarters in a rural area just south of Miami on Biscayne Bay. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew, the last Category 5 hurricane to strike the U.S. in the twentieth century roared ashore also just south of Miami with sustained 175 mph winds that caused incredible devastation. Ground Zero was the Burger King complex. It was a total loss.