Ukraine war: Burger King still open in Russia despite pledge to exit

Restaurant Brands International owns Burger King, Tim Hortons, Popeye's Chicken, and Firehouse Subs

Fuck RBI, they are lying war profiteers putting tax revenue in the hand of the Kremlin which it uses to fund it's war of genocide in Ukraine. Do not eat in any of their restaurants

Especially with firehouse subs having such a purpose washed image/mission, you think they'd be smarter.
War profiteer is an interesting way to look at it. If a company doesn't cut ties with warmonger countries, they are war profiteers ?

They should also get away from US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and most of the "developed" countries that are historically exploiting poor countries ?

They sell fucking burguers, if they manage to not put too much garbage in the food to save money, they are doing enough.
Are you also telling us how much they own of those Burger King franchises in Russia they are supposed to shut down?
- They are getting paid 100% of the franchise fees of their Russian businesses.
- You don’t own franchise partners by definition. They are individually owned restaurants that pay you a fee to use your brand (name, menu, marketing, etc.).
  
  „Shutting down“ here means: Don’t renew these franchise contracts. The restaurants will continue to exist, but they will have to rebrand and be less lucrative.

I thought burger king staying was the punishment

They outrage is such a great example of western exceptionalism. The existence of western consumer businesses in the countries of the non-Aryan jungle is supposed to be an immense benefit to these places and their departure must necessarily be disastrous for them. Nowhere is the idea entertained that Russians are perfectly capable of creating their own shitty burger restaurants to replace those if the west.

It's like that 80s news footage of the first McDonald's opening in Moscow where they're like ”finally those filthy commies get to enjoy our superior Western treats”

Then they interview someone who says it wasn't really worth it to stand in line and pay so much
You're missing the point. For BK to operate in Russia means dollars flowing into Russia, because BK needs to buy Rubles. Dollars that Russia needs to buy arms on the international market, because nobody is accepting Rubles.
- This is true. However, if I owned BK, I'd see this as an amazing business strategy, although a quite unethical one (but as we can see, multi million+ dollar companies aren't the most ethical either way). I mean, now the literal government has an interest for it to stay in business, they may even start to promote the brand.
- Except BK is an American company. They wouldn't operate in Russia if they weren't making a profit. So their net effect is to have money flowing out of Russia.
Many words considering no point.

Let them.
- Don't be upset
Commies say the dumbest shit

Capital Scum doing capitalist scum shit.

Yeah, they should only operate in good countries, like the US.
- And Israel

Imperialism: good

Slavery: good (when in prison or countries that I can't find on a map)

Burger King in Russia: moral outrage

Libs rock

hexbear
unironically saying Russia is the victim of imperialism

Yeah that checks out.
- Lib
  
  Fails at basic reading comprehension
  
  Now that does check out
Wow wow wow you got it in one amazing job
- I mean he's not wrong, out of all the things to try and start an outrage about, this is just dumb.

There has been a lot of debate on this. Is it cruel and unusaul punishments. Have the russiand done things so bad to deserve burger king. only time will tell.

Lmao westerners having a totally normal one over the lack of loyalty of a slop-house to the divinely-ordained imperial cause.

Putin isn't chowing down on BK, neither are the oligarchs, or the heads of the army, the FSB, or so on.

What's the point of making sure BK leaves the market except and ineffectual attempt to hurt ordinary Russians?

Honestly, BK should just leave. Russians or as a matter of fact no one deserves to eat that "food".
- I remember when the sanctions started and Western fast food, media, and social media were all pulling out. Someome quipped "oh no, Russians will be the healthiest and happiest people on the planet. How awful."
- I don't even understand how the hell burger King is alive to this day. There's 2 burger kings in my city, both on the same road and I've never seen anyone in line at either of them.
  
  Like are we even sure burger King isint some psy op or something? Does anyone even remember the last time they were in one?
- BK staying is the punishment
also if they left then the burger kings in russia would just stay open. It is not a complicated business to copy when you already have the equipment and staff. It's as simple as continuing to sell burgers

Burger king could end it's francisee relationships but the burger shop is already in russia
I think the narrative these people are trying to push is that these companies get dollars flowing into Russia, they buy roubles, and Russia uses the dollars on the international weaponry market. I don't get why this would be a problem, since Microsoft still does the same shit I assume (most Russians definitely use Windows)
The main purpose is to create a sentiment of dissatisfaction for the current government

Edit: I am just pointing out their purpose, it doesn't mean that I share their view boyz
- Is it effective? Especially since McD's leaving the country has just resulted in the Russian suppliers and restaurant owners running the place on their own with the same recipes.
  
  Are the Russian people going to be angry at the lack of clown/king related branding?
- Russians are going to be so angry about no Burger King they'll do a 1917 on Putin for sure.
- Like the time I overthrew my government when my favorite pizza joint closed.
- IDK I would be pretty happy if shitty body-ruining fast food and proprietary Spyware like Microsoft left my country, I would like my shitty neofascist government sliiiightly more (I am Italian, sadly) if instead of sucking on uncle Sam's hairy balls they would kick harmful corpos out
Well, it's about economics, not hurting ordinary russians. Doing business in russia gives them money, which helps them pay for the war. It's as simple as that.
- It is about economics. If Burger King leaves Russia, they're still leaving the restaurants, distribution networks and the employees behind. They're not going to sit idle just because the brand left, rather they're going to keep going under a new name, just like how McDonald's did.
  
  What effect does that have on the Russian war effort? None.
- But Burger King sells to Russians and repatriates some of its profits back to the US. If BK leaves Russia then Russians will spend their money on other restaurants, presumably ones which do not send profits overseas (due to the sanctions) which paradoxically means more money staying in Russia.
  
  If the restaurants close then there will be some momentary unemployment but there's a war going on so unemployment helps smooth over manpower issues. That's also ignoring the possibility of a Russian entity stepping into BK's shoes like they did with McD's and just running the place without the trademarks.
  
  I don't see any purpose beyond moral posturing.

Who the fuck cares who is still open in Russia. Theres plenty of companiess still open in Israel where's the outrage over that?

So you say I should ignore all the injustice in the world just because I cannot care about all of them?

That's just stupid
- why can't you care about all of them. Also how is burger king selling burgers injustice?
You know you can care about multiple things at once, right?
- OK?
Ah, classic case of whataboutism. Go troll somewhere else.
- Uhh you're on my server dummy
Classic Russian whataboutism
- I do love me some Tchaikovsky

Capitalists gonna capitalise!

They didn't change their name like McDonald's? No principles smh

Burger Tzar
- You have got to try their condom pizzas. The condoms mimic the texture of cheese!

Slow news day I assume?

No news means good news. Maybe that's just me being pessimistic tho.

Continuing to bring the most meh fries in the fast food industry to the fair people of Povarovo

when mcdonalds pulled out they just didn't close the mcdonalds. The buildings and people who work in the mcdonalds were already in Russia there is literally no reason they can't just stay open

Don't like it, don't go there. Tell them why.

Personally I'm boycotting them. Not because of any moral justification, but because they sell overpriced disappointing mulch.

Literally worst fast food joint and the only people I've met who claim otherwise have objectively bad taste.

Like no joke, objectively, "I love a butter and cheese sandwich on wonderbread", British, wouldn't know flavor if it ripped their tongue out.
- I have to make my own burgers now. Most places serve fast food swill, and the only nice place has switched to brioche buns.
  
  Brioche buns are not load bearing buns! They fall apart at the slightest contact with moisture. I will die on this hill forever.
- You rank BK as worse than McDonald's? I only ask cause I've worked at both, and I would put McDonald's just the tiniest bit lower than BK. Wendy's is barely better than both BK and McDonald's.
- I sent my sister a bottle of fry sauce that she's been trying to find for years (she never thought to check Amazon lol), this is what she sends me back. Told her she was supposed to use it to enhance good food, not make terrible food tolerable.
- And yet they invented the sticky toffee pudding. Two extremes

Every hexbear comment reads like AI trained only on the Tumblr accounts of 14 year old boys with Stalin body pillows.

Have some lemme.ee gold friend
- Fucking savage 😂
Absolutely brilliant description.

Say anything remotely negative about Dictatorship 1 and Dictatorship 2, and they come scrambling out of the woodwork with a long rant full of lies, stupidity, and revisionism and a couple of those cringe ass, unnecessarily large emojis to go with it. Honestly sick of them. Individual instance filtering can’t come fast enough.
- Yuuuuup.
I just clicked the rainbow pentagram to see that version of this comment thread. Wow. So glad we defederated from those assholes.
- What's the deal with the rainbow pentagram next to the username?
  
  Clicking it seemed to just take me to another lemmy instance?

Explaining the ineffectiveness of sanctions to an American:

ok so imagine you have McDonald’s but you also have Burger King and McDonald’s pulls out but the Russians can just make their own McDonald’s and they can still buy Burger King…

Sanctions are when you ask your mom for McDonald's and she says "we got food at the house". But the burger at home is actually not bad

I think (?) I watered it down even more for the average American to understand.
Also a ton of people die due to a lack of medicine. Not in Russia per se, but you get what I mean

AFAIK, the situation with Burger King, is that unlike McDonalds, BK doesn't have much leverage over Russian franchisee's. They can try and say "close the stores, we're leaving", but the actual store owners would just say "no" and re-brand them back to "Rostik's". They don't really have any assets in Russia so there's nothing really to sell either, but they do still receive the franchise fees. So pulling out would only benefit Russia

Rostik's is actually what KFC was, and the funny thing about it is KFC has the similar franchise structure in Russia, they officially left, told all franchisees to change names back to Rostik's, but the biggest one just said "no" even to that, as KFC's contract that includes the rights to use the name expires only in 2035.

That's one way to defeat Russia. Have them eat garbage food.

My condolences to the Russians.

Спасибо за поддержку. Мы стараемся держаться и попытаемся пережить это неописуемое горе.

this is genocide

Burger King will never see a single cent from me, fucking traitors

where did you shop while the united states was occupying iraq and afghanistan?
- Around these parts, we salute the McDonald's flag flying over Guantanamo Bay.
The consumer feels betrayed by the slophouse!
- i refuse to believe this isn't a bit
relax they sell burgers not cruise missiles

also new tagline
You know BK still operates in the US, right?
- Hehehehe
- And?
You people throw around 'traitor' so much its nearly lost all meaning.
I simply don't get this mentality. I'm sure you do realize, that companies such as Microsoft still operate in Russia. You think all people over there are running Linux? Aside from how unbelievably stupid your take is, guess they are traitors too. But you'll still keep using their OS and Office suite for millenia to come.
- MS stopped selling licenses last year and blocked the ones operating this year (non renewal). But I get your point, only not all the big companies stayed
- I wouldn't be at all surprised if Russia did have larger linux adoption. It's not unheard of for countries to be (in my opinion baselessly) suspicious that microsoft contains american spyware.
- MS stopped selling licenses last year
pizza hut will never see a cent from me either, fucking traitors.
Extend that to all companies and capitalism is over party.
- Good.
So brave

If BK food in the US is any indication of the quality in Russia, let them stay open. Worst of the worst as far as fast food goes. It's economic warfare with none of the war crimes! /s

Can Burger King pull out of the US first? Absolutely the worst fast food chain ever. The only reason anybody goes to BK is if McDonald's is on fire.

Personally I prefer Burger King over McDonald's. Haven't been since the first BK opened in my city.
At least for vegetarian options they are way ahead of McDonalds

Can't speak for the rest of the menu though
- McD has zero vegetarian options, besides some very sad salad.
- Yeah, in Finland at least the vegan Whopper is waaaaaaaay better than what McD or other similar franchises offer.

They're making too much money. Corporations are not beholden to nations, silly Americans.

On all the shorts etc showing sanction life in Russia, not one has mentioned burger King is still there.

BK in Russia? Smh I thought biological warfare was illegal.

Was going to say that.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

David Shear, RBI's president, said in March 2022 that Burger King's main operator in Russia had "refused" to shut the outlets following the first attacks on Ukraine.

Steven Tian, part of a team of researchers at Yale University who track what companies have done in response to the Ukraine war, argued using franchise agreements as an "excuse" was a "convenient smokescreen".

Mark Dixon, founder of the Moral Rating Agency, which campaigns against firms doing business in Russia, called for RBI to disclose what specific actions it had taken in its attempts to leave.

David Bond, partner at law firm Fieldfisher, said RBI's 15% stake meant it could not simply "dictate terms" to its fellow shareholders to require them to close Burger King branches.

He also suggested companies that franchise out their brands would be reluctant to simply walk away from deals as it could lead to "dire consequences", including being sued for breach of contract, as well as reputational damage.

But he said consequences aside, there was nothing stopping RBI from terminating the franchise arrangement if it was adamant it wanted to do so, though added it might not result in the Burger King brand ceasing to exist in Russia.

The original article contains 671 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 70%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Their burgers are trash compared to what they used to be - so fine - feed the Russians trash. About not keeping their word to leave Russia... does anyone here believe anything corporate has to say?

Ukraine: Have it Russia's way.

Every time someone complains about hexbear they make their emojis 1 pixel bigger

oooaaaaaaauhhh

borgin queen is ruzzian orc cpc shill putler bot

I’ve already boycotted Burger King just for how aggressively bad their advertising song is.

I boycott burger king because it's disgusting

let them eat that poison idgaf

and even the taste remained the same - shit with sauce

Burger King ad, remove. Fast food are a health hazard stop promoting this shit

I know the answer to my question, don't bother. But let's all try to come back to the really basic common sense. Burger king topic in a war news channel? For real?

Yo those chips look fresh