As of this month, Burger King has eliminated in Mexico the preservatives, flavorings and dyes that it used in the foods on its menu and to communicate it, it will allocate 70 million pesos to the “Non-artificial Mexico” campaign, effective in the following six months.
“We have consolidated a job that took five years and we did it hand in hand with all our suppliers, national and international, to ensure products that are one hundred percent real, one hundred percent natural, without affecting the flavors,” the Marketing Director explained in an interview. of the brand, Óscar Alcántara.
With this change, Mexico (one of the ten most important markets for the brand) joins the global trend of betting on the natural and trusts that they will become the spearhead in the market where they participate.
According to the manager, the average frequency that his guests (customers) attend restaurants per month is 2.8 times with a purchase ticket that is around 175 pesos in restaurants, while in home services it rises to 220. pesos.
“It is not a minor thing what we are doing in our business, gradually eliminating 120 ingredients. For example, in ketchup (Heinz) there is no longer anything artificial, neither sugar nor preservatives. This situation led us to another challenge: shorter shelf life of our products. If a small envelope lasted six months, now you have to move it every 1.5 months. In the logistics issue we see more frequency of deliveries and less quantities”, he added.
Asked about the possibility of changing the perception of the consumption of hamburgers with his natural initiative, the director said that the main objective is not to seek a change: I will eat a salad or a hamburger, because each one has a well-defined consumption moment. “What we do want is that, at the time of consumption, the guest feels good about himself because it is a 100% natural food,” he assured.
How is your recovery process going after the pandemic?
At the moment we have 420 restaurants nationwide and we are back after the impact, which caused the digital sales channel to rise tremendously, but it was not even enough to compensate for what we lost in restaurants. In April 2021 we began to see our recovery and today, a year later, we have traffic levels equal to those of 2019 and we are already selling more. There were some temporary business closures, but today we have more points of sale than in 2019.
How relevant is the investment they advertise?
A lot, we have budgets for the whole year and normally we assign them to different initiatives, but this year we reduced other initiatives to focus on our comprehensive campaign in which we are going to communicate that we are eliminating artificial products from the menu.