Tom Whitehurst

Whataburger snaps up Burger King locations

Whataburger Inc. has acquired four defunct Burger Kings — two in Corpus Christi — and will

Taft

remodel and reopen them as Whataburger restaurants, the company announced Tuesday.
   One of the acquisitions, in the Flour Bluff area, will replace an existing Whataburger restaurant, the company said, which means that the deal effectively adds three restaurants to the company’s holdings. The other local acquisition is on Weber Road near Saratoga Boulevard, where the nearest Whataburgers are at least two miles away, on Weber near South Padre Island Drive and at Saratoga and Everhart Road.
   The family-owned, Corpus Christi-based chain also is negotiating more potential acquisitions from franchise owners of Burger Kings and other fast-food outlets, not just in South Texas, said Tim Taft, Whataburger’s chief operating officer. Taft wouldn’t estimate how many restaurants Whataburger might acquire, though he did say that the company is in an acquisition mode in a fast-food market that’s generally down nationwide.
   “We’ll look at any and all of them if they make sense for us geographically,” Taft said. “We’re honestly looking at every deal individually.”
   The other two Burger King acquisitions are in Schulenburg, where no Whataburgers exist, and Victoria, where there are three.
   The six Burger Kings in Corpus Christi closed at the end of July. Whataburger isn’t interested in the other four because they’re too near existing Whataburgers and don’t offer advantages over the nearby Whataburger locations, Taft said.
   Advantageous locations
   In contrast, the Weber-Saratoga Burger King is near where Whataburger would have built a competing restaurant, and the Flour Bluff Burger King is in a more opportune location than the current Flour Bluff Whataburger, Taft said. The existing Flour Bluff Whataburger, on South Padre Island Drive near Waldron Road, is fronted only by one-way traffic. The ex-Burger King location benefits from two-way Waldron Road traffic plus one-way traffic from an SPID access road.
   The acquisition also saves Whataburger the expense of remodeling the Flour Bluff location, Taft said. The company is nearing the end of a three-year upgrade of its approximately 300 corporate-owned restaurants. There are about 600 Whataburger restaurants in eight states and Mexico, the others owned by franchisees.
   October reopening
   Remodeling began Monday on the former Burger Kings and they’ll reopen as Whataburgers in October, the company said. Each will employ about 50 people, Taft said.
   The estimated 150 former Burger King employees in Corpus Christi are welcome to apply but will not receive special consideration, Taft said.
   Those workers didn’t receive their last paychecks when the restaurants closed, and still haven’t, one former Burger King manager said. Whataburger’s acquisitions didn’t include paying those checks, Taft said.
   Fred Staggs, a former Burger King manager who now works as an assistant manager at a Pizza Hut, said he still hasn’t been paid for his last two weeks of work at Burger King. He has been in contact with other former employees and hasn’t heard of anyone receiving their last checks.
   The local Burger Kings were among 85 owned and operated in Texas and South Carolina by James Hinton, whose operation was based in Houston. He shut down all but two of the restaurants after Burger King told him he could no longer operate them under the Burger King name. Hinton’s attorney, Robert Einhorn, couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday.
  
   Contact Business Editor Tom Whitehurst Jr. at 886-3619 or whitehurstt@caller.com
  
  

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