How Burger King's 1950s 'Insta-Broiler' Popped Out 400 Burgers An Hour

In the history of American fast food, McDonald's and Burger King have succeeded while so many other burger chains, like Burger Chef, have disappeared. And if not for McDonald's, Burger King would never have existed. The latter fast food empire was born of the desire to emulate McDonald's innovative food service system, and all on the back of a machine called the Insta-Broiler. In 1952, Matthew Burns and his son-in-law, Keith Cramer, visited the McDonald's in San Bernardino, California, to learn what they could about this new type of restaurant, and on the same trip, met an inventor named George Read. Read had designed several machines intended to help automate the fast food industry.

Among these machines was Read's Insta-Broiler. The machine was 3 feet long, a foot wide, and 2.5 feet tall and could cook both sides of a dozen hamburger patties at once. The hamburgers were held in place by wire baskets that conveyed them, along with their buns, past two electric broilers. The cooked burgers would then drop into a vat of secret sauce that included ketchup, mustard, relish, and spices. It could pump out 400 burgers an hour. The first Insta-Burger King opened in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1953. But it wasn't the Insta-Broiler that ultimately made this burger franchise so successful.

You'd think a machine that could spit out 400 burgers an hour would have laid the groundwork for Burger King's success, but, sadly, it didn't live up to expectations. The Insta-Broiler broke down often, and the restaurant essentially couldn't function until it was fixed. The Burger King we know today can be credited to two Insta-Burger franchisees, David Edgerton and his partner James McLamore. Edgerton opened a location in Miami in 1954 and suggested adding "King" to the end of the restaurant's name, along with introducing a royal mascot.

After McLamore joined Edgerton in the business, they converted the Insta-Broiler into a flame broiler, giving rise to the chain's distinctive cooking method. They also introduced the Whopper, selling the burger for 37 cents, a controversial move considering a McDonald's burger was going for 15 cents at the time. By 1957, when the original Jacksonville Insta-Burger King chain and its Insta-Broiler hit hard times, Edgerton and McLamore bought the national rights to the company and rebranded as Burger King of Miami. So, while the Insta-Broiler got the Burger King ball rolling, what made the fast food chain was a flame broiler and an oversized burger, which the chain now sells more than 1.3 billion of a year (just one of the many astounding Whopper facts).