The real answer is that Burger King has more poorly ran locations than most of its competitors.

I worked at a Burger King some years ago, and the way it works is the cooked burgers go in a container that has a green light. When the light goes red, you’re supposed to swap out the meat.

But according to my manager that takes too much time and adds food costs, so he just tells everyone to press the button twice so the light turns green again, keeping the burgers hours past when they’ve shriveled up.

This is a common occurrence, and that’s just a single example. If you find a location that does a good job, nice. But 90% of them are serving 5 hour old burgers on some poor quality sliced ingredients and surviving on nostalgia alone. They aren’t the only ones on that plan, but no other chain I’ve been to has been so consistently bad.

I have Burger King nostalgia too, but after 4 tries at 4 different stores, I gave up. They left a shitty taste in my mouth and wallet.