How Burger King’s 2024 FDD Reveals a Massive Ownership Shakeup

Reported and written by Joe Dunbar, Director of Data, RestaurantData.com

Burger King’s 2024 Franchise Disclosure Document reveals a substantial restructuring of the brand’s U.S. franchise system. RestaurantData identified 405 Burger King restaurants that ceased operations and another 302 locations that transferred ownership. Together, those 707 restaurants represented approximately 10% of the disclosed U.S. system.

The Burger King findings are part of a broader RestaurantData review of franchise systems over multiple filing periods. The recently published Franchise Disclosure Documents Multi-Year Growth Summary examines how seven prominent franchise brands changed between 2021 and 2025, including unit growth, franchisee activity, closures, development pipelines, and changes in company-owned and franchised locations.

From Carrols to Burger King

Carrols served burgers, fries, and shakes to customers for takeout. Most people dined in their cars. The food was fast, tasty, and inexpensive. Our family of seven could dine for less than $6. Whenever we drove down to Schenectady, we went hungry and stopped for lunch at Carrols.

In the 1970s, Carrols converted most of its locations to Burger King restaurants. My college friends and I loved the Burger King in Utica, New York. We liked the “Have It Your Way” motto and ordered burgers loaded with extra tomatoes and mayonnaise.

Over time, Carrols became Burger King’s largest franchisee, operating more than 1,000 locations. In early 2024, Burger King parent Restaurant Brands International acquired all outstanding shares of Carrols Restaurant Group in a transaction valued at approximately $1 billion.

The acquisition followed a period in which several high-volume Burger King franchisees entered bankruptcy, sold restaurants through auctions, transferred locations to other operators, or left the system entirely. The 2024 FDD provides a structured view of how widespread those ownership changes became.

The 10 Franchisee Groups Behind Most Closures and Transfers

Approximately 470 of the Burger King restaurants that closed or transferred were associated with 10 franchisee groups. This concentration shows that a relatively small number of operator-level events can reshape ownership across hundreds of individual restaurant locations.

• Premier Kings sold 150 restaurants through an auction in February 2024. Its remaining Burger King locations closed.
• Meridian Restaurants Unlimited sold 70 of its 91 restaurants through an auction. Buyers included Burger King corporate and several established franchisees.
• Toms King sold its Burger King locations to several buyers for approximately $33 million.
• EYM Group no longer includes Burger King among the restaurant brands listed in its operating portfolio.
• Seven Restaurants, NDM Restaurants, NKS Restaurants, HR Restaurants, and Southern King Holdings had no remaining restaurants listed in the 2024 Burger King FDD.

These company-level changes are organized within Atlas by RestaurantData , which connects restaurant locations, franchisees, brands, operating companies, parent organizations, and executive contacts. This structure allows researchers to move upward from an individual restaurant to its franchisee and parent company or downward from an ownership group to the locations it controls.

How Franchisee Location Reassignments Work

When a franchisee exits a restaurant brand through a closure, asset sale, bankruptcy, corporate repurchase, or negotiated transfer, its locations may follow several different paths. A restaurant can close permanently, transfer to another franchisee, return temporarily to corporate ownership, or reopen under a different operator.

A location transfer does not necessarily mean that the restaurant itself closed. The sign, menu, employees, and customer experience may remain substantially the same while the legal owner and operating organization change. That distinction is important when evaluating franchisee counts, ownership concentration, location continuity, and company-level expansion.

The diagram below illustrates three types of changes identified in the 2024 Burger King FDD: locations reassigned to another franchisee, a restaurant reported as closed, and locations transferred back to Burger King corporate.

What the Ownership Changes Indicate

The movement of hundreds of Burger King locations illustrates why restaurant-unit counts alone do not provide a complete view of a franchise system. A brand can report thousands of operating restaurants while experiencing significant changes beneath the brand level, including franchisee exits, ownership consolidation, corporate intervention, market withdrawals, and transfers to better-capitalized operators.

Transfers can also change the purchasing structure surrounding a restaurant. A location that moves from a smaller franchisee to a large multi-unit organization may become part of a centralized system for equipment, technology, food purchasing, facilities management, construction, and professional services.

RestaurantData evaluates verified development activity across growing companies through the Expansion Pressure Index™ . The index is a business-prioritization model rather than a prediction of future performance. It helps distinguish companies demonstrating continuing verified development activity from organizations associated with isolated openings or announcements.

Larger franchise organizations, parent companies, and multi-concept ownership groups are also examined through the Restaurant Enterprise Index™ . The index generally covers organizations responsible for 100 or more restaurant units and provides a company-level view that is separate from an individual restaurant-brand ranking.

RestaurantData’s Top 100 Restaurant Franchisors research provides an additional view of the companies responsible for major restaurant franchise systems, including the relationships among franchisors, restaurant brands, franchise operators, and individual locations.

Reclaim the Flame: Burger King’s Strategic Turnaround

Burger King has been implementing a strategic turnaround known as Reclaim the Flame. The program includes restaurant remodeling, equipment investments, updated technology, advertising, operational improvements, and changes intended to strengthen franchisee performance.

Locations transferred to Burger King corporate may be remodeled or operationally stabilized before being sold to new or existing franchisees. The 2024 FDD already reflects the entrance of additional multi-unit franchisees and the reassignment of restaurants previously controlled by operators that exited the system.

RestaurantData will continue tracking Burger King ownership changes, corporate acquisitions, restaurant transfers, closures, and franchisee additions through company disclosures, public records, operating-location research, and subsequent Franchise Disclosure Documents.

How RestaurantData Tracks FDD Ownership Changes

RestaurantData ingests and organizes new-unit records, closed-location records, franchisee changes, corporate ownership changes, and hierarchical connections across more than 135 restaurant brands. In cases such as Burger King, the work includes identifying when corporate takes locations back from a franchisee, retains them as company-owned restaurants, closes them, or reassigns them to another operator.

RestaurantData receives and reviews updated FDD documents for tracked brands each year. The primary restaurant FDD filing period generally runs from February through May. From spring through early summer, the research team compares disclosed outlets, identifies openings and closures, reviews ownership changes, and investigates broken or newly created hierarchical connections.

The broader Restaurant Franchise FDD Analysis reviews current filings across multiple restaurant brands, including disclosed unit counts, franchised and company-owned locations, development agreements, growth rates, and financial-performance information when available.

Additional methodology papers, franchise-ownership studies, company research, opening analyses, executive-movement reports, and proprietary indexes are organized within the RestaurantData Research Center .

Related Franchise and Ownership Research

Burger King’s ownership restructuring can be viewed alongside RestaurantData’s multi-year analysis of Franchise Disclosure Documents from 2021 through 2025 . That report follows several restaurant franchise systems through periods of rapid growth, stabilization, closures, franchisee additions, signed development pipelines, and changes between franchised and company-owned restaurants.

Readers comparing Burger King with other major franchise brands can also review RestaurantData’s analysis of leading restaurant franchise brands by FDD unit count . That research compares franchised and company-owned restaurants, geographic coverage, service categories, ownership structures, and disclosed operating information across large franchise systems.

Franchisee transfers also connect to a broader shift toward larger and more diversified operating organizations. RestaurantData’s study of multi-concept restaurant operators examines companies that control multiple restaurant concepts, legal entities, executive structures, and location networks. This company-level view helps explain why the transfer of a restaurant from one franchisee to another can alter purchasing authority, corporate relationships, market coverage, and the identity of the organization making operating decisions.

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