Why Burger King Is Called Something Completely Different In Australia

If you're traveling to Australia and feel like chowing down on a Whopper at a local Burger King restaurant, good luck to you: The global burger chain doesn't exist there. Well, at least technically speaking. Spend some time there and you'll probably notice a suspiciously similar-looking chain restaurant. It's called Hungry Jack's, and features a logo that's almost identical to Burger King: The name of the chain written in curved red letters, sandwiched between two yellow buns.

This isn't an accidental lookalike: It turns out that Hungry Jack's is actually just Burger King in disguise. The chain set its sights on Australia back in the '70s as one of its first overseas expansions after Canada, but ran into one problem: There was already a restaurant named Burger King operating in the city of Adelaide, and that restaurant had trademarked its name. That meant Burger King couldn't use the name unless they bought the trademark out from this small Adelaide restaurant: Whether or not the company tried this is unclear, but the end result was that they settled on an alternate name. The Hungry Jack's name comes from the franchisee who opened the first restaurant in Australia, Jack Cowin (a franchise pro, he had also brought KFC to Australia a few years prior). Despite the name difference, Hungry Jacks' restaurants were considered more or less the same as their American counterparts in terms of aesthetics, the way they operated, and most menu items.

While the Hungry Jack's name has stuck and now has around 460 restaurants around Australia, for a period in the '90s Burger King tried to get its name into the Australian market. The Burger King trademark expired in the '90s, meaning the U.S. chain was free to use its original name. But instead of renaming all the Hungry Jack's locations, the chain set about opening a bunch of separate Burger King-branded locations that were effectively competing with Hungry Jack's. On top of that, because the company had the power to accept or deny franchisees' expansion plans, Burger King blocked Cowin from opening new Hungry Jack's locations as it set about opening Burger King restaurants around the country.

Cowin ended up suing Burger King over a failure to honor its franchise agreements with him, and in 2001, he won a $45 million court judgment in his favor. Burger King gave up on competing with Cowin and switched the names of all Burger King restaurants in Australia over to Hungry Jack's, based on the fact that it had been an established name in the country for decades, compared to "newcomer" Burger King.

This isn't the first U.S. chain to run into such a problem in Australia: Wendy's is also bringing its square burgers to the country, despite an ice cream chain named Wendy's already existing. However, both companies hold trademarks to the name, so Wendy's may not need a name change.

If you visit a Hungry Jack's, it's aesthetically similar to a Burger King, with the same branding (like the "Home of the Whopper" slogan) and staff wearing pretty much identical uniforms to its American counterpart. The menus are also similar: You'll find most of the same key menu items like the Whopper, fries, onion rings, nuggets, and sodas. However, Burger King (at least in the U.S.) does have some extra sizes when it comes to items like drinks and fries, and a slight tendency towards larger portion sizes.

There are specialty items that are unique to either Hungry Jack's or Burger King. For example, Hungry Jack's doesn't have a fish sandwich on its menu but has a range of grilled and fried chicken sandwiches. Meanwhile, Burger King is missing items like the spicier "Angry Whopper" (with jalapenos and "angry" fried onions) and desserts like sundaes or Storms (ice cream with extras like Oreos mixed in). This shouldn't be taken as an indication that Hungry Jack's is independently doing its own thing: Chains like McDonald's usually have items unique to certain countries beyond their central menu.

In business terms, Hungry Jack's is more or less just a subsidiary of Burger King, but with some distance: The chain basically operates as a series of Burger King franchises, with Jack Cowin considered the country's master franchise holder. Cowin's company, Competitive Foods Australia, effectively runs Burger King's Australian operations, although it's a separate company from Burger King.