37 Eye-Popping Restaurants & Other Related Facts About the Industry

There is a restaurant named Burger King in the town of Mattoon, Illinois, which opened before the giant chain Burger King had registered a statewide trademark in 1959. The Burger King chain isn’t allowed to operate within 20 miles of this original restaurant.

2. There are only 9 restaurants in the United States that are certified by the Kobe Beef Association in Japan to carry real Kobe Beef. Every other restaurant with the word "Kobe" in their menu is misleading their customers and serving a knock-off product.

3. Whataburger in Texas and What-A-Burger in Virginia opened about the same time in 1950 but didn't know of each other's existence until 1970. They both sued the other, but the court ruled that customers were not likely to be confused about whether the burgers served came from Texas or Virginia.

4. A Starbucks grande coffee has 320 milligrams of caffeine, over four times the amount of caffeine in a Red Bull and the Starbucks cinnamon chip scone has more calories than a McDonald's quarter pounder with 480 calories.

5. There is a restaurant in Pittsburgh named the Conflict Kitchen, that only serves cuisines from countries that the US is in conflict with. When they started serving Palestinian food, they received death threats.

There is a sausage restaurant named Regensburg Sausage Kitchen in Regensburg, Germany which has been in business for 900 years. This means that they were selling sausages well before the Inca Empire existed and are still serving 6,000 sausages a day.

7. After Domino's admitted that their pizza tasted bad in 2010 and reinvented their pizza, the company's stock has outperformed every large tech company in the past decade.

8. Over 60% of the restaurants on ‘Kitchen Nightmares’ are now closed.

9. Taco Bell sold 100 million Doritos Locos tacos in the first 10 weeks. It took McDonald's to sell the same amount of burgers 18 years.

10. All meat in a Subway's Cold Cut Combo sandwich (ham, salami, and bologna) is actually made from turkey.

Burger King was forced to change its whole franchise name to Hungry Jack's in Australia due to a small takeaway joint already trademarking the name in Adelaide.

12. All the McDonalds in Argentina were forced to sell the Big Mac at an artificially low price to hide inflation and to manipulate the country's performance on the Big Mac index.

13. Hooters in China is known as "American Owl Restaurant."

14. Little Caesar's makes only a .90 cents profit on a $5.00 hot and ready pizza. $3.50 goes to the ingredients and 60 cents for overhead.

15. When McDonald's set up its first restaurant in Soviet Russia, it had to teach workers how to smile and pretend to be cheerful.

In 2009, Burger King launched a promotion in which if you unfriended 10 of your friends on Facebook you got a free Whooper. The catch was that the friends were told that you unfriended them for just one Whooper.

17. The original "Dunkin' Donut" from Dunkin' Donuts had an actual pastry handle for dipping into coffee. It was discontinued in 2003 because it had to be cut by hand.

18. In 2001, a Hooter's restaurant held a sales contest for servers offering the prize of a new Toyota. When a server named Jodee Berry won, she was presented with a new "Toy Yoda". She sued the restaurant for deception and won enough money to buy a new car.

19. Popeyes gave Beyonce a free-Popeyes-for-life card after they heard how much she loved their food.

20. In the late 80's and early 90's McDonalds brought in the McPizza as part of their dinner menu. Customers who were used to fast service were irritated by the long wait times for made-to-order pizza and it was discontinued. Some franchises were left with pizza ovens they paid fifty grand for.

Mark Wahlberg has a restaurant called "Wahlburgers."

22. Pizza Hut once sued Papa Johns, claiming that the slogan "Better ingredients. Better Pizza." is false advertising.

23. Many of Denny's restaurants were built without locks, which was problematic when they decided to close for the first time ever on Christmas 1988.

24. Starbucks serves a smaller and cheaper size than “Tall” called “Short”, which it doesn’t mention on their menus.

25. Subway's most popular sandwich, the Italian BMT, is named after ‘Brooklyn Manhattan Transit’, literally a Subway.