BurgerFi CEO Julio Ramirez Talks Burger Wars And Working With Martha Stewart - Exclusive Interview

You worked at Burger King for 26 years, from 1984 to 2010. Tell us about your role there.

I always tell people that 26 years at Burger King is different than working 26 years in a Ford assembly plant. The Burger King Corporation was bought and sold five times in my lifetime and four times as a senior executive. You can imagine the flux of change in ownership, CEOs, marketing, culture. I mean, it was a very challenging environment. Great product, great brand. I think the brand, I think it's a testament to the great-tasting Whopper Sandwich that the brand is still alive today, because frankly, at Burger King, the institutional knowledge was with the franchise owners because there was so much rotating executives.

I was really almost like an alien, because I was there so long as a senior executive... we were constantly changing, and it was very challenging. Having said that, I think that you learn to work for many different styles of CEO's, because I reported to seven different ones. And you learn from the good ones, and you learned from the bad ones, and you try to put that at play when you finally get a chance to be a CEO. So, one of the wonderful things at BurgerFi that I've enjoyed a lot is the fact that there's still a lot of institutional knowledge inside the company, not just with our franchisees, and I think that's a very rewarding thing that I cherish.

I ran the North America franchise operations and development business. It's about 90 percent of the business at Burger King. [Including Canada,] I had 1,100 franchises and 7,500 restaurants. It was a big business... I was [also] president of the Latin America/Caribbean region two different times. I was the head of Latin America for Burger King, opening Burger King in over 10 countries, including Brazil, where today there's 1100, Mexico, where we started with 35, when I was done, there were 420. Market leader, by the way, one of the few areas of the world where BK was bigger than McDonald's... That was a huge accomplishment with the teams that I lead.

And then the last job I had, I was the head of global operations. So I had global responsibility, including the U.S. and every one of the 81 countries in terms of training, operations, technology for the restaurants, food safety, and supply chain, so pretty broad-based stuff. But I never was the CEO of the company, and so this is my dream job, to really take a small but powerful company that's ready for the big growth, and that's why I'm so excited to be here.

Why did you leave Burger King?

The reason I left Burger King's very simple. After having five different owners, the sixth owner [of Burger King] was a company called 3G. They're part of RBI (Restaurant Brands International). They're the owners of Popeye's, Tim Horton's, and so they also, by the way, own Anheuser-Busch, they own Kraft, they own Heinz, and they own a bunch of other stuff. But anyway, their style is when they acquire something, they eliminate not only the executive team, but three levels below that. So, I left along with every one of my peers. Like they say in the movies: "it's just business." I was given a nice package, so I don't have a complaint. But a week later they came back and said, "Well, would you stay? We decided maybe you could do something else, like run the U.S." Which I had already done for 10 years. I was 56 at the time, and I decided that I wanted a change, and this was my opportunity to do that.

What was your favorite thing to order at Burger King?

Well, now that's a great question. Obviously, the answer has to be a Whopper. I always would have a Whopper, minus onion, cut in half, extra pickles, but that's what I liked then. Having said that, I can tell you, there's nothing like a BurgerFi burger, and I'm not just saying that because I'm the CEO.

What's the difference between BurgerFi and other burger places?

Our beef is grass-fed, grain-finished, the fact that there's no antibiotics, no steroids, no chemicals. And I think about this a lot, I'm not a young guy. I don't mind telling you, I just turned 67, which is not a young age, although I feel young, and I can tell you that as opposed to my father that didn't grow up with fast food, guys that are my age now grew up with fast food, we grew up with Burger King, McDonald's, Wendy's, so for us, BurgerFi is very relevant. It's not just relevant to millennials and young people, it's very relevant to folks like me that love fast food, except it's even better. The quality of the food... the burgers are incredible.

And not only... And I don't mind saying this, you've probably heard of Shake Shack. We have in the state of Florida, for example, we have 55 locations, Shake Shack only has 17. So we're actually the better burger chain of choice in Florida, in our home state. We started in Lauderdale by the sea, but we're headquartered in North Palm Beach. 

One thing we have that I'm very proud of is the fact that we not only have a variety of great-tasting burgers... but we also have, and we were one of the first to have a plant-based product, The Beyond Burger, we also have our very own VegeFi. It's a trademarked product. We produce it in a world-class commissary, also based in North Palm Beach. And having that great variety, the big three, beef, plant-based, and VegeFi, that's a huge platform for us, and that's just the beginning. 

There's a magazine called Chain Reaction, which I had never heard of until I got to BurgerFi, because it's an industry-specific thing. But we are one of two chains (Shake Shack is the other) that has an A-rated burger. 

What's the difference between fast food and fast casual?

That's a great question, and one that certainly people in the industry know. And I would say that because our food is handcrafted and takes a little bit of time, as we say, chef-inspired, handcrafted, and very unique in our build-out, we take a little more time to provide that quality food. So fast food, some place like a drive-through chain might get you the food in three minutes, but it's a different type of quality then you're going to get in the five and seven minutes that we take to make our food, so that's one. 

Secondly, I think it's more of a niche menu. And what I mean by that, is we don't... Yeah, we have variety, but we also don't have 2,000 products, and we really take our time selecting the very best quality products. We're constantly looking at our menu and getting the right number of items. I think that's also part of it. And I think the atmosphere, and also the hospitality. When you have a great atmosphere... As I like to say, you can take a date to a BurgerFi. You can take your wife to BurgerFi, and you're not going to disappoint, they're going to want to come back again. You wouldn't necessarily take a date to a McDonald's or to another place, it's just a different experience, you probably want to go through a drive-through. So, I think that's a big part of it. I think the image, the hospitality, the friendly service, it's a fun place, you have music, you can have beer, for example, craft beer and different types of beer, you can have wine. So, I mean, you can have a really nice time eating our great food and celebrating with a nice cold beer.

Your French fries look incredible. What's the secret?

I know, they're fantastic! I know fries because I competed in that industry against many others. They're properly salted, the right size, the right color. We have very indulgent, great-tasting food. Our custard shakes are like ice cream, so it can be tough to have a shake along with fries and a burger. So we now have a custard size, which we will walk up and down the dining room and offer it up. We get a lot of sales that way. 

The last component of why we're different is we also serve it in a very eco-friendly and a sustainable environment. The brand has been around for 10 years, and yet the image of our restaurant is brand new. Many fast food chains have remodeled three times, and they don't look as good as ours, and I think that's a tribute to the team. We have a small, focused team here, who we're now leveraging more strengths on. You're able to do a lot of stuff without middle management saying, "No, we can't do that. It costs too much." It's a very powerful thing about our brand. 

How was Martha Stewart brought on to BurgerFi's Board of Directors?

Martha Stewart is obviously one of the icons of food in the world. I think she has 97 percent recognition among women. And I heard another statistic the other day: 70 percent of millennials have tried one of Martha's recipes. That's pretty incredible. First of all, I've gotten to know her. I actually text her back and forth. She's great about visiting our restaurants. She went through our store in the Upper East Side in Manhattan, she was in Kentucky this week, and always visits and shares with me her experience at the restaurant level. She loves our food!  

But to answer specifically your question, she actually met my boss, the chairman of the company, Ophir Sternberg, who took the company public. They met at a food and wine festival where Martha, she was the guest honoree, if you will. So they met there, they got to know each other. It turns out they both have a love of horses, and they're into that quite a bit, so they became actually great friends, and I think that's where the relationship started. 

What's it like to work with Martha? 

I will tell you, I've been so impressed with her. She is top-notch, super smart, and it's gotten so much excitement now that we're a public company. Our franchisees, I must've gotten more texts from our franchisees about Martha Stewart coming on our board in a positive way, it was more than anything else we've done. It's been huge, even though we're doing a lot of great stuff with our food. Right now, we're rolling out the SWAG Burger, which is the Spicy Wagyu Burger, I can tell you that Martha Stewart was equally exciting and more so. It's a great combination with our brand. We're happy to have her, and I'm excited to work with her.

What will Martha's role be at BurgerFi?

She's going to work with us in our... Most board members are in a couple of committees as well. She's going to be the co-chair of our product and innovation committee with chef Paul Griffin, who's our chef. So, we're excited. We're actually planning our first meeting hopefully soon, so we're in the middle of that right now.  

Will she be adding more menu items? Working with the chef?

She'll be collaborating with us. She loves our menu and our image, but I think we love to have somebody of that pedigree looking at our stuff and seeing what we could do. And we are working on new stuff, which I can't talk about because we're a public company. But we'll certainly get Martha involved as we can.

What's your favorite BurgerFi burger?

I actually love the regular BurgerFi burger, although because I'm the CEO, I have to admit that I also go for the CEO burger. Sometimes I combine burgers, mix it up a bit. One of the beautiful things about our burgers is they're made to order, so we can do whatever you want. We have one burger we call the Conflicted Burger because you have both a no-antibiotic Angus beef patty and our trademarked VegeFi patty as well. 

There are a lot of countries, like Argentina, where having an egg on a burger is a big deal. So we have a Breakfast All Day burger that has hash browns and a fried egg on top. It's like having your breakfast meal between two buns. We also can do a green-style burger, if you don't want to do carbs. It's very nice iceberg lettuce that covers the burger like a clap shell. The list goes on. I really try to eat all of our products all the time. The spicy chicken products have been fantastic, but my new favorite now is the SWAG (Spicy Wagyu) burger. There was this whole thing about the chicken sandwich competition. We wanted to be the first to start a spicy beef competition, so that's why we rolled out the SWAG burger. We're getting a lot of social media behind it, so hopefully a competitor will try to take us on. And then we'll go to Plan B. We've got a couple of other options ready to go.

Can you tell us what makes the SWAG burger so special?

It's made with two patties that's a blend of brisket and 100-percent Wagyu, which is a notch above our regular Angus burger patty, and like all of our beef, it's vacuum-packed and never frozen. It's interesting that a lot of our guests don't know what Wagyu is, but they know it's high quality. People are really craving that, so we went with the spicy Wagyu instead of a regular burger, and it's even more premium. There are five different components to it: charred jalapenos, candied ghost-pepper bacon, which really packs on the heat, sweet tomato relish, habanero pepper jack cheese, and hot steak sauce. It's spicy, but it's not overwhelming. It all works very well together, and that's the beauty of chef-inspired food because Chef Paul Griffin knows exactly how to make that happen.