When Burger King announced its new "Your Way Champion" role - a dedicated manager in a special vest whose job is to make sure orders are right and customers feel welcomed - I posted one sentence on LinkedIn: you cannot vest your way out of a training and accountability failure.
Seventy-five thousand impressions later, Tom Curtis, President of Burger King US and Canada, showed up in the comments. Twice.
That does not happen. Most executives at that level do not engage a critic in a public thread. He did, and what he said was worth taking seriously.
"I strongly believe that the role is a piece of a puzzle and a part of a solution - it is not the answer. It's also a signal, both internally and externally of our value system and the culture we are working toward. Nobody at BK looks at the Your Way Champion as THE solution or as a PR stunt. It is one small step in building toward the culture we envision. #JustStarted"
And then, in a second reply:
"Two months of training managers, regional and local rallies, and franchisee buy-in surrounded this moment. And it's just a moment in a mission. Marketing creates that moment. What happens in restaurants creates a movement."
That last line is correct. I have stood in the gap between the moment and the movement, and I know exactly how wide it is.
When I was CMO of It's A Grind Coffee, we took the company from startup to more than 130 locations and were the second fastest-growing business in Los Angeles County two years running. Every franchisee went through two weeks of training we called Java U. Same standards, same book, same framework for every location.
Before we sent a trainer out to a new store, we had one non-negotiable requirement: the occupancy certificate had to be in hand. Not applied for. Not pending. In hand.
One of our first out-of-state franchisees called to say they were ready. Our trainer flew from Long Beach to the Midwest. She arrived to find construction still underway at the front door. No occupancy certificate. And the franchisee who had completed two weeks of Java U? He was on vacation. He had left his son, who had never been through a single day of training, to manage the opening.
She called me exasperated. They had four days and could not begin because the store could not legally open.
That moment told me everything. This franchisee had heard every standard we set, nodded at every requirement, and then decided all of it was a suggestion once we were not standing next to him.
That is not a training failure. That is a commitment failure. And no amount of training fixes a person who treats your process as optional before the doors even open.
At It's A Grind, the franchisees split into two groups, and the divide had nothing to do with the quality of their Java U training.
The first group worked the floor. They knew that 80% of coffee drinkers buy before 11am, so they staffed heavy for the morning rush and ran lean the rest of the day. They were in the building. They knew their crew. When something went wrong, they saw it and fixed it.
The second group had bought an investment and wanted to stay out of the building. They were also the ones who came back to corporate with ideas - ads in movie theaters, karaoke nights, one operator who wanted Chippendale dancers at his grand reopening. Anything except standing behind the counter at 6 am, which is the only hour that pays.
We sent performance coaches to the second group more than anyone else. The coach would arrive to run standards training and get redirected to help with marketing instead. The book stayed closed.
We had a rule: no televisions in the coffee houses. We wanted customers talking to each other. One operator hung a TV and covered it with a piece of art before our coach came through, then uncovered it after we left. When September 11 happened, the sets were on. Everything we had built the brand around - a calm escape from the noise - was gone by lunch.
Franchisee buy-in is not a headcount at a rally. It is not a signed agreement. It is a daily choice made by an owner you are not standing next to.
Curtis says two months of manager training and regional rallies preceded the launch. I believe him. That is real work and most brands skip it entirely.
It is also not the work that changes what an associate does on a Tuesday at 11:40 with six cars in the drive-thru.
Rallies build energy. Energy is not skill. Everyone leaves a rally believing. Nobody leaves a rally competent. The belief fades by the following week without someone in the store reinforcing it, asking why, holding the standard, and making it personal to each person on that crew.
Behavior changes through constant, bite-sized learning with someone accountable for applying it. That work happens in the trench, one conversation at a time, not in a ballroom.
Burger King has roughly 6,600 US restaurants. At It's A Grind, I could see everything clearly at 50 locations. At 100, once we were outside our own state, we lost the ability to know what was happening in real time and the ability to respond fast enough when we found out. Whatever visibility problem I had at 100, multiply it by 66.
The Whopper Guarantee promises that if your order misses, Burger King remakes it on the spot and a QR code in the box gets you a free one on your next visit.
At It's A Grind, we never gave away product for a service miss. Giving it away is an admission that we did not do the job. It buys silence from one customer and teaches the crew nothing.
There is a structural problem with the guarantee that the press release does not mention. The free Whopper comes off the franchisee's P&L. So does the labor for the person in the vest. Burger King is asking operators to pay for the failure and to fund the role created to catch the failure - a role that only exists because orders go wrong in the first place.
The franchisees who are already in their buildings will absorb it and use it as a feedback tool. The ones who bought a job they never intended to do will not. And it does not take many locations failing to deliver on a national guarantee to redefine what customers expect from the entire brand.
I watched that happen with a single TV on September 11.
The CEO showed up. He engaged. He did not send a communications director to post a careful non-response. He defended his program and acknowledged the limits of it in the same breath, and that combination takes confidence.
His instinct to train managers first and announce second was correct. His framing - marketing creates the moment, restaurants create the movement - is exactly right.
Where I would push back is on sequence. The morning that campaign ran, customers walked into Burger King to see what had changed. A campaign creates expectation and hands the bill to the restaurant. If what they found was one person in a vest and the same wrong order, the announcement cost the brand more than saying nothing would have.
Train first. Prove it in the restaurants. Then tell the world what they will find.
Curtis signed off with #JustStarted and I will take him at his word.
Twelve months from now there are two questions worth asking. Is the Your Way Champion still on the floor, or did franchisees quietly eliminate the position when the press moved on? And is anyone measuring the operators who never bought in - not the ones who showed up to the rally, but the ones who covered the TV with a painting?
The distance between a committed franchisee and an absentee one is not training. It is whether they see the work as a career or an investment. You can build the best training system in the industry and it will not move a person who decided your standards were optional before the doors opened.
That is why I built SalesRX - because every associate deserves a consistent framework for engaging customers, and every retail owner deserves a way to deliver it without relying on whoever happens to walk in that morning. The goal was never a wild west of individual interpretation where the customer becomes someone to deal with rather than someone who chose to walk in. You can see the difference the moment you walk into a Chick-fil-A. That standard is not out of reach for any retailer. It requires a system, and it requires someone willing to hold it.
Tom Curtis is trying. The question is whether his franchisees are.
What is Burger King's Your Way Champion role?
The Your Way Champion is a redesigned restaurant manager role at Burger King, identified by a dedicated uniform, whose job is to oversee order accuracy and serve as the point person for customer complaints and satisfaction.
What is the Burger King Whopper Guarantee?
The Whopper Guarantee promises that if a customer's Whopper doesn't meet expectations, Burger King will remake it on the spot and provide a QR code for a free Whopper on the customer's next visit.
Will Burger King's new training initiative actually fix its service problems?
The initiative depends entirely on franchisee buy-in. Rallies and announcements create a moment. What happens inside individual restaurants - run by franchise operators who may or may not be present in their buildings - determines whether that moment becomes a movement.
Why do franchise training programs fail?
Franchise training programs fail when operators treat standards as optional. The split is not about the quality of the training - it is about whether the franchisee sees ownership as a career or a passive investment. An absentee owner cannot hold a crew accountable for standards they never model themselves.
Who pays for the free Whopper when an order is wrong?
The cost comes off the individual franchisee's P&L, as does the labor for the Your Way Champion role. Burger King is asking operators to fund both the failure and the position created to catch it.