This is the best summary I could come up with:
David Shear, RBI’s president, said in March 2022 that Burger King’s main operator in Russia had “refused” to shut the outlets following the first attacks on Ukraine.
Steven Tian, part of a team of researchers at Yale University who track what companies have done in response to the Ukraine war, argued using franchise agreements as an “excuse” was a “convenient smokescreen”.
Mark Dixon, founder of the Moral Rating Agency, which campaigns against firms doing business in Russia, called for RBI to disclose what specific actions it had taken in its attempts to leave.
David Bond, partner at law firm Fieldfisher, said RBI’s 15% stake meant it could not simply “dictate terms” to its fellow shareholders to require them to close Burger King branches.
He also suggested companies that franchise out their brands would be reluctant to simply walk away from deals as it could lead to “dire consequences”, including being sued for breach of contract, as well as reputational damage.
But he said consequences aside, there was nothing stopping RBI from terminating the franchise arrangement if it was adamant it wanted to do so, though added it might not result in the Burger King brand ceasing to exist in Russia.
The original article contains 671 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Putin isn’t chowing down on BK, neither are the oligarchs, or the heads of the army, the FSB, or so on.
What’s the point of making sure BK leaves the market except and ineffectual attempt to hurt ordinary Russians?
Honestly, BK should just leave. Russians or as a matter of fact no one deserves to eat that “food”.
I remember when the sanctions started and Western fast food, media, and social media were all pulling out. Someome quipped “oh no, Russians will be the healthiest and happiest people on the planet. How awful.”
Then they just kept the same fast food joints but changed the names after the franchise exits
Mfw when no pizza hut
BK staying is the punishment
I don’t even understand how the hell burger King is alive to this day. There’s 2 burger kings in my city, both on the same road and I’ve never seen anyone in line at either of them.
Like are we even sure burger King isint some psy op or something? Does anyone even remember the last time they were in one?
I think the narrative these people are trying to push is that these companies get dollars flowing into Russia, they buy roubles, and Russia uses the dollars on the international weaponry market. I don’t get why this would be a problem, since Microsoft still does the same shit I assume (most Russians definitely use Windows)
The main purpose is to create a sentiment of dissatisfaction for the current government
Edit: I am just pointing out their purpose, it doesn’t mean that I share their view boyz
Russians are going to be so angry about no Burger King they’ll do a 1917 on Putin for sure.
Without American fast food, Russians will have to resort to eating rotten maggot-infested meat. It will be like a million Battleship Potemkins all at once.
Is it effective? Especially since McD’s leaving the country has just resulted in the Russian suppliers and restaurant owners running the place on their own with the same recipes.
Are the Russian people going to be angry at the lack of clown/king related branding?
Are the Russian people going to be angry at the lack of clown/king related branding?
I point to things like Aunt Jemima or something and tell you I can see how this might seem like it works to the US
that’s because Americans just want to be angry at each other about something. Ultimately the American obsession with culture war stupid bullshit comes from the fact that the American constitution is an objectively stupid foundation for a country and its checks and balances prevent any actual politics from getting done so to differentiate themselves politicians have to focus on nonsense
this has also effected other countries that have too much american news
I don’t really know a way forward other than just getting rid of the United states as a legal framework and starting a new country entirely from scratch there is really nothing salvageable about the way american democracy is structured and it needs a redesign from the ground up
Like the time I overthrew my government when my favorite pizza joint closed.
I’m just going to point out here the lockdown protests
IDK I would be pretty happy if shitty body-ruining fast food and proprietary Spyware like Microsoft left my country, I would like my shitty neofascist government sliiiightly more (I am Italian, sadly) if instead of sucking on uncle Sam’s hairy balls they would kick harmful corpos out
also if they left then the burger kings in russia would just stay open. It is not a complicated business to copy when you already have the equipment and staff. It’s as simple as continuing to sell burgers
Burger king could end it’s francisee relationships but the burger shop is already in russia
Well, it’s about economics, not hurting ordinary russians. Doing business in russia gives them money, which helps them pay for the war. It’s as simple as that.
But Burger King sells to Russians and repatriates some of its profits back to the US. If BK leaves Russia then Russians will spend their money on other restaurants, presumably ones which do not send profits overseas (due to the sanctions) which paradoxically means more money staying in Russia.
If the restaurants close then there will be some momentary unemployment but there’s a war going on so unemployment helps smooth over manpower issues. That’s also ignoring the possibility of a Russian entity stepping into BK’s shoes like they did with McD’s and just running the place without the trademarks.
I don’t see any purpose beyond moral posturing.
They don’t even have to respect trademarks anymore because of how much Russia is sanctioned. They can just keep running their own Burger King with the only difference being that the real BK won’t see any profits and the money will stay inside Russia.
Worst case scenario for the west is that the Russians just rename the chain “Burger Tsar” or something and continue as normal. Russians still get their treats, BK gets no money.
they wouldn’t even have to stop calling it burger king
It is about economics. If Burger King leaves Russia, they’re still leaving the restaurants, distribution networks and the employees behind. They’re not going to sit idle just because the brand left, rather they’re going to keep going under a new name, just like how McDonald’s did.
What effect does that have on the Russian war effort? None.
They should feed the homeless free borgors in USA and Europe instead, and just leave the great Mother Russia. Burger King is fucking mediocre in India.
wait they dont have the special vegan spicy no-meat burger alternative in India all the tiktoklings have been yapping about?
How does this make sense? They lose money from giving away free burgers and lose money from leavig Russia. Why would they do this? This is like when George Michael throws a banana away for every dollar he steals from the cash register
Borgors are not very healthy, and these big brands induce a capitalistic slavery mindset among non-rich people. Burger King exports USA culture as well.
They’re very mediocre in Canada. But that said, they’re cheap as hell compared to their counterparts. And I’d argue, in many urban centers they definitely are feeding the homeless, just charging for it lol.
You can get two cheeseburgers, fries and a drink for $6. You can get a pack of nuggies for $3. You aren’t getting that sort of bang for buck at any other commercial fast food place around here. Something like that would easily cost close to $10 if not more at mcdonalds.
I always tell my wife if I was homeless, she’d find me begging for change at the intersection closest to a burger king.
Well, I would prefer cooking raw materials myself if I were that poor. For $6 I could cook myself a day’s worth of food in India, but that probably cannot be said about Canada.
but that probably cannot be said about Canada.
Depends on what you’re eating. Even in the most insanely priced areas, beans and rice tend to be pretty damn cheap, and North Americans do not eat a lot of rice or beans or chili or other cheap foods that are staples in lots of Asian diets.
Yeah it’s been a bit tight. Like surely, for $6 you could definitely get more food at the grocery store, but being that poor often involves not having the proper equipment or space to really cook anything. But yeah, our grocery store situation isn’t pretty right now. Fresh and healthy foods are expensive.
Every time someone complains about hexbear they make their emojis 1 pixel bigger
Burger King ad, remove. Fast food are a health hazard stop promoting this shit
If BK food in the US is any indication of the quality in Russia, let them stay open. Worst of the worst as far as fast food goes. It’s economic warfare with none of the war crimes! /s
and even the taste remained the same - shit with sauce
I thought burger king staying was the punishment
Who the fuck cares who is still open in Russia. Theres plenty of companiess still open in Israel where’s the outrage over that?
Ah, classic case of whataboutism. Go troll somewhere else.
Uhh you’re on my server dummy
Classic Russian whataboutism
I do love me some Tchaikovsky
So you say I should ignore all the injustice in the world just because I cannot care about all of them?
That’s just stupid
why can’t you care about all of them. Also how is burger king selling burgers injustice?
You know you can care about multiple things at once, right?
OK?
I know the answer to my question, don’t bother. But let’s all try to come back to the really basic common sense. Burger king topic in a war news channel? For real?
Explaining the ineffectiveness of sanctions to an American:
ok so imagine you have McDonald’s but you also have Burger King and McDonald’s pulls out but the Russians can just make their own McDonald’s and they can still buy Burger King…
Sanctions are when you ask your mom for McDonald's and she says "we got food at the house". But the burger at home is actually not badI think (?) I watered it down even more for the average American to understand.
Also a ton of people die due to a lack of medicine. Not in Russia per se, but you get what I mean
BK in Russia? Smh I thought biological warfare was illegal.
Was going to say that.
AFAIK, the situation with Burger King, is that unlike McDonalds, BK doesn’t have much leverage over Russian franchisee’s. They can try and say “close the stores, we’re leaving”, but the actual store owners would just say “no” and re-brand them back to “Rostik’s”. They don’t really have any assets in Russia so there’s nothing really to sell either, but they do still receive the franchise fees. So pulling out would only benefit Russia
Rostik’s is actually what KFC was, and the funny thing about it is KFC has the similar franchise structure in Russia, they officially left, told all franchisees to change names back to Rostik’s, but the biggest one just said “no” even to that, as KFC’s contract that includes the rights to use the name expires only in 2035.
Every hexbear comment reads like AI trained only on the Tumblr accounts of 14 year old boys with Stalin body pillows.
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Have some lemme.ee gold friend
Fucking savage 😂
Absolutely brilliant description.
Say anything remotely negative about Dictatorship 1 and Dictatorship 2, and they come scrambling out of the woodwork with a long rant full of lies, stupidity, and revisionism and a couple of those cringe ass, unnecessarily large emojis to go with it. Honestly sick of them. Individual instance filtering can’t come fast enough.
Yuuuuup.
I just clicked the rainbow pentagram to see that version of this comment thread. Wow. So glad we defederated from those assholes.
What’s the deal with the rainbow pentagram next to the username?
Clicking it seemed to just take me to another lemmy instance?
It takes you to the version of the comment on the commenter’s instance.
Thanks!
Capital Scum doing capitalist scum shit.
Yeah, they should only operate in good countries, like the US.
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And Israel
