Burger King takes crown from Wendy’s

Burger King has been chasing Wendy’s for more than 20 years.

The home of the Whopper finally caught the iconic Frosty maker in the American Customer Satisfaction Index’s most recent restaurant report as the burger chain with the most satisfied customers.

Among hamburger chains, Burger King eked out a single percentage point victory with a score of 77 to Wendy’s 76, on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being the most-satisfied customers.

The report was distilled from 5,557 customer surveys collected nationwide between June 2016 and May 2017.

Why did Burger King gain ground on Wendy’s? There are too many factors, such as thousands of individual locations and tens of thousands of employees, to come to any one conclusion, said Bob Welcher, president of Restaurant Consultants Inc.

“I can’t think of a reason,” he said.

Wendy’s score did not drop in the index, but Burger King rose 1 percentage point to break last year’s tie. McDonald’s lags both by a wide margin with a score of 69.

In another shift, full-service restaurants as a whole were surpassed in satisfaction by their limited-service competition for the first time. The top performing full-service chain was Cracker Barrel, with a score of 84, compared with the top limited-service chain, Chick-fil-A, which scored an 87.

Here, Welcher sees the index reflecting a longerterm shift in consumer

behavior. Full-service chains have suffered in general through a years-long slump in traffic.

Full-service restaurants dropped almost 4 percentage points in the index from last year.

“There is something to that score being down,” Welcher said. “I don’t know if it as much dissatisfaction with full-service as it is that they don’t want full service.”

Full-service chains, which would include Columbusbased restaurants such as Bob Evans and Bravo Brio, received lower scores this year on accuracy of orders, quality and variety of food, and speed of service. It might just be that some chains need to step up their game, he said.

“Places that do their homework really shine,” Welcher said, “but some of that is fading.”

Other points of note in the report are that Papa John’s scored best among pizza chains and Dunkin’ Donuts held off Starbucks for most satisfying coffee chain.