March 4, 2026
Photo courtesy of Burger King
Should Burger King’s President Be Giving Out his Cell Phone Number?
While QSRs often solicit feedback from customers, Burger King is providing the phone number of Tom Curtis — president, Burger King U.S. and Canada — to the public to support both marketing and feedback-gathering.
According to articles from Restaurant Business and Nation’s Restaurant News, Curtis will spend the first two weeks of the program spending four hours every day — including nights and weekends — taking unfiltered calls and texts from guests on his work phone.
The calls during the first two weeks will be recorded and are expected to be used in digital marketing. After the two weeks, the initiative will continue with shorter daily windows and include additional members of the leadership team answering and responding to calls and texts. Every message received will be reviewed and responded to.
Despite the public relations and potential marketing benefit, Burger King said the campaign particularly builds on efforts to leverage customer feedback in recent years to “help drive meaningful change” in modernizing restaurants and updating its menu to support its $400 million “Reclaim the Flame” turnaround. Those efforts included the launch of the Million Dollar Whopper Contest, which invites Burger King enthusiasts to dream up their own Whopper creations.
“As the home of Have It Your Way, guests are our most important advisors. We’re grateful that they provide the feedback that is shaping our brand today and in the future,” said Curtis in statement. “There’s nothing like hearing from guests firsthand, so I’m excited to have an even greater opportunity to have live open and honest conversations, ask questions, and see how we can create an even better Burger King together.”
Burger King’s Curtis Speaks on the Unique Marketing, Comms Effort
In an interview with Nation’s Restaurant News, Curtis said he hopes the initial two weeks will “get a pipeline going” to establish a perpetual loop of customer feedback. He said, “This will become a sustainable routine as long as I’m here. It won’t be four hours a day, but a couple days a week, and we’ll rotate.”
Later this year, franchisees and other Burger King team members will engage directly with customers to hear and act on feedback.
Criticism is expected. He told Nation’s Restaurant News, “I don’t expect it to be a love fest. People are going to tell me what we can do better, or about an experience at their local restaurant. The best gift I can get is real, honest feedback. Maybe the food isn’t hot or the cashier is distracted, or a restaurant isn’t as clean as we’d like it to be. We have to understand anything that may make a customer think twice about not coming back.”
He further told Restaurant Business that while many retail and restaurant executives routinely visit locations to secure insights from customers, encouraging phone calls and texts extends his reach to customers. He said, “You know, there’s 7,000 restaurants out there, and I know this is going to shock you, but I don’t get to 7,000 restaurants in a year. It’s just not practical. I’m going to get people. Calling me from who knows where, New York, Pennsylvania, Tucson, Arizona, and they’re going to talk with me about their specific experiences.”
In the retail space, J.Crew’s former CEO Mickey Drexler in 2016 gave out his work e-mail to encourage feedback — but it’s rare for any executive across industries to provide either direct e-mails or phone numbers.
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Discussion Questions
Will giving out the phone number of Burger King’s North American president to encourage feedback prove to be valuable and practical for the fast-food chain?
Are there more efficient and effective ways to attain quality customer feedback?
Poll
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This feels more like a marketing stunt than a genuine feedback mechanism. Case in point: the first two weeks are being recorded for digital content… bit of a tell.
That said, any time a company actually listens to customers, something useful can slip through. If there were a prediction market on “Will Tom Curtis actually answer the phone,” I’d lean heavily into not likey, but I hope I’m wrong. I bet someone in Albuquerque has a lot to unpack about their relationship with their last Whopper.
As an attention-getting gimmick it’s fine; as an attention-getting gimmick that has low potential for accomplishing anything, and a high potential for actually backfiring – when thousands of people complain “I couldn’t get thru” – it’s even better.
The only thing I’m undecided over is what voting “E” on the Poll would mean.
Effort?
There is an argument to be made that this shows Burger King wants to listen to customers, which is no bad thing. It also generates headlines. The question, of course, is how authentic it is. I very much doubt this is the CEO’s main cellphone number. Nor do I think he reads all comments. So, in practice it’s a bit of a gimmick. I much prefer the approach that Steve Jobs took – which was to selectively read customer emails and respond personally to a handful – which I am sure created surprise and delight for the recipient.
Yes an argument could be made; but as you demonstrate it would be a naive one.
You’re probably correct that they want to hear from people – and I don’t actually question that they do – but unfortunately their methodology tells me they’e much more concerned with the conveying the impression that they are. So in this case, for the cyncial at least, the good intentions get trumped by the gimmickry (or maybe they’ve just a lack of confidence about their credibility ?).
This is sort of the equivalent of a retail CEO working the sales floor. Giving customers your private cell number is a little gimmicky, but I give Tom Curtis credit for actually trying something different. And honestly, who wouldn’t want to sit in on a few of those calls?
It is all going to be in the execution. If it is just another idea dreamed up by the marketing department, it will be a waste of time and money. If the CEO actually spends the time on the phone, I think it will be a real eye-opener. Most likely,y the people who call customer service are not calling to tell management how happy they are, but how unhappy they are about something that happened to them in the restaurant.
This can be a chance to really learn something and make real changes.
Burger King’s decision to give out the phone number of its North American president is a clever engagement tactic—but its long-term value is more symbolic than operational. The company invited customers to call or text President Tom Curtis directly with feedback on food, service, and restaurant conditions, promising that messages would be reviewed and used to inform business decisions. Curtis even committed to spending several hours per day responding to customers during the initiative’s launch.
From a brand standpoint, that kind of direct access can be powerful. It signals accountability and authenticity, and it reinforces Burger King’s long-standing “Have It Your Way” positioning by showing that leadership is willing to hear feedback firsthand. In that sense, the effort is valuable as a cultural and marketing signal—demonstrating that the organization is listening and potentially surfacing real insights that may not appear in surveys or social monitoring.
The challenge, of course, is scalability. A national quick-service brand serving millions of customers per week simply cannot rely on a single executive to field calls as the primary feedback mechanism. More efficient approaches include structured digital feedback systems, loyalty-app surveys tied to transactions, social listening tools, and operational data tied to specific stores or menu items. These systems allow companies to gather large volumes of feedback, identify patterns, and respond systematically rather than anecdotally.
Ultimately, initiatives like this work best as a tone-setting exercise rather than a permanent operating model. If the gesture encourages the broader organization—from franchisees to store managers—to listen more carefully to customers, then it has served a meaningful purpose. But the real work of capturing and acting on customer feedback still requires scalable systems and disciplined operational follow-through.
Do you think his wife, kids, and corporate staff have a different number?
Although appearing a bit gimmicky, direct interaction with customers provides executives with unfiltered customer feedback. Two things need to be addressed to make this a success: 1. Make sure you hear what you don’t want to hear. 2. Respond to customers who reach out to you.
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This feels more like a marketing stunt than a genuine feedback mechanism. Case in point: the first two weeks are being recorded for digital content… bit of a tell.
That said, any time a company actually listens to customers, something useful can slip through. If there were a prediction market on “Will Tom Curtis actually answer the phone,” I’d lean heavily into not likey, but I hope I’m wrong. I bet someone in Albuquerque has a lot to unpack about their relationship with their last Whopper.
As an attention-getting gimmick it’s fine; as an attention-getting gimmick that has low potential for accomplishing anything, and a high potential for actually backfiring – when thousands of people complain “I couldn’t get thru” – it’s even better.
The only thing I’m undecided over is what voting “E” on the Poll would mean.
Effort?
There is an argument to be made that this shows Burger King wants to listen to customers, which is no bad thing. It also generates headlines. The question, of course, is how authentic it is. I very much doubt this is the CEO’s main cellphone number. Nor do I think he reads all comments. So, in practice it’s a bit of a gimmick. I much prefer the approach that Steve Jobs took – which was to selectively read customer emails and respond personally to a handful – which I am sure created surprise and delight for the recipient.
Yes an argument could be made; but as you demonstrate it would be a naive one.
You’re probably correct that they want to hear from people – and I don’t actually question that they do – but unfortunately their methodology tells me they’e much more concerned with the conveying the impression that they are. So in this case, for the cyncial at least, the good intentions get trumped by the gimmickry (or maybe they’ve just a lack of confidence about their credibility ?).
This is sort of the equivalent of a retail CEO working the sales floor. Giving customers your private cell number is a little gimmicky, but I give Tom Curtis credit for actually trying something different. And honestly, who wouldn’t want to sit in on a few of those calls?
It is all going to be in the execution. If it is just another idea dreamed up by the marketing department, it will be a waste of time and money. If the CEO actually spends the time on the phone, I think it will be a real eye-opener. Most likely,y the people who call customer service are not calling to tell management how happy they are, but how unhappy they are about something that happened to them in the restaurant.
This can be a chance to really learn something and make real changes.
Burger King’s decision to give out the phone number of its North American president is a clever engagement tactic—but its long-term value is more symbolic than operational. The company invited customers to call or text President Tom Curtis directly with feedback on food, service, and restaurant conditions, promising that messages would be reviewed and used to inform business decisions. Curtis even committed to spending several hours per day responding to customers during the initiative’s launch.
From a brand standpoint, that kind of direct access can be powerful. It signals accountability and authenticity, and it reinforces Burger King’s long-standing “Have It Your Way” positioning by showing that leadership is willing to hear feedback firsthand. In that sense, the effort is valuable as a cultural and marketing signal—demonstrating that the organization is listening and potentially surfacing real insights that may not appear in surveys or social monitoring.
The challenge, of course, is scalability. A national quick-service brand serving millions of customers per week simply cannot rely on a single executive to field calls as the primary feedback mechanism. More efficient approaches include structured digital feedback systems, loyalty-app surveys tied to transactions, social listening tools, and operational data tied to specific stores or menu items. These systems allow companies to gather large volumes of feedback, identify patterns, and respond systematically rather than anecdotally.
Ultimately, initiatives like this work best as a tone-setting exercise rather than a permanent operating model. If the gesture encourages the broader organization—from franchisees to store managers—to listen more carefully to customers, then it has served a meaningful purpose. But the real work of capturing and acting on customer feedback still requires scalable systems and disciplined operational follow-through.
Do you think his wife, kids, and corporate staff have a different number?
Although appearing a bit gimmicky, direct interaction with customers provides executives with unfiltered customer feedback. Two things need to be addressed to make this a success: 1. Make sure you hear what you don’t want to hear. 2. Respond to customers who reach out to you.