Burger King Opens Its First 100% Vegetarian Location Called Vurger King

While the entire fast-food sector is shifting to offer vegan alternatives, Burger King remains at the forefront of the movement. The fast-food giant just announced that Burger King Spain will host a completely vegetarian storefront for one month in Madrid. The company spent years of plant-based development to create a plant-based menu for consumers. The vegetarian pop-up is created in partnership with Unilever-owned The Vegetarian Butcher. For the duration of the pop-up, the Burger King location will be renamed, Vurger King.

The menu will feature all of Burger King’s innovative plant-based menu items. Some items will still contain animal-based ingredients including mayonnaise, however, customers can ask for these ingredients to be removed from their order.

The plant-based menu will feature the plant-based Whopper, vegan chicken nuggets, and the brand new Long Vegetal the plant-based alternative to the fast-food restaurant’s signature Long Chicken Sandwich. While the Long Vegetal will feature a plant-based chicken substitute, consumers will have to ask for no mayonnaise to make the sandwich completely vegan.

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The Vurger King storefront will last a month, but the collaborative restaurant aims to encourage plant-based eating throughout Spain and the rest of Europe. Over recent years, The Vegetarian Butchers have partnered with the international fast-food corporation to improve plant-based accessibility in the fast-food sector. This partnership marks the first time that Spain will see a plant-based fast-food establishment.

"We want to reach both people who base their diet on vegetable products and those who do eat meat but want to reduce their consumption," General Director of Restaurant Brands Iberia Spain and Portugal Borja Hernández de Alba told Entrepreneur Europe.

Spain’s first plant-based Burger King arrives in response to a sharp growth of vegan consumers throughout Europe. A new report publish by EU-funded SMART PROTEIN found that Europe’s plant-based food industry grew 49 percent over the last two years, reaching a valuation of approximately $4.2 billion. The report went on to record that more than 90 percent of Spain’s plant-based sales came from meat alternatives, showing a significant interest in plant-based protein alternatives.

“Finally, we can see the tremendous growth of plant-based food in Europe reflected in concrete numbers,” Senior Consumer Research Scientist at SMART PROTEIN Dr. Kai-Brit Bechtold wrote on the project website. “This report clearly reveals the huge increase in sales of plant-based food, providing a green light to the food industry to further pursue plant-based options.”

The Vurger King collaboration is the fast-food companies longest plant-based operation, but not its first vegan pop-up. Earlier this year, Burger King Germany announced that one location in Cologne would release a fully vegan menu for four days. As another extension of its partnership with the Vegetarian Butcher, the Cologne locations also featured the plant-based Whopper, nuggets, and Long Chicken Patty.

Burger King’s partnership with the Vegetarian Butcher now extends across 25 countries, providing plant-based alternatives to consumers worldwide. Through this alliance, Burger King offers the Plant-Based Whopper in China, the Whopper Vegetal in Mexico, the Vegan Chicken Royale in the United Kingdom, and more.

Within the US, Burger King is working with plant-based pioneer Impossible Foods to bring US consumers vegan proteins. Following the success of the Impossible Whopper, the two companies just announced the Impossible Chicken Nuggets debut in select cities including Des Moines, Miami, and Boston. Beginning on October 11, the plant-based nuggets will be available to customers for a trial period in the classic eight-piece menu option.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve teamed up with Impossible to make waves in the industry. In 2019, we became the first quick-service restaurant to serve the award-winning, plant-based Impossible patty and offer the iconic Impossible Whopper,” Burger King North America’s Chief Marketing Officer Ellie Doty said in a statement earlier this month. “So, it’s only fitting we’re the first global QSR to test the Impossible Nuggets. We’re excited to hear what our guests in the test markets think of this latest innovation.”

Fast-food restaurants have finally got the memo that their customer base isn’t just coming through for a burger, fried chicken, or a beef taco. Many now have plant-based foods and are coming up with creative, delicious ways to get more greens on the menu. Here are the 6 best fast-food chains with plant-based options on the menu.

Turns out there’s a lot more to rely on than a salad if you’re eating plant-based. Burger King has the Impossible Whopper featuring a meatless patty as well as a few secretly vegan options such as the French Toast Sticks and Hashbrowns.

Known for its mini square-shaped sliders, this hamburger chain jumped on the plant-based bandwagon at some participating locations. You can find an Impossible Slider on some White Castle menus.

This was the first national Mexican fast-food chain to offer Beyond Meat at the company’s 580 restaurants across the country. Del Taco has the Beyond Avocado Taco on the menu along with the Epic Beyond Original Mex Burrito and Avocado Veggie Bowl.

Another brand synonymous with beef burgers, Carl’s Jr. offers several plant-based options for veggie and plant lover such as Beyond Famous Star Burger and Guacamole Thickburger.

This fast-food restaurant may have been one of the first you frequented while transitioning to plant-based eating. That’s because Taco Bell has eight million vegetarian combinations and sells 350 million vegetarian items a year through menu substitutions or ordering off their vegetarian menu. In fact, they were the first quick-service restaurant to offer American Vegetarian Association (AVA) certified food options.

From the time it started offering breakfast sandwiches in 2006, the coffee conglomerate became a competitor in the fast-food space. You can get your favorite hot and cold beverages made with almond, coconut or oat milk but there are also plant-based food options available such as the Baja Black Bean Veggie Wrap, bagel with vegan cream cheese and Impossible Breakfast Sandwich.