Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and it turns out it can be a shot in the arm for business, too. After losing its crown as the number-two burger chain in the country to Wendy’s, Burger King fought back and dumped $750 million into a massive makeover. Its efforts seem to be paying off. The company announced this week that its quarterly net income shot up by a super-sized 60%.
But while nobody’s going to mistake BK’s former plastic-masked King mascot (which it abandoned last year in favor of celebrity endorsers) for McDonald’s Ronald or Wendy’s eponymous spokes-redhead, there’s something striking about the changes Burger King made to get customers back in the door and at the drive-through window: They look a lot like the tactics both McDonald’s and Wendy’s have been using for some time now.