Why There's A Whataburger Flag On Mount Kilimanjaro

What would you expect to find should you ever ascend to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro? Snow, possibly, if you're a Hemingway fan, or perhaps the corpse of a frozen leopard, or a lifetime's worth of unfulfilled hopes and dreams. If your turn of mind is more literal than literary, you might expect to see the debris left behind by previous mountaineering expeditions. What you might not be expecting, however, is what amounts to advertising for a U.S. fast food chain.

No, McDonald's has yet to open an outpost high atop a peak in Tanzania, nor has Starbucks colonized this territory, although it does source some of its beans from coffee plantations in that country. Instead, what you might find on Kilimanjaro is a flag bearing the logo of Whataburger, planted by a father and son climbing team back in 2010. We cannot say for certain whether the flag still remains, though, as that would depend on the site cleanup policy at Kilimanjaro National Park. After all, the flag kind of does contravene the outdoorsy motto: "Take only photos [or memories], leave only footprints."

The twosome who ascended Mount Kilimanjaro, Whataburger flag in hand (or perhaps in one of their packs) were Jerry and Hudson Baird. Hudson at the time was a recent college graduate and the climbing trip was a present from his proud dad, Jerry. Now mountaineering isn't an inexpensive hobby, nor is Kilimanjaro the cheapest of climbs -– it's estimated that it costs between $2,000 and $6,000 per climber to make the trek, and this doesn't even begin to cover the cost of plane fare. Still, Jerry Baird was likely earning a comfortable living back then as he was the proud owner of eight Whataburger franchises in the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama.

As to what motivated the Bairds to claim Kilimanjaro in the name of Whataburger, they didn't come right out and say, but Baird Senior did admit that he was actively looking to expand the brand's footprint. While he wasn't attempting to open any overseas branches, much less ones that only an elite few would be likely to visit, the flag-planting stunt did succeed in gaining a certain amount of press coverage in the Birmingham area and elsewhere. What's more, he may have improved his standing with Whataburger as the flag bore the signatures of the company's head honchos circa 2010. Four years later, Baird divested himself of his holdings by selling them to Whataburger, thus completing the circle of (corporate) life (ingonyama nengw' enamabala).