Burger King Hacks You'll Wish You Knew Sooner

For 40 years, Burger King's slogan was "Have It Your Way," a snappy promise of the company's commitment to personalizing customer's fast food menu orders. But, according to Inc., in 2014. the brand changed its slogan to "Be Your Way," which sounds a little less like a promise about customized food options and a little more like a way to encourage customers to embrace their fast-food-loving selves. Regardless, the intent is the same: The brand wants customers to know they can mix, match, and change orders to suit their own needs. 

But when the sky's the limit for customized orders and you feel the pressure to place an order quickly, it can be hard to know where to start. So, if you need a few ideas to get the creative juices flowing, we've got you covered. Here are just a few of the many Burger King hacks you'll wish you knew sooner.

Most fast food joints give you the ability to load up on extra meat patties or cheese if you so desire. Burger King is no different, and it has a secret menu item that's loaded with four beef patties, four slices of cheese, bacon, and "special sauce." It's aptly dubbed (by fans, not the company itself) the Suicide Burger. Of course, for marketing reasons (if nothing else), this menu item certainly isn't listed on Burger King's menu board. 

So, if you waltz up to the counter and request a Suicide Burger, you might be met with blank stares. According to #HackTheMenu, if that happens, try asking for a "Quad Stacker," which just adds an extra patty and slice of cheese to the Triple Stacker that was on the official menu. If you're still met with general confusion (hey, these things happen), just ask for exactly what you're looking for: A burger with four patties, four slices of cheese, bacon, and special sauce. Simple, right?

Hey, sometimes you want French fries, and sometimes you want onion rings. But what happens when you just can't quite make up your mind? Enter the Burger King menu hack you absolutely need to know: Order "frings." According to #HackTheMenu, whether you're ordering a value size, small, medium, or large, when you ask for "frings," you'll automatically be served half French fries and half onion rings. Hence, the obviously derived moniker.

It's a delicious alternative to ordering just one side or the other (or both — no one's judging!), but it's hard to determine if it's a good deal. Onion rings tend to take up more space, so when you order just onion rings, you end up getting fewer total items to snack on. So, if you'd typically order onion rings, ordering frings might actually get you more volume of food for the same price. But if you tend to order French fries, ordering frings might actually land you with less volume of food to fill your belly with. At the end of the day, though, maybe food volume is less important than food satisfaction. If you want to "Have It Your Way," an order of frings might just be the ticket to a happy stomach. 

Here's a quick tip for anyone ordering from any fast food menu ever: If the restaurant has bacon on the menu, you can add bacon to pretty much whatever you want. Burger King is no different, according to Wide Open Eats. If you want a regular Whopper with bacon added? Simply ask for it. If you want your fries served with bacon, ask for it. If you want a salad with bacon strips added on top? Ask for it. If you want vanilla soft serve ice cream with a few slices of bacon crumbled in? Ask for it. (You probably get the picture.) Within reason, Burger King employees will probably be happy to accommodate all of your bacon-craving desires.

Maybe this is exactly what Burger King wanted when it switched its tagline to "Be Your Way" — the chain wanted people to feel unencumbered by social norms and to feel free to add bacon to everything without judgment. Or, you know, whatever customizations feel right for you. But when in doubt, bacon's a good place to start.

If you spend a few minutes perusing Burger King's own social media pages, you're bound to notice a few company-sanctioned "hacks." Really, these aren't jaw-dropping, break-the-mold-style hacks you could never come up with on your own, but it is interesting that the company itself is helping customers out with customization ideas. For example, in a 2016 Facebook post, Burger King Curaçao suggested layering onion rings on a cheeseburger for a personalized (and delicious) alternative. 

But really, if you're going to add onion rings, why not take the customization a little further and try a Rodeo Burger as suggested by #HackTheMenu? To score this secret menu item, all you have to do is ask for onion rings and barbecue sauce to be added to a standard cheeseburger. And if you're looking for a little more kick, ask for sliced jalapenos on top of your patty as well. It may not be a burger you want to indulge in every day, but these simple (and relatively inexpensive) tweaks are sure to take your standard burger from basic to gourmet.

Another Burger King-suggested hack is guaranteed to give your breakfast the extra shot of sugar you need to help power you through the morning. In a 2016 Facebook post, the fast-food chain suggested adding French toast sticks to your favorite breakfast sandwich, using the syrup as a sticky and delicious sauce.

Of course, the suggestion would have gone over better with fans if the accompanying image hadn't shown a person eating a sticky, syrup-doused breakfast sandwich while wearing fuzzy gloves. In fact, one fan, Jeremy Berg, stated, "At first glance this looked delicious ... then I saw this person was wearing fuzzy gloves. Disgusting." So, here's your tip: Do add French toast sticks to your favorite breakfast sandwich if you need something a little heartier than the standard option, but don't wear fuzzy gloves while eating it (especially if you add the syrup).

In 2015 Burger King caught some flack for suggesting on Facebook that customers individualize their salad order by adding onion rings. Many fans commented that adding onion rings to a salad defeats the purpose of making a health(ier) choice. But here's the thing: It's a bit of a false assumption that choosing a salad is a healthier decision than a burger and that you're negating the "health points" you earn by ordering a salad if you add onion rings. 

The false assumption is twofold. First, many salads are actually loaded with fat and calories in the form of cheese, croutons, fried chicken, and dressing. In fact, according to Burger King's nutrition website, the Crispy Chicken Garden Salad has a whopping 870 calories and about 71 grams of fat compared to the Whopper, which has only 657 calories and about 40 grams of fat. 

In this sense, you could eat a Whopper and a Crispy Taco (170 calories and nine grams of fat) and still consume fewer calories and less fat than you would with the Crispy Chicken Garden Salad. The second assumption is that adding onion rings would negate the other health benefits (like extra vitamins and fiber) that you consume when eating a salad. That's not how that works. If you really want onion rings on your salad, go ahead and add them. It won't make your salad healthier, but your salad might not be that healthy to begin with.

In 2015, McDonald's disappointed fast food lovers everywhere when it refused to collaborate with Burger King to release a one-day McWhopper (half Whopper, half Big Mac) in honor of International Peace Day. But just because McDonald's refused to make the sandwich official, there's nothing stopping you from building your own. Of course, you'll have to stop at Burger King and McDonald's to make it happen, but really it's simple. 

According to Mashable, you simply order one of each sandwich, then use the top half of the Big Mac (the middle bun on up, including Big Mac sauce, beef patty, cheese, lettuce, and upper bun), and place it on top of the Whopper from the tomatoes on down, including the tomato, onion, ketchup, pickles, beef patty, and bottom bun. You end up with more meat and pickles (the Whopper patty is larger than the Big Mac), tomatoes, and a combination of ketchup and Big Mac sauce that ends up tasting pretty epic. Plus, you can transfer the top bun and lettuce from your Whopper and add it to the bottom patty of the Big Mac and give it to a friend (or, you know, eat it yourself). 

For anyone looking to cut down on carb intake, one of the easiest Burger King hacks you can take advantage of is to simply order your burger without the buns. Your burger (really just whatever meat and toppings would usually come on your preferred burger) comes out on a platter, and you can eat it with a fork (or if you're down with getting messy, you can use your hands). 

One Facebook user showed off his order of two burger patties, several slices of cheese, and a heap of bacon, which is likely the Double Stacker King burger served without buns. Another user, 50 to Fab, said she just ordered "two patties with all the toppings," which included cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and pickles. Both users touted their orders as keto-friendly, which basically means high in fat with moderate amounts of protein and low in carbs.

You can use this hack for pretty much any sandwich order at Burger King to reduce the number of carbs you consume, but keep in mind if you're nixing the buns on a fried chicken or fish sandwich, you're still consuming the fried breading, which is filled with carbs. That means that even bunless, the chicken or fish sandwiches end up being higher in carbs and are less keto-friendly than using the same hack with beef burgers.

There's an easy way to cut down on carbs when eating breakfast at Burger King. As Facebook user Ruben Gonzales suggests, just order two egg patties (with cheese) and a sausage patty, then construct your own egg and sausage sandwich by using the eggs as the "buns" with the sausage in between. (Just make sure you turn the cheese-side inward, toward the sausage.) And because you can order individual pieces separately (the egg, the cheese, the sausage), you can really customize this breakfast hack to your heart's content. 

For instance, add an order of bacon or ham, nix the cheese, or add to the stack with another slice of sausage and a third egg. You can even ask for veggies like onions and tomatoes on top. In essence, you end up with a deconstructed omelet you can eat in a sandwich-like form. It's a pretty fun way to customize your morning meal if you're so inclined.

Burger King's dessert menu is actually pretty extensive, featuring a number of sundaes, ice creams, shakes, and pies to cap off your favorite order. That means you can come up with personalized hacks to make your after-meal sweets even sweeter. Take, for instance, the suggestion by Facebook page Brunei Foodies that said to use your Taro Turnover (which, unfortunately, you can't get in the U.S.) as a spoon to eat your ice cream cup. And honestly, it's a pretty smart move, because what's better than pie (or in this case, a turnover) topped with vanilla ice cream? 

The only catch is that Burger King tends to release different turnovers as seasonal or limited-time offers, so they're not always on the menu. That said, the same idea applies to the regular menu items. You can order a slice of Burger King's famous apple pie and a cup of vanilla soft-serve ice cream and top the pie with the ice cream. Of course, you really can't go wrong with adding ice cream to your Hershey's sundae pie, either. It might be sugar overkill, but you deserve to treat yourself from time to time.

When you're looking for a protein-filled snack in the middle of the afternoon, it's hard to go wrong with Burger King's chicken nuggets. You can order a four-piece, six-piece, ten-piece, or 20-piece box, depending on how hungry you are (or how many mouths you're looking to feed). What you may not have thought to do before is to ask for more than one type of dipping sauce. Sometimes if you order more than one sauce, Burger King will charge you, but if you get lucky, you'll score the extra sauces for free. And if you weren't aware, there are five possible sauces to choose from: barbecue, ranch, buffalo, honey mustard, and zesty onion ring dipping sauce (which isn't reserved just for onion rings, by the way). 

The real fun (other than having different flavors to cap your chicken nuggets with) is in mixing your sauces for even more possible flavor combos. For instance, Facebook user Aryianna Hall suggests double-dipping your nuggets in the ranch and buffalo sauces. Two other good combos are honey mustard and barbecue and barbecue ranch. 

It's no secret that most companies have a giant markup on fountain drinks. According to Yahoo! Finance, when you buy a fountain soda at a restaurant, you might be paying anywhere from 300 to 600 percent more than the actual cost. Even though drinks are usually inexpensive, you're kinda getting screwed when you pay that much more than the expense of the item. 

Burger King employee Mishalaina Coles offered a quick solution on Spoon University for saving some cash when you plan to dine in-store: Buy the value-sized drink. Sure, it's a little smaller than the small-sized drink (according to HuffPost, the value drink is 16 ounces, and the small is 20 ounces), but 16 ounces isn't tiny, and if you're eating in-store, you can score free refills. Plus, if you don't overload your cup with ice, 16 ounces is actually a pretty good size for a drink — it's larger than your standard 12-ounce can of soda. And as the HuffPost article also points out, when Burger King first opened, a 16-ounce soda was actually the largest size it sold. So, when you think about it that way, today's "value size" drink is actually huge when you consider the free refills you can enjoy. 

Burger King doesn't put an age limit on its kid's meals, which means if you're hungry but not super hungry, you can score a full meal with a small burger, drink, and side for less than a meal off the chain's regular menu. But probably the best part of this hack is that, according to an article written by a Burger King employee on Spoon University, you can ask for the toy to be replaced with a dessert item instead. Granted, you can't ask for a more expensive dessert, like a slice of pie or a shake, but you can ask for a cookie or cup of ice cream. This article also mentions that the cookies are made fresh in the mornings, so if you order a kid's meal at about 11 a.m., it's worth choosing the cookie over the ice cream — it's sure to be soft, warm, and delicious.