How Burger King France Is Helping Small Businesses During Lockdown

2020 has been a rough year for many of us, but the food, travel, and hospitality industries in particular have been struggling since the pandemic started. The ever-changing government restrictions regarding dining and gathering, set to limit the spread of the virus, have forced many restaurants to close their doors. For instance, in France, all restaurants and bars are currently closed and will remain that way until mid-January 2021 in an effort to reduce the resurgence of cases that started in November 2020 (via Bloomberg).

Luckily, these uniting difficulties have sparked some acts of support and solidarity between restaurants in France. According to AdWeek, Burger King France has been using its Instagram to give free promotion to independent restaurants during the latest lockdown. This strategy provides Burger King with some positive PR (perhaps aiming to replicate the success of their recent post encouraging their customers to eat at McDonald's), while also supporting independent restaurants during this difficult time.

Burger King France's Instagram post introducing the #WhopperAndFriends campaign, translated to English, reads (via Branding in Asia): "There's More to Life than the Whopper... There are specialties from thousands of restaurants that deserve to be as famous as the Whopper. So, we decided to stop posting our burger pics and to make our Instagram account available to all of these restaurants. Until they can be open again, they will be able to advertise here, for free."

So far, restaurants of all different cuisines have taken Burger King up on their offer, from Aux Trois Sens posting their langoustine risotto to L'Artisan posting their fluffy pancake, and garnering thousands of likes in the process (via Instagram). To participate, restaurant owners need only post a photo of their signature dish and tag it with #WhopperAndFriends, and the Burger King France account will repost it to their account or to their Instagram Story.