About this episode

Dave Arnold and guests discuss the intricacies of culinary innovation at Burger King.

This week on Cooking Issues, Dave and the crew are joined by Alex Hawk, Manager of Culinary Innovation at Burger King, and Zach Young, Director of Culinary and Commercialization at Burger King, for a rare look inside the food science, logistics, and product development behind one of the largest restaurant systems in the world. They get into what it actually takes to create food for millions of people: bakery supply chains, fresh bread logistics, Whopper improvements, tomato specs, lettuce formats, clean-label constraints, regional menu development, and the challenge of making recipes work across thousands of restaurants and multiple generations of equipment. The conversation also covers home frying versus commercial frying, fryer oil, Popeyes chicken, Burger King’s relationship to Puerto Rico and the Whopper Jr., artificial sweeteners, frozen carbonated beverages, CVAP ovens, water fryers, potato freezers measured in hundreds of millions of pounds, and why even a seemingly simple menu change can become a massive operational question. Plus: Diet Coke loyalty, green ketchup, edible Tide Pods that mercifully never happened, the original chicken sandwich, secret-menu chaos, and the…

People in this episode

Host: Dave Arnold

Guests: Alex Hawk, Zach Young

Topics covered

• culinary innovation
• food science
• restaurant logistics
• product development
• fast food
• menu changes

Keywords

• culinary innovation
• Burger King
• Whopper
• food science
• restaurant logistics
• menu development
• fryer oil
• commercial frying

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Burger King

Products: Whopper, Diet Coke, Popeyes chicken, green ketchup, edible Tide Pods, original chicken sandwich

Places: Puerto Rico

More episodes of Cooking Issues with Dave Arnold

• Max Wittawat of Bangkok Supper Club · June 27, 2026 · 1h 2m
• Greg Baxtrom: Nothing Matters But Delicious · June 23, 2026 · 1h 1m
• Farideh Sadeghin on Hot Dogs, Regional Obsessions, and the Case Against Stunt Dogs · June 13, 2026 · 1h 0m

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Cooking Issues with Dave Arnold podcast page.