Remembering Burger King Table Service

Oct 05, 2017

My family enjoyed going out for fast food. We liked the price and we really enjoyed the taste. It was not something we did all the time, but when we did, we made an event out of it. So when Burger King Table Service began, we were drawn to it immediately.

Burger King Table Service was part of their move to go slightly upscale. It mostly revolved around their BK Dinner Baskets. It was a short-lived experiment. Rolling out from 1992 through 1994 and ending quickly thereafter. They really did not change the Burger Kings themselves, just the food options and how they served it.

During dinner hours, between 4 pm and 8 pm, you would order your food just like normal. Then things started to change. They would give you a number for your table and a basket of popcorn to munch on while you waited. Then a few minutes later, a person would bring your food in baskets to your table.

Those baskets had a lot of the standard Burger King food, but with some new options on the side. You could get the choice of Fries, Baked Potato AND Cole Slaw or Side Salad. I never got any of those sides and stuck to my normal cheeseburger meal. My family, on the other hand, were thrilled at trying their baked potato and side salads. Although in the end, they would go running back to the fries option.

The basket options, not counting any regional options, included:

Whopper Dinner Basket
Steak Sandwich Dinner Basket
Chicken Dinner Basket
Shrimp Dinner Basket

They might have also had a meatloaf sandwich at the time, but not sure if that was a regional offering. I recall the meatloaf sandwich being enjoyed a bit by my Grandmother. Mostly because we mocked her a bit for getting a meatloaf sandwich. For most of the meals during this offer, the rest of my family got the Whopper.

Never got to try BK Dinner baskets the accompanying Burger King Table Service, but still, remember it? That is because they had some high energy commercials during their “I Love this Place” phase of advertising, featuring Dan Cortese as Dan the Whopper Man. They were part of that obnoxious attempt to try to figure out how to sell to Generation X by yelling a lot.

Besides the grating tone, the commercials were good in that they did spell out the exact process and food available. Enjoy this collection of Burger King Table Service commercials.