Wimpy vs McDonald’s: The Battle of the Burgers
In the 1970s and 1980s Wimpy faced off with McDonald’s in a battle over what it meant to eat British.
When the burger landed on the tables of the first Wimpy Bar in 1954, it marked a new era of modernity, global connection, and convenience for a Britain rebuilding from the austerity of the Second World War. But it later found itself at the heart of a cultural war against these same ideals. ‘The McDonalds are coming’, declared the Reading Post in March 1983 as Wimpy’s competitor gained ground on the British high street. ‘It looks like the battle of the burgers is about to erupt.’
As the first modern fast food chain in Britain, pioneered by the German-Jewish owners of J. Lyons and Company, who purchased the rights from an American entrepreneur, the Wimpy Bars successfully opened their first location in Westminster in 1954. Here, and at later franchises across the country, company photographs captured waitresses in red-and-white uniforms serving burgers on porcelain plates with metal cutlery and napkins, hallmarks of British catering. Keeping business simple and tapping into a developing cultural proclivity for affordable indulgences, a menu from the early 1970s presented three mains: the Shanty (a fish fillet), the Bender (a frankfurter-style coiled sausage), and the Wimpy – a ‘pure beef hamburger’ served with optional toppings of fried eggs, cheese, or salad, as well as specialities of apple pies and ice cream sundaes. The familiar setting eased the introduction of informal American meal etiquette and a new style of eating out. The Wimpy Bars thus became what David Walker, a meat purchaser for McDonald’s UK, described in an interview in July 2002 as the ‘English compromise of the great hamburger revolution’.
Historians including Elizabeth Buettner and Panikos Panayi describe the 1950s as an era of multiculturalisation for catering in Britain, as entrepreneurial migrants opened Indian and Chinese takeaways and new foods became popular. Among these changes, beefburgers became a sensation. ‘Crowds of youngsters, teenagers, and adults gathered at the corner of West Street and Swinton Road on Friday morning’, wrote the South Yorkshire Times and Mexborough & Swinton Times on 7 June 1958, reporting on the celebratory opening of a Wimpy Bar in Mexborough, South Yorkshire, which included performances by the popular American music group the Hilltoppers. ‘Many people waited longer than an hour for the formal opening’, it continued. From midday to early evening, Wimpy Bars targeted a snack and meal trade at workers and groups of friends. Market reports suggest they remained largely male-dominated until at least the 1970s.
Reaching a total of 500 locations by 1971, Wimpy Bars gained a reputation as a British innovation. Later in the decade, however, when press cuttings cited a 65 per cent price increase on cakes, tea, and ice cream, the novelty of what one contemporary reporter called the ‘watered-down taste of the great American burger’ waned. When McDonald’s arrived in London in 1974 it ignited a public discourse that pitted Wimpy as a national symbol of British business against its American rivals.
Tapping into memories of the war, local newspapers widely presented McDonald’s as an impinging globalist threat on the ‘battlefield’ of the high street. Fears were fanned that American values of corporatism and the increasing expansion of counter service threatened traditional food custom, including public houses and the original British fast food institution of fish and chips. Papers seldom acknowledged Wimpy as an American import, instead claiming their beefburgers as a successor to the ‘Roast Beef of Old England’, the country’s national dish. McDonald’s burgers challenged established rules of dine-in food convention: customers did not need to make advance bookings, and their disposable wrappers made for quick and predictable service. To much chagrin, McDonald’s also sourced their supply chain globally. According to the New York Times, the company imported cheddar cheese from Germany, milkshake mixes from the Netherlands, and sauces and pickles from the state of New York. Meanwhile, white onions originated from California – ‘because it seems ours are not quite right’, quipped the Burton Daily Mail. One Wimpy customer returned the sentiment in an interview with the Sunday Mirror: ‘The British onion is best.’ When McDonald’s temporarily switched from the British Pentland Dell potato to the American Russet Burbank variety, public figures announced their dismay at the homogenising effects of fast food. Quoted in the Ottawa Citizen in February 1988, agricultural expert Michael Shaw linked British pride to the potato and argued that ‘McDonald’s is so powerful in the fast-food business that they are killing off the great British chip’.
Consumers, however, offered a new type of public dining space that was reliable, more inviting to broader demographics, and increasingly accessible to shopping centres, ignored criticisms. By 1981 McDonald’s had expanded to 50 branches in the London area, aided by a series of prominent television advertisements intended to expand business from a metropolitan workforce to urbanite families with children. Offering new tastes and a significantly larger investment budget in comparison to their stalled Wimpy competitor, McDonald’s solidified its profit within a decade of opening.
Over the last 70 years the burger has advanced a trend towards convenience and fast food that now makes up an integral part of the British food economy. Later evolving to suit diversifying preferences such as vegetarianism (Wimpy Bars launched a ‘spicy beanburger’ in 1984; McDonald’s briefly trialled ‘vegetable McNuggets’ in 1994 and likely sold vegetarian burgers by September 1998), the burger brought American commercial values to the British public despite a growing voice of dissent from those fearing the erasure of food heritage and business.
By the 1980s various protest movements gained traction, including the ‘Burger Off!’ campaign led by over 5,000 residents against a new McDonald’s outlet planned in Hampstead Heath. Between March 1995 and February 2005 the longest-running court trial in British history, dubbed ‘McLibel’, saw McDonald’s bring a claim of defamation against protesters associated with Greenpeace for their distribution of anti-McDonald’s leaflets outside businesses. One of the most influential campaigns ever waged against McDonald’s, this surge of activism attested to a deeper cultural conflict in Britain’s food identity by interrogating the role of corporations on society and diet. Or, as one restaurateur in Hartlepool summarised to the Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail in November 2001, it brought into focus the ‘social problems’ that many felt would ‘be part of the downfall’ of their town.
Danielle La Scala-Lewins is a PhD researcher in History at De Montfort University.