Hungry Jacks and Burger King In Australia.
Hungry Jack’s was the second-largest burger chain in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. However for a short period in Australia, Burger Kings also co-existed here with HJ’s in 1990s, and by 2003 there are 81 in Australia.
Burger King oddly started in Adelaide, South Australia.
A UK man named Don Dervan moved to Adelaide in the early 60’s with his Adelaide girlfriend. Don noticed there were no American-style takeaway shops in Australia.

Don sets out to open his own restaurant chain. It is unrelated to the chain that is also expanding in the USA under the same name.
The first Burger King’s in Australia did not sell whoppers. However they did follow the same concept of popular North American chains. The restaurant featured waiting bays to either eat or take away.
It featured waitresses on rollerskates that would take your order, then return with a tray that attached to your car.

The Australian Burger King was a success; it was selling over a million burgers a year in South Australia between 1962 and 1970.

A Canadian salesman Jack Cowin noticed the lack of fast food in Sydney while visiting in the late 60s, and the queues outside Sydney Chinese takeaway restaurants.
He decides to purchase the rights to KFC for the state of Western Australia and expand KFC Australian operations there.
After opening eight successful KFC outlets, he bought the rights to Burger King for the entirety of Australia, the second biggest name in burgers in North America.
However, after obtaining the rights to expand Burger King in Australia, Jack encountered a problem. The chain and trademarks already existed in Australia—the very successful Adelaide Burger King chain.
Because of this, Burger King provided him with a list of possible alternative names. These were derived from pre-existing trademarks already registered by Burger King and its then corporate then parent Pillsbury. These names could be used for the Australian restaurants.
Cowin selected the “Hungry Jack” brand name, one of Pillsbury’s U.S. pancake mixture products.
The first Hungry Jacks opens in Innaloo, Perth, on 18 April 1971.
Weirdly Jack Cown purchases the Adelaide Burger King chain in 1972, a year after the Hungry Jacks, and rebrands them Hungry Jacks.
Hungry Jacks had a chance of claiming its international trademark via acquisition a year after opening its first store, and even rebranding.

By the end of its first decade, Hungry Jack’s had expanded. It had grown to 26 stores in three states. In October 1981, the company opened its first New South Wales store. This store was located in the Sydney central business district on the corner of Liverpool and George Street.
Hungry Jacks then expands into the Victorian market, by taking over another popular North American chain attempting to expand in Australia, Wendys Hamburgers, converting 11 stores there.
In 1991, Jack Cowin has to renegotiate the terms of Hungry Jacks and Burger King in Australia, and one of the conditions of the agreement was that Hungry Jack’s had to open a certain number of stores every year for the term of the contract.

1996 saw the Burger King trademark lapse in Australia, and the international owner, Burger King, purchased the trademarks in Australia.
Burger King then trys to terminate it;s agreement with Jack Cowin and Hungry Jacks, by using the clause that it was failing to expand the chain a certain rate.
Under the basis of this claim, Burger King Corporation partnered with Shell Australia. They began to open their stores in 1997.
These stores started in Sydney and spread throughout the Australian regions of New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, and Tasmania.
Burger King’s actions prompted a legal response from Jack Cowin and his company Competitive Foods Australia. They began legal proceedings in 2001 against the Burger King Corporation. Jack Cowin claimed that Burger King Corporation had violated the conditions of the master franchising agreement. He accused them of being in breach of the contract.
The Supreme Court of New South Wales agreed with Cowin and determined that Burger King had violated the terms of the contract and awarded Hungry Jack’s A$46.9 million.

After Burger King Corporation lost the case, it decided to terminate its operations in Australia. In July 2002, the company transferred its assets to its New Zealand franchise group, Trans-Pacific Foods (TPF).

In 2003, Burger King left the Australian market again.

Trans-Pacific Foods administered the chain’s 81 locations until September 2003. In that month, the new management team of Burger King Corporation reached an agreement with Hungry Jack’s Pty Ltd. They decided to rebrand the existing Burger King locations to Hungry Jack’s. Hungry Jack’s Pty became the sole master franchisee of both brands.

All Burger Kings became Hungry Jacks in Australia from this point.