Burger King Opens Its First Meat-Free Restaurant for a Five-Day Trial in Cologne

Burger King has just run its first ever restaurant with no meat on the menu. For five days, from Monday, June 7 to Friday, June 11, a branch in the center of Cologne served only plant-based burgers and nuggets.

The plant-based meat came from The Vegetarian Butcher, the Unilever-owned brand behind Burger King's plant-based patties. On the menu were the Plant-Based Whopper, plant-based nuggets and the debut of a plant-based Long Chicken (Germany's version of the Chicken Royale) with vegan mayonnaise on a long sesame bun, according to Green Queen. Posters outside promised "100 percent taste, 0 percent meat".

And people came. Plant Based News reports that queues gathered outside the restaurant, with one visitor writing on Facebook: "It was really busy, people were standing outside. The burgers were delicious and tasted like the original." Customers elsewhere in Germany could claim free plant-based products with coupons in the Burger King app.

At the end of the week Burger King Deutschland posted a thank-you on Facebook:

Thank you Cologne! Thanks to the many, many enthusiastic guests. And especially thanks to our super team from the Plant-based Burger King Restaurant.

One honest caveat: while all the meat was plant-based, Plant Based News notes that some items still contained cheese and mayonnaise, so it wasn't a fully vegan menu just yet. Still, a global burger chain proving it can run a whole restaurant without meat is a big deal.

Germany has been moving this way for a while. In 2017 the German environment ministry banned meat at official functions, and last year the country's biggest sausage maker started selling more veggie than meat. Health is a big part of it. The World Health Organization classifies processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen, and research in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found plant protein is significantly more heart-healthy.

Burger King keeps going further. It rolled out the Impossible Whopper across the US in 2019, and in April Burger King UK launched the Vegan Royale and pledged a 50% meat-free menu. Last month Eleven Madison Park ditched meat completely, and Oatly's IPO valued the oat milk maker at $10 billion.

This is just the beginning.