8 Facts You Didn’t Know About Whataburger

A habitual flyer, Dobson wanted his restaurant to be visible from the sky, so he used bright, bold colors and a classic A-frame to add visibility. His love of airplanes also extended into his creative marketing with his using airplanes to carry Whataburger banners (that dropped coupons and other promo materials from the plane) across the country.

The July 1999 expedition crew on the Space Shuttle Columbia specifically requested the chain’s beloved cookies for their journey into the great beyond.

Jerry Baird and his son Hudson reached the summit of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in July 2010 and planted a flag emblazoned with the Whataburger “W” in tow. Baird, an owner of multiple Whataburger franchise locations in the Birmingham area, embarked on the journey as a gift to his son after he’d graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in public policy.

When Burton and Dobson opened the first Whataburger in 1950 in Corpus Christi, Texas, the now-famous burger cost only 25¢ (roughly $3.13 today, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). Burton and Dobson’s partnership was incredibly brief, ending a year later after the pair were unable to resolve a dispute over a price increase of five cents. Following the dissolution of their relationship, Burton was granted ownership of all Whataburger locations in San Antonio, while Dobson retained control of the remainder of the company and franchise locations. Shortly after the split took effect, Dobson raised the price of the burgers to 35¢.

Technically, between 36,000 and 40,000, depending on who you ask. Since its inception, Whataburger has made it a point to make each burger exactly how the customer orders, no matter what. The chain’s expansive menu and its commitment to customer customization have led to the generation of more than 36,000 possible burger combinations. That’s enough to try a new combination every single day for almost a century.

In 2020, Whataburger held a contest to give six Texas couples their dream Whataburger wedding on Valentine’s Day. One lucky couple, Dylan Welch and Sharon Arteaga, won the wedding of their dreams at the fast-food giant’s flagship Corpus Christi location, complete with Dr. Pepper toasts, an onion ring bearer, and $5,000 courtesy of Whataburger. In 2022, Whataburger launched a specialty collection of wedding products called “Whatawedding” that included T-shirts and “Just Married” table tents.

When Dobson set out to create Whataburger, he wanted to “make a better burger that took two hands to hold and tasted so good that when you took a bite, you would say, ‘What a burger!’” Essentially, giving further credence to the platitude that everything really is bigger in Texas. The founders eschewed the standard two ounces of ground beef and doubled it to create the quarter pounder that’s standard today, a practice its largest competitor, McDonald’s, would not adopt until the 1970s.

Sadly, Whataburger University is not a higher education pathway where you can receive a degree in things like burger engineering or milkshake physics but rather a corporate training center located in San Antonio designed to prep employees for leadership roles and promotions. Each quarter, about 18 to 50 employees from across hundreds of locations are nominated to participate in a weeklong training program at the “university” designed to further their professional development and help them obtain promotions within the company.