Fast Foodie: Meet Don Dervan, Australia’s original Burger King

AUSTRALIA is home to more than 1200 burger restaurants. But long before the big chains came to town, there was an Adelaide man named Don Dervan. And he’s the reason why we now have Hungry Jack’s.

One of the Adelaide Burger King outlets. Photo: Adrienne Peele.

DON Dervan embodied 1960s America — he loved eating French fries and burgers in diners, and he was always looking for a way to make his fortune in business.

And it was in Adelaide that Dervan found that opportunity when he saw a chance to combine his culinary tastes and entrepreneurial bent.

Seeing a gap in the local market, he established his own chain of fast food joints and chose the catchy name Burger King.

But even though the chain is no more, and Dervan died last year in Melbourne, Florida, his legacy lives on in the Australian fast food market. In a weird way, he was partly responsible for the creation of one of the nation’s most recognisable burger restaurants, Hungry Jack’s.

PODCAST — AUSTRALIA’S ORIGINAL BURGER KING

Dervan was born in Washington D.C. and was living in London in 1959 when he met and married an Adelaide girl, named Jean McEntee. Soon after they were married, Don and Jean moved together to Adelaide.

“When he came out to Australia with my mum, he noticed there was no fast food restaurants out here,” daughter Adrienne Peele, who returned to Adelaide 12 years ago, recalls.

“He was always looking for a business venture out here and once he discovered that he thought ‘well, I’ll just start a burger place’ — and that’s what he did.”

The flagship Burger King restaurant opened on the corner of Anzac Highway and Leader St in 1962, with waitresses on rollerskates serving customers in their cars — just like on so many popular US TV shows.

Locations in Glenelg, the city, Unley, Port Rd, Marion and Elizabeth followed and, says Peele, by 1970 the business was selling a million dollars’ worth of burgers a year, at 17 restaurants around Australia.

Don Dervan — Adelaide’s original Burger King — with his wife Jean on a cruise in 1961.

She thinks her dad also introduced Australia to the soft-serve ice cream machine and opened up Australia’s first drive-through car wash — across the road from his Burger King on Anzac Highway.

 

Remembering Burger King in Adelaide

VIEW GALLERY

 

Meanwhile, a US burger chain also known as “Burger King” was busy expanding its empire and in 1971 granted franchise rights to an Australian company, which immediately hit a snag.

Don Dervan had already registered the Burger King trademark in Australia and while he was ready to sell after almost a decade in the burger business, he was not willing to part with his trademark.

“He told the company you can have everything but the name,” Peele explains.

“Because he didn’t know that maybe in the future he might want to come back and open up another one, so he kept the Burger King trademark.”

Hamstrung, Australian Burger King franchisee, Jack Cowin had no choice but to pick a new name.

According to Andrew Terry and Heather Forrest in a 2007-8 academic paper on the dispute, published by America’s Northwestern University, Cowin eventually settled on Hungry Jack’s, a slight variation on the name of a pancake mix owned in Australia by Pillsbury — the then-owner of the US Burger King chain.

Cowin opened the first Hungry Jack’s outlet in Australia, in Perth in 1971.

After selling his business, Dervan eventually moved his young family back to the US, settling in Atlanta, Georgia.

He pursued other business ventures but would never return to Adelaide to revive his beloved Burger King franchise.

The trademark eventually was allowed to lapse but Don Dervan’s place in the history of fast food culture in Australia was already secure.

Peele says she is proud of her dad’s legacy and still meets South Australians who have nothing but fond memories of Burger King restaurants across Adelaide or who worked as one of Don’s famous rollerskating waitresses.

“And apparently so many people have met their husbands and wives at Burger Kings, you know the drive-ins — I hear about it all the time,” Peele says.

“So, that’s great. It’s a good story to tell.”

You can also download episodes from iTunes or search for “Heaps Good History” in your favourite podcast app. Got a good SA story suggestion for a future episode of the podcast?

Email us here.