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Australian fast food franchise

Hungry Jack's Pty Ltd. is an Australian fast food franchise of the Burger King Corporation. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Competitive Foods Australia (with licensing from Restaurant Brands International), a privately held company owned by Jack Cowin. Hungry Jack's owns and operates or sub licenses all of the Burger King/Hungry Jack's restaurants in Australia. As the master franchise for Australia, the company is responsible for licensing new operators, opening its own stores and performing standards oversight of franchised locations in Australia. With over 400 locations across Australia, Hungry Jack's is the second largest franchise of Burger King in the world (second to Carrols Corporation).

When Burger King moved to expand its operations into Australia, it found that its business name was already trademarked by a takeaway food shop in Adelaide, South Australia. As a result, Burger King provided the Australian franchisee, Jack Cowin, with a list of possible alternative names derived from pre existing trademarks already registered by Burger King and its then corporate parent Pillsbury that could be used to name the Australian restaurants. The first Australian franchise of Burger King Corporation was established in Innaloo, Perth, on 18 April 1971, under the auspices of Cowin's new company Hungry Jack's Pty Ltd.

By the end of its first decade of operation in the 1970s, Hungry Jack's had expanded to 26 stores in three states. In October 1981, the company opened its first New South Wales store in the Sydney central business district on the corner of Liverpool and George Street. In 1986, the chain entered Victoria by purchasing 11 stores from the ailing Wendy's Hamburger chain, later converting them to Hungry Jack's.

In 1991, Hungry Jack's Pty Ltd. renewed its franchise agreement with Burger King Corporation which allowed the Hungry Jack's to license third party franchisee. However, 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. In 1996, shortly after the Australian trademark on the Burger King name lapsed, Burger King Corporation made a claim that Hungry Jack's had violated the conditions of the renewed franchise agreement by failing to expand the chain at the rate defined in the contract and sought to terminate the agreement. In addition, Burger King sought to limit HJ's ability to open new locations in the country, whether they were corporate locations or third party licensees. As a result of Burger King's actions, Hungry Jack's owner Jack Cowin and his company Competitive Foods Australia, began legal proceedings in 2001 against the Burger King Corporation, claiming Burger King Corporation had violated the conditions of the master franchising agreement and was 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 (US$41.6 million in 2001). In its decision, the Court said that Burger King sought to engineer a default of the franchise agreement so that the company could limit the number of new Hungry Jack's branded restaurants and ultimately claim the Australian market as its own, which was a purpose that was extraneous to the agreement.

[[File:Hungry Jack's Elizabeth Street Hobart. jpg|thumb|A Hungry Jack's/Coles Express/Shell outlet in Elizabeth Street, Hobart. From 1997 until it was rebranded in 2003 this was Hobart's first and only Burger King branded outlet, and was the first Burger King in Australia to be located outside an airport. The terms of the sale had TPF assume oversight of the Burger King franchises in the region as the Burger King brand's master franchisee. Trans Pacific Foods administered the chain's 81 locations until September 2003 when the new management team of Burger King Corporation reached an agreement with Hungry Jack's Pty Ltd. to rebrand the existing Burger King locations to Hungry Jack's and make Hungry Jack's Pty the sole master franchisee of both brands. An additional part of the agreement required Burger King Corporation to provide administrative and advertising support as to ensure a common marketing scheme for the company and its products. Trans Pacific Foods transferred its control of the Burger King franchises to Hungry Jack's Pty Ltd., which subsequently renamed the remaining Burger King locations as "Hungry Jack's," joining the other 210 outlets at the time. As of September 2021, Hungry Jack's has 440 stores, with 75% being company owned. The company intends to open more than 20 new stores per year in the future, with an upper aim of 700 stores in total.

In mid 2020, the chain introduced the "Big Jack" burger, which is essentially a slightly altered version of the Big King, and similar to McDonald's Big Mac burger. The close similarities in the name, appearance and the marketing of the burger led to McDonald's suing Hungry Jack's in the Federal Court of Australia in August 2020 over trademark infringement, and they sought to cancel Hungry Jack's Big Jack trademark which was filed the previous year. They also accused the company of deliberately copying the ingredients and appearance of the Big Mac in bad faith. In its defence, Hungry Jack's argued that the burger's name is simply a play on the company's name and that of its founder Jack Cowin, and that a burger's appearance and composition cannot be protected by a trademark, noting that their product features "common characteristics of hamburgers" sold everywhere. Hungry Jack's had also ran an advertising campaign that made light of the lawsuit during the early stages of the trial which also made the claim that the Big Jack patty was 25% larger than the Big Mac's as a point of differentiation; the Court found this claim misleading but it did not affect the final verdict.

The Hungry Jack's logo is still based on the 1994 Burger King logo, despite subsequent revisions to the logo used by Burger King in other markets. The logo was redesigned in 2000, with the design based on the 1999 Burger King logo, but the logo was never used.

Hungry Jack's currently sponsors the West Coast Eagles and Adelaide Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). Hungry Jack's are also the naming rights sponsor for the National Basketball League.