“I’m in Texas and the locations near me have really turned bad. They were once really good and fresh, now the 20-25 minute wait is for old tasting and low quality burgers and fries and breakfast.”
That Reddit comment represents one end of the Whataburger opinion spectrum in 2025 – and it’s worth noting the other end exists too. By most accounts, Whataburger is not struggling. But in Texas, where the chain’s identity runs deep and loyalty is fierce, the complaints from customers who say something has changed carry a particular weight.
Whataburger’s reputation was built on freshness. Burgers cooked to order, real ingredients, a product that took longer than the competition because it was made to your specifications. That trade-off — the wait in exchange for quality – is one Texans accepted enthusiastically for decades. What some customers are saying now is that the wait has stayed while the quality has not.
The fries problem
The fries have become a focal point. Because Whataburger cooks its burgers to order, fries can sit while the burger catches up – a tension that has always existed, but that customers say has gotten worse. “The fries are always undercooked and soggy. Bacon undercooked and soggy, burger thrown together very sloppily,” one Reddit user wrote. Reports of cold food and insufficient toppings have been consistent enough through 2025 to generate dedicated threads.
“Quality of food has dropped since they sold out and customer service diminished as well,” one customer wrote. “I gave up on them two years ago. Even though the free meal offers kept getting sent out for me to return, I declined them.” The “selling out” reference points to the 2019 sale of a majority stake in Whataburger to Chicago-based investment bank BDT Capital Partners – a transition that some longtime customers blame for the changes they’ve noticed.
What’s actually happening
Whether the food has objectively declined is genuinely hard to determine. Whataburger has thousands of locations, and quality varies. Some customers in Texas report their locations are as good as ever. Others, in the same cities, describe consistently disappointing visits. The Dallas Observer and Washington Post both published pieces in late 2024 suggesting the chain had lost something – and the Texas reaction to those articles suggested the topic had hit a nerve.
Whataburger’s record sales numbers suggest the brand is still doing plenty right. But in a state where Whataburger is practically a point of regional pride, even a perception of decline is something the chain has reason to take seriously.
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