Dallas

Texas Connects Us: Whataburger Synonymous With Texas

In Texas we have cowboy boots, bluebonnets and all-beef burgers.

And for many Texans, the bright orange sign outside Whataburger is synonymous with the Lone Star State.

"My grandmother used to call them water burgers," said Dexter Gatlin. He's been eating Whataburger for decades.

"Can't remember if they were 20 or 25 cents back then, but they were good," Gatlin added.

Whataburger has been the talk of Texas since Harmon Dobson opened his first burger stand down in Corpus Christi back in 1950.

"He wanted to create a product where you had to pick that burger up with two hands, and when you bit into it you went, 'what a burger!'" said Joel Griffiths, the company's senior regional director of operations.

Griffiths is in charge of roughly half of the company's more than 780 locations.

The fast food chain is now found in 10 different states, but not Oregon, where young Ethan Wilson was born.

We watched as Ethan tried his first Whataburger.

"I decided to just come to Whataburger since it's good to try new things and everybody's been talking about it," he said.

Oh, and don't forget the "Fancy Ketchup." Whataburger serves an estimated 17 million pounds of ketchup each year.

That's nearly the same weight as four space shuttles.

Many would argue the burgers are out of this world.

Last year Whataburger won an online poll, named the best burger in the country by FastCompany.com, beating out rivals like Fuddruckers and In-N-Out.

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