Burger King in Japan intros Sound Spot Booths

The newest Burger King restaurant in Japan, its 32nd, has new luxury touches catering to audiophiles. Box-like seating for two includes a dock for an iPod, iPhone or other portable music device and an overhead, umbrella-like speaker to let diners listen to their own music. The new flagship location has seating for 220, though not all are what the restaurant calls Sound Spots.

The design of the speaker pods and the booths themselves ensures distraction to other diners is minimized, with reports of clear, loud music heard by the intended audience and not much volume heard in the immediate area around it.

This is the latest in a series of efforts to make American fast food chains more acceptable to Japanese customers and isn't the only effort the chain has made to cater to technology; it offered a special Windows 7 Whopper in collaboration with Microsoft last fall. Burger King is back in Japan after a hiatus due to a price war. Competitor Wendy's retreated from the market six months ago. [via JapanTrends]

by MacNN Staff