The exclusive Australian master fast food franchisee of Burger King Corporation. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Competitive Foods Australia, a privately held company owned by Jack Cowin. Hungry Jack's currently owns and operates or sub-licenses all of the Burger King/Hungry Jack's restaurants in Australia. As the master franchise for the continent, the company is responsible for licencing new operators, opening its own stores and performing standards oversight of franchised locations in that country. With over 300 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. 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. Cowin selected the "Hungry Jack" brand name, one of Pillsbury's US pancake mixture products, and slightly changed the name to a possessive form by adding an apostrophe 's' forming the new name Hungry Jack's. 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, Limited. By the end of its first decade of operation, Hungry Jack's had expanded to 26 stores in three states. In October 1981, the company opened its first New South Wales store in Sydney's CBD 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 coverting them to Hungry Jack's. Hungry Jack's "Jack" has since been adopted as the name for the Burger King himself in the company's main franchise.

In 1991, Hungry Jack's Pty Limited renewed its franchise agreement with Burger King Corporation which allowed the Hungry Jack's to licence 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. Under the aegis of this claim, Burger King Corporation in partnership with Royal Dutch Shell's Australian division Shell Company of Australia Ltd., began to open its own stores in 1997 beginning in Sydney and throughout the Australian regions of New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory, Victoria and Tasmania. 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. The case introduced the American legal concept of good faith negotiations into the Australian legal system, which until the time of the verdict had been rarely used in the Australian court systems.