A&W Turns its 'Worst Marketing Fail' Into a New Burger, Launches 3/9lb sandwich | Hacker News Reader

A&W Turns its 'Worst Marketing Fail' Into a New Burger, Launches 3/9lb sandwich

qsrmagazine.com

78 pointsjedberg75 comments

Honestly I think it's a fantastic ad. It's self-deprecating, and even teases the audience's parents. But it also makes the current audience feel smarter, and it's memorable, and you remember that it's more meat than a Quarter Pounder.

IMHO the scale is a terrible idea... at first glance (which is all an ad gets) it presents the 1/4 pounder as the higher/top choice.

Not to mention subconsciously, people will see a heavier thing as being bad.

My eyes were instantly drawn to the 1/4. It looks like the winner being held up to me.

same here, pretty funny that they kind of messed up the marketing of this again.

The most terrifying mathematical fact mentioned amidst this is the fact that the 1980s are "forty years" ago.

https://xkcd.com/647/

The scariest thing about that comic is the alt text: "Pokemon hit the US over a decade ago". It has now been 24 years, making the age of the comic itself rather dramatic.

Holy shit that's nearly thirty years.

Brilliant!

I was standing at the deli counter of my supermarket and the person in front of me told the employee "I want more than a quarter pound but less than a half pound". I told her "back when I was in school we called that a third of a pound but it might have changed since then, it was a long time ago". She turned around and continued her quest to discover what a third was.

It is more likely that what she envisioned was 3/8 though.

Agreed. At least in the US, we really seem to love base 2 denominators on our strange measurements.

Or maybe 4/9

Which I would have called "six ounces".

The American measuring system is a pain in the butt for a lot of reasons, but "16 ounces to a pound" does make for a lot of very nice even divisions. Half is 8; a quarter is 4; midway between the two is 6.

One time when at a burger restaurant with my father when I was maybe 9 or 10, we overheard someone in line ahead of us say (completely seriously) "I don't think I could eat a 1/3 lb burger, so I'll just get a 1/2 lb). I found this terribly amusing back then, and almost two decades later my father and I still make jokes about it every time we go to that restaurant.

I've never really bought this story. I mean, it's possible some of the focus group subjects said this, and even probable that some people made that mistake. But I don't know if I'd extrapolate from that that it's the sole, or even main cause for a product launch failing.

If it was Americans' math skills that were at fault for their failure, and not their products, A&W would have learned from this decades ago and become a much more successful franchise than it is today. So, there must be something else holding it back: maybe quality, maybe competition. In the long term you can't blame your mediocre position on customers being too stupid to realize you're the best.

Well, you can, but it won't help. I think this is a fun story to tell, but probably apocryphal, or just the wrong explanation.

I just laughed maniacally about this so I had to explain to my ten year old daughter what this was about. She immediately knew that ⅓ was greater than ¼ though, whew!

Wake me when they launch the 9/27lb burger

This whole ad campaign is very tongue in cheek, so while we're on that thread, stack two of them for the 6/9 burger.

Dinner for two.

Tell me you're not from the US without telling me you're not from the US

Is that a sheet between them or what?

Note that if you stack three of them you only get 0.999… pound. It makes more sense to buy 4 McDonald's ones.

The missing 0.001 is the grease left on the grill..

McDonalds 4/16 burger (real soon now)

I didn't even know that A&W restaurants still existed. They disappeared from my part of America decades ago. What areas do they operate in?

I can think of at least one within relatively close driving distance to me and another at an outlet mall that’s an hour away. I live in the mid-Michigan area.

Around me (Austin, TX) there are a few A&W restaurants combined with other fast food franchises. The one I see most often is a combined A&W/Long John Silver’s.

That’s because they used to be owned by Yum brands which had owned all of those brands.

Their wikipedia page says there are nearly 1,000 worldwide, with 600 in the US.

There are 5 in the Seattle area.

A&W restaurants are pretty prevalent in Canada, at least in Toronto anyways. Just looked at stats: they have about ~1000 restaurants in the country spread over 470+ cities.

But a commenter below said they have around a 1000 restaurants worldwide so perhaps the Canadian A&W is a separate entity from the American A&W otherwise that number doesn't make sense.

> perhaps the Canadian A&W is a separate entity from the American A&W otherwise that number doesn't make sense.

Yes, A&W Canada no longer has any connection with A&W US [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%26W_(Canada)

Canadian A&W is really good, and tbh it's kinda surprising that Canadian A&W hasn't bought out American A&W and tried to expand there.

That being said, I believe Canadian A&W is much more heavily tilted toward the western part of the country, so maybe they feel they have their hands full trying to grab marketshare in Ontario, Quebec and further.

My wife and I stopped in an A&W in Toronto a few years back—we were walking, and hungry, and just needed food. My expectations were not high at all, but damn—it was good!

I didn't know they existed in America as I always thought they were a Canadian brand as they are so common here in Canada.

fun fact: the Canadians bought themselves out so they run it as a distinct (seemingly more successful) entity.

Canadian corporate hq is in North Vancouver.

Ahh, interesting! Perhaps that is why they are so high quality and Canadian seeming :)

There are a lot in Okinawa.

There's a lot of them in Canada. For some reason, they seem to be common in small isolated towns along highways in northern Ontario, as the only fast food restaurant in the town (if there's another one, it's probably Subway).

There's one not far from me in the suburbs of Salt Lake City.

It's a combination A&W and KFC.

There's in my town combined with a KFC. I assume the KFC is the money driver since there's a McDonald's about 50 yards away.

There is a fair bit of them in the South West US. Including in my home-town "Corona".

But they're awful. You go once and never go again.

This is not a math problem, its a bad franchise problem.

Interesting - we had them when I lived in the Midwest and while I didn’t think it was particularly memorable beyond being a decent enough fast food burger, nothing really struck me as awful. Perhaps it’s franchise related.

I did really enjoy the A&W root beer on tap when I went - I think that’s probably the best thing that the restaurant offers.

This has been my experience at several A&W's around the PNW -- it's no In-n-Out, but it's pretty good and a nice break from McDonald's every once in a while (though it's a bit pricey). The root beer (& root beer floats) is definitely the real selling point though.

They are sprinkled all over, I’ve seen them in New York, Dallas, New Mexico, Michigan, etc. but never in quantity. The quality and menu varies widely across locations, a lot of the time they are paired with other chains like Long John Silver’s. Nostalgia aside I think Sonic is the better place to spend your money - Whataburger or Lottaburger if your in Texas or the southwest states.

How I miss those frosty mugs and fries by the pound.

The 4/12lb is bigger than the 3/12 burger.

I agree they should have used 12, it has so many divisors (that’s why the ancients chose it).

Love the campaign. Is the narrator the same guy who did the narration in Idiocracy?

If they are so good at math why did the skip over the 2/6 lb burger?

because 9 is bigger than 6-- atleast I think. I am american so I could be wrong.

could someone from the EU confirm please?

Maybe ninths rather than sixths are a fraction used somewhere? Railroad gauges? Music meters? Firearm calibers?

Maybe just so that they can add this joke?

> If sold out, a 2/6 lb. Burger can be specially made at no extra charge.

If they went with 2/6, then someone else could advertise a 3/9 and "beat" them.

I can still beat them with a 6/18-lb. burger!

There's an upper limit before it starts to get ridiculous and backfires again. I would say that's anything more than single digits.

18 is way too big, i'll never be able to finish that

Probably focus tested and 3/9 was more popular.

Because 2 < 4 :))))))))))))))

They didn't, the 2/6 is made when they run out of 3/9s.

> Fans of big burgers and big digits are encouraged to grab an A&W 3/9 lb. (...) If sold out, a 2/6 lb. Burger can be specially made at no extra charge.

This is delightful.

It's sad that Americans are so bad at math that they couldn't figure out that 1/4 was smaller than 1/3.

Never mind the lost opportunity of naming a burger "The 100g'er" (and paying less in meat costs to boot)

As an American with no intuition for metric weights, I know 100g is almost a quarter pound but on first impression it sounds like it should be slider-sized.

The American intuition is essentially "if it wasn't very light they wouldn't be using grams".

It's not clear that this is why it actually failed. I'm sure they got at least one complaint about that, just by the law of large numbers, but it's not definitive that it played a significant factor in the burger failing.

https://awrestaurants.com/blog/aw-third-pound-burger-fractio...

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/28745/did-aw-cu...

Every single source I have found eventually gets traced back to Taubman.

that's really all you took away from this huh. and it's not even clear that's the real reason why it failed. that's just what some instagram dude said.

The real reason was probably because it was gross. like all the other a&w food

Rootbeer float?

Mmm, I don’t know what they put in their tap root beer but it’s just the best. Haven’t had it in years though, not sure where the nearest A&W even is.

Right? I don't like soda and if/when I go in for some, its some fancy smancy bottled brand.

But A&W from the tap at an A&W? Its like.. fluffy?

And with vanilla icecream, maybe after a long hike or backpacking trip?

This story is older than Instagram by at least a decade. Also according to the then-ceo of A&W over half of their focus group respondents thought 1/3 was less than 1/4.

Also their curly fries are awesome.

Ignorance can come in handy when you want to prime the country for a war for example. Or have the masses vote against their interests.

Or maybe that's just advertising spice, to blame their customers for their own failures in a cheeky way.

I remember A&W burgers, and they just weren't that great.

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