Burger King faces legal claim over size of Whopper | Hacker News Reader

Burger King faces legal claim over size of Whopper

bbc.com

52 pointsadrian_mrd23 comments

This case was filed in the US District Court of Florida back in 2022 and has only recently resurfaced.

In a somewhat rare turn, the Daily Mail coverage [1] of this article, is actually quite superior, as it features several direct images from the court documents, including references of "Current Advertisement" vs "Actual Product."

Its not difficult to see why they're mad. From most of the imagery, it looks like BK has an aversion to spending even a few cents on lettuce. The situation's bad enough that most comments amount to "of course it does not look like the ads, they never do." Most are "bad", yet the Spicy Whopper Melt is almost laughable.

My personal view is this might be huge, if the plaintiff's win, as it then sets a strong precedent about the "amount" of truth in advertising, and when is a crushed lump of bread and meat too far from the picture. How much $ do you have to spend making sure what arrives on your plastic tray, or in your take out bag, is kind of close to the picture? At least in the $300+ billion dollar US fast food industry.

[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10684749/Class-acti...

Reminds me of the Hamburger Scene in Falling Down.

https://youtu.be/zJs9p-VNORw

While I was ordering food to go at a rotisserie chicken restaurant, another customer pointed out to me that the window of the rotisserie oven magnifies the size of the chicken.

I remember eating at Burger King in a German airport about 20 years ago. I ordered some sort of crispy chicken sandwich with coarse breading. I think it was some sort of local special. The whole thing looked very similar in quality to these advertisements. The lettuce and onions and tomatoes were good and the chicken seemed almost real. The bread was like from a bakery. Haven't had a sandwich like that ever since and I think about it randomly. It seems possible to achieve the standard in their advertisements. People seem to be gradually tolerating lower quality food such that they can get away with what they actually serve today. But I’ve noticed this trend outside of fast food.

By contrast, as a Canadian, I visited Germany last year and noticed a strange amount of BKs. We don't have many of them on the West Coast, perhaps because in comparison to Canadian A&W and Wendy's, BK might as well be cat food. Either way, I decided to try one at the train station, and it was surprisingly similar, if not identical, to what's served here; not competitive.

Fwiw, I did also try McDonald's over there, and it was also indistinguishable, which is better than BK per dollar, though still not ideal. (McDouble)

I think BK legitimately has one of the worst quality burgers on the market, but I did enjoy the Stackers when they came out as a kid. Not to rag on your personal experience btw, I just hate that they can get away with serving literal garbage for the same price as much better fast food.

The quality of most fast food chicken sandwiches has fallen off a cliff. If you get even a 50% chicken to breading ratio you’re lucky and the chicken inside the thick breading is often gross. Very few fast food places even offer grilled/non-breaded chicken anymore. And it goes without saying that the product you get has zero bearing on the pictures on the menu/ads.

This reminds me of how when I was a small child I noticed how pathetic the real McDonald hamburgers looked in comparison to the pictures. It always ruined my appetite

Whoppers are actually disgusting in the UK. They fall apart, the meat is dry, the tomato is anaemic and the bun is devoid of moisture. I’d take a couple of £1.29 McDonald’s burgers any day over a whopper (they must be £5-7 these days?)

Being the UK, this does not stop people buying them. BK is very popular at service stations for example, despite the high prices. Though I’m sure McDonald’s overall is far more popular

Also in the US. I suspect there was something happened when the brand was acquired sometime back. I remember BK used to be better.

Back in the mid-late 80s, despite my family never eating fast food, we'd occasionally go get Whoppers because they were so glorious. I think we stopped by the early 90s because they were already going downhill.

I used to eat Whoppers because they were one of the lowest sodium fast food burgers.

BK still lists the low sodium on their nutrition information, but then they cook a BK King patty and make it taste like a Whopper. The BK King burger is one of the fast food burgers with the most sodium in it.

I have explained the problem several times, and I have always been promised a real Whopper when ordering, only to get a high sodium substitute.

Best outcome is to require BK to give claimants coupons for free Big Macs.

Wouldn't that incentivize them to cut costs even more?

How so? They'd be buying coupons from their competitor.

Oh, sorry, the back of my brain apparently automatically replaced s/Big Macs/Whoppers/ , d'oh.

Hmmm...I'm wondering why we don't include all business news, as this is the least important of all the stories coming across the wire right now.

Like for example? I find this story fairly interesting.

As non-US person, what is the motivation of these kind of lawsuits which seem to be ridiculous from a layman perspective? Is it because how the US system is stacked to give a massive payout to a law firm who presents the clients?

As in other countries, people would just stop eating in the place if the food falls short of expectations.

Not so much money, of whcih there is usually very little (exception: stuff that ends up being found to cause cancer) after the lawyers take their giant cut (which is totally fair - these cases are taken on a "you don't get anything, we don't get anything" basis, and the lawyers front all the money for expert witnesses, investigations, etc).

The motivation for the people filing the suit is to get the company to stop doing it.

In the US, lawsuits are one of the primary ways used to compel behavior, especially from corporate institutions.

While your solution has merit, it suffers from tragedy of the commons issues. I cannot compel other customers to stop eating there. I cannot compel other fast food restaurants to act better.

Quality version: McD and Wendy's look at BK, and see BK makes large profits selling junk, look at their own process and say "we waste money on quality we don't need", and then they all race to the bottom.

If the situation is bad, and the market mostly colludes (such as with recent price hikes, where everyone knows everyone else is going to raise prices, so they all do), then all you're left with is: "They all act that way, because they know we have no options." All burgers now cost $5 more. Bloomberg at least refers to this phenomenon as "Excuseflation." [1] Also similar to "Shrinkflation." (Products across all stores slowly become smaller)

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-09/how-excus...

These lawsuits change the calculations of other companies tempted to engage in false advertising. The only reason actual Whoppers don't match what is shown in commercials is so that Burger King can squeeze out a larger profit margin.

Stealing a handful of cents on each transaction isn't a big deal on any one sale, but adds up to a lot at their volume. Corporations have a lot of incentive to be dishonest, and lawsuits are one of the few effective ways to punish that behavior.

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