22 ms·

No One Wanted A&W's Third-Pound Burger (2016)

• stayfrosty420 5y ago
  weird that people can seem to grok a half pound is bigger though
  • syshum 5y ago
    Can they? MC'D does the "Double 1/4 Pounder" instead of 1/2 Pound... Hardee's does "Monster" and before that " $6 Dollar Burger" instead of 1/2 pound I have seen people use 8 oz in marketing I have not seen anyone advertise a "1/2 Pounder"
    • moron4hire 5y ago
      A double quarter pounder is two quarter pound patties, not one half-pound patty. And no, the sandwiches would not be equivalent. Two quarter pound patties cook faster, even serially, than one half pounder. Plus, you typically pair each patty with a slice of cheese when making cheeseburgers, so the bread/meat/cheese ratio is completely different.
    • frosted-flakes 5y ago
      The McDonalds's Double Quarter-Pounder is two 1/4 lb patties though, and it matches the naming scheme of all of their other two-patty burgers.
• hellbannedguy 5y ago
  A & W needs to check-in on their franchises. They have gone down hill in terms of quality, or at least tye one near me. I'm not a fast person food guy, but recently was hungry enough to go into my local store. $6 for a terrible burger. It was lunch so I guess they made a lot expecting a rush, but this is the first time I thought about returning food.
  • tylermac1 5y ago
    Apparently there's a drastic difference in the quality of A&W between the US and Canada. From what I've heard A&W in Canada is a top-tier fast food chain while it's barely hanging on in the States.
    • FractalParadigm 5y ago
      Here in Canada I would go so far to argue that A&W is on-par with a lot of the 'fancier' burger joints, if not better. It's a burger I can't eat while driving because it's so juicy it ends up ruining clothes. Their breakfast gives diners a run for their money too imo, I can go in and order the same kind of breakfast (eggs, home fries, bacon, sausage, toast, coffee), all cooked with the same freshness with generally the same ingredients, and be sitting down eating within 5 minutes, where a diner you might be waiting 5 minutes for a waitress to bring you coffee and take an order for your food to come out ~15-20 minutes later. If A&W US took a few ideas from their sister company here up north, they could seriously find themselves in contention for the best fast food in the country
    • yissp 5y ago
      Yeah I was surprised by the above comment as a Canadian. I'd definitely say A&W is one of the better quality fast-food chains here.
      • tonyarkles 5y ago
        Me too! If I'm on a road trip and looking for a fast food burger, I'm definitely looking for an A&W. McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendy's can barely compete with how good the food is at A&W. Good to know that I shouldn't have the same expectation if I try an A&W in the US!
    • hdhjebebeb 5y ago
      A&W Canada is kicking ass with plant-based offerings - their veggie burger is delicious, and they're in every rest stop on the highway so I end up eating at least one every road trip
    • 5y ago
• yarcob 5y ago
  Third-pound-burger just doesn't roll off the tongue like quarterpounder.
• isamuel 5y ago
  “Third pounder” is also a bad name. “Quarter pounder” has a pleasing rhythm and rhyme to it; “third pounder” doesn’t. “Third” is also easily scanned as “first, second, third,” which “quarter” is not. Should have called it the “pebble pounder” (0.02 stone—sure, it doesn’t make sense really, but it sounds nice, doesn’t it?) Or the “fifteen’r” (150 grams is about a third of a pound).
  • nanis 5y ago
    I hadn't heard the phrase "quarter pounder" before I came to the U.S. ... Heck we'd had McDonalds for a only a few years. I think there may have been at most a handful of locations through most of that time. So, one night, we go to McDonalds and I see "quarter pounder" on the menu. It just sounds big ... waaaaayyy bigger than 113 grams (I have no problems converting among different units). But, subconsciously, I had expected something that would take some effort to eat. I don't think I've had another one in the intervening decades.
    • m_mueller 5y ago
      strange, I find the "Royale" here still the best on their menu if it wasn't for the no-gluten options I nowadays prefer for digestive reasons. very glad they have those in Switzerland btw., their burger quality here is remarkably consistent and decent IMO.
    • nielsbot 5y ago
      “The Royale with Cheese”
      • nemo44x 5y ago
        What do they call a Big Mac?
        • chihuahua 5y ago
          Le Big Mac
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
  > Alfred Taubman, who owned A&W at the time, wrote about the confusion in his book Threshold Resistance: This seems like one of those things that sounds like it is true but is just too convenient. It is really convenient to put out a story about how Americans are bad at fractions. In addition, the story originally came from a book the guy that owned A&W wrote. Thus he would have incentive both to create a good story and to deflect blame from himself to American stupidity. Finally, Americans use the imperial system with cups, etc and there are always a ton of fractions like 1/3, 1/4 in recipes. I bet most American households have measuring cups of 1/3 and 1/4 cup in size and surely know that the 1/3 cup is bigger than the 1/4 cup. For me this story just seems to good to be true and I would take it with a huge (1/3 pound) grain of salt.
  • toyg 5y ago
    > I bet most American households have measuring cups You are betting that most Americans cook often and cook using written recipes. That's a very bold assumption. I expect most people who cook a lot just know "how much is enough", and people who don't cook a lot, well, they just don't cook much if at all. This is compounded by the story being about customers of fast-food joints, who likely fall disproportionately in the "don't cook at all" camp.
    • sixothree 5y ago
      Sounds like you’re extrapolating his argument. He said most Americans have measuring cups. I would agree with this to be true. How many people have you met that don’t have measuring cups? This article is a distraction from what really happened here - insanely bad marketing. Third pounder is a terrible name for a burger. It’s derivative and implies gluttony.
      • horsawlarway 5y ago
        Even outside of the marketing - In the US A&W is essentially considered off-brand fast food. They're already starting from the position of bad branding, and then using an absolutely terrible name for a burger.
• gorpomon 5y ago
  Is this is a sad illustration of American's numerical illiteracy? Or is this just another argument for doing away with fractions and using a decimal system? This anecdote is a common one to share when the intent is to bemoan the intelligence or decline of America, but I am starting to think there's more to this story. Consider a few points: First off-- being bad at math doesn't mean a general lack of intelligence. I've met plenty of college educated, liberal minded people who openly say that math is their weakness. I've met people with masters degrees who struggle with math. The American student loan crisis should be evidence enough that even college educated people struggle with math. Second-- the decision to buy a burger is not one that is often carefully measured and considered. It's more of a "do I pull off this highway right now to get this burger?" and in that moment, you're acting more on instinct that rationality. So in that moment yes, 1/3 < 1/4, it's not ideal but our brain makes a lot of other more serious fallacies. Third-- does anyone here really doubt that if you explained to those focus groups that 1/3 is larger than 1/4 they still wouldn't understand? I don't. I'm sure those focus groups quickly did understand, but the conclusion drawn was that unless it was explained to the broader public, everyone would make the same incorrect initial assumption. Fourth-- let's just be honest, fractions are confusing. 1/3 > 1/4 is confusing to read and understand quickly. I still can make this mistake from time to time. In the special case of 1/4 vs 1/3 even text is confusing. "Quarter pounder" just sounds larger than "third pounder", "quarter" is a heftier word. If you don't think sound informs meaning, why do so many sports cars have "Z" in their model name instead of "K"? The only way this would be really clear is if McDonalds was calling it a ".25 pounder" and then A&W could launch a ".33 pounder" In my opinion, wielding this anecdote as an example about the sad state of anything, people, intelligence, America, etc, is ill-informed. If it's unfortunate that American's often confuse fractions, it's even more unfortunate that the confusion is easily turned into a powerful meme that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
  • smeej 5y ago
    I do doubt that people would understand even once it was explained. I've seen way too many people's faces glaze over immediately as soon as a number enters the conversation.
    • 5y ago
• 8K832d7tNmiQ 5y ago
  Alternative archive page, since the site is somehow broken in my device, even with add-on disabled: https://archive.is/fSrs5 https://archive.is/fSrs5
  • thedrbrian 5y ago
    It did some weird redirects on my iPad https://i.imgur.com/QUwApxZ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/QUwApxZ.jpg
• S_A_P 5y ago
  My last 2 years of high school my parents moved to an affluent area where 70% of the kids had a 3.0 or better. I was an uninterested student who admittedly didn’t try very hard. However I did take advanced math in high school. As a result I had to go to community college and transfer into my alma mater in college. (TAMU) when I got there I met a friend group from a rural border town of Texas. Not only did they get academic scholarships they were accepted as first year freshman. However they had little to no grasp of pre-algebra and especially fractions. All of them across the board had no idea how to add/subtract or find LCM. I don’t think these were dumb people. It did open my eyes to the difference in education quality in the US. I say all of that to say that while anecdotal seems plausible. One very distinct error they made was to see a high number denominator as being bigger than a lower number denominator.
  • mywittyname 5y ago
    Math is easy to forget because it often goes unused for years. Pre-algebra was likely taught to these people early, maybe at the age of 11 or 12. It isn't crazy to think they largely forgot about this six years on. Of course, it doesn't help that mathematics is treated as second-class in standardized testing. You can hand-wave away a low math score as long as you're avoiding a technical major, unlike, say English (assuming America here). I will admit to having to re-learn how logarithms work nearly every time I use them. And each time, it's pretty obvious based on the websites I see with instructions that logs are taught to like sixth graders.
  • at_a_remove 5y ago
    I was a private tutor for quite some time, largely specializing in math. I can tell you with complete sincerity that for most students who have any math issues, fractions were their first stumbling block, and it is typically left unaddressed and festering. Going back, addressing the issue, working toward a full unconscious mastery, then working forward again was the often painful solution.
• dustintrex 5y ago
  Should've called it a Royale with Cheese.
• lbrito 5y ago
  Not to reedit Imperial vs Metric, but I asked an American friend why he preferred the former, and he said it was "more intuitive/natural". I always found that answer really strange (how can "next exit 3 3/4 miles" be more intuitive than "next exit 3.75 miles"?), and this A&W anecdote kind of proves my point. If the burgers were measured in grams there could be no confusion about 400g being greater than 300g.
  • mcdonje 5y ago
    People who work in the trades with imperial measures get used to fractions and reasoning about distances in fractions. I have this 2-5/8 tile I need to split in half. Ok, 1-5/16. Contrast that with 2.625 / 2 = 1.3125. I'm sure tradespeople who use metric have their own ways of making simple calculations in their heads, but that's an example of why a lot of people who work with fractions prefer them.
    • lbrito 5y ago
      >I have this 2-5/8 tile I need to split in half. Ok, 1-5/16. Contrast that with 2.625 / 2 = 1.3125. The latter is much easier to think about IMO.
      • nkrisc 5y ago
        I find the latter more difficult because you’re carrying numbers to different places and have to reason about the whole number. In the former you can cheat by just halving (doubling, yeah it’s a little counterintuitive) the denominator (ignoring the integer in both examples, since that’s easy in both). But I will grant you, converting between denominators makes my head hurt in the imperial system. Overall I do still think metric is easier as a whole.
      • mcdonje 5y ago
        Just double the denominator. Do you have .625/2=.3125 memorized?
        • 5y ago
• jasonhansel 5y ago
  Now that I think about it, I'm curious about the reliability of this result. While it says that the majority of participants "questioned the price of [the] burger," it doesn't explicitly state that all of these people questioned the price because they thought 1/3 < 1/4. There are also no hard numbers provided in the quotation, and we aren't told anything about the methodology or sample size. It seems possible that people questioned the price, not because they were confused about fractions, but because they thought that the burger was too low in quality to justify the same price as a McDonald's Quarter Pounder. [edit: While they say that A&W's burger outperformed in blind taste tests, those taste tests could have had methodological differences (or even just a different sample of the population) that would make it impossible to compare their results to those of the focus groups.] [edit 2: New Coke also outperformed regular Coke in blind taste tests and was also priced the same. But it was a massive failure, and not because of mathematical confusion.]
  • porbelm 5y ago
    It won taste comparisons and was priced the same?
  • pverghese 5y ago
    It was priced the same
  • throwaway91321 5y ago
    A few other points - first, from what I can tell, the third pounder used two 3 ounce patties while the quarter pounder used one 4 ounce patty. So it's possible that it looked like less to people. Second, the third pounder later changed it's name to the Papa Burger. Though there's a lot of discussion claiming the name "third pounder" hurt sales, I can't find any information about how the change in name effected sales. And even after the name change, it still doesn't seem to have been nearly as successful as the quarter pounder or the whopper. Third, the way A&W management talk about this makes it seem like if they just offered up a larger burger a good chunk of the population would come to them instead of McDonald's. It sounds like they convinced themselves that "bigger burger" was going to be a hugely successful campaign, but it's likely a lot of people didn't care that much. I wouldn't be surprised if some people opted for the quarter pounder because they're bad at fractions, but my guess is that there are other, more important factors involved. When choosing a fast food place I doubt the first thing that pops into most people's minds is "how many ounces are in everyone's signature burgers?"
• causi 5y ago
  Yeah, nah. It was about the quality, not the amount. McDonald's successfully offered a 1/3 pound burger for over a decade until price increases and health culture made it uneconomical.
• tristor 5y ago
  I don't know how many people on HN have even been in an A&W since they've been dying for more than a decade and closing franchises, but I have. The store wasn't clean, the food was overly greasy but not in a good way, and they didn't properly season the fries. I'm not really a fan of McDonald's, but one thing I'll give McDonald's is that I've rarely been in a store that's dirty, and the food is the same whether I'm in downtown NYC or in Tulsa, Oklahoma, so I know exactly what I'm going to get, not wondering when the last time was that they changed the fry oil or whether they ran out of salt. When it comes to fast food, the order of importance is pretty much: 1. Consistent, 2. Fast, 3. Cheap, 4. Quality. A&W tried to compete on quality and failed because the quality wasn't there, first of all, and because they failed to be consistent, fast, and cheap, which are more important. McDonald's is the absolute best at #1. In the US, Wendy's is superior to McDonald's for a nationwide chain in quality, but the consistency is more variable, so McDonald's rules. Burger King is faster and cheaper, but the consistency is variable, so McDonald's rules. McDonald's understands the ordering of priorities here, and so they win, it's that simple. McDonald's understands that not everyone will like McDonald's but that almost nobody finds it outright objectionable and many people love it. As long as they keep doing the same thing in every single store or franchise across the country, McDonald's is always a safe choice for stopping into the drive-thru due to that consistency. A&W failed with the third-pounder because they had bad marketing and because they failed to understand the marketplace to achieve product-market fit, not because Americans are too dumb to understand fractions. I'm sure there's /some people/ who don't understand fractions, but the vast majority of people I've met understand fractions and use them in their daily life...
  • throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    "Mismanaged franchise declines" doesn't get smug upvotes, cheap comments, shares and general engagement/popularity among the HN and Reddit demographics the way portraying fast food eating Americans as dumb does. Every human (and many non-humans, though they may have more difficulty expressing it) who's had to divide things by three and four knows that knows that a third is more than a quarter. People know in the back of their minds that other people know this. But the dumb lizard brain takes over and they can't help but engage with low effort content that is spun in a way that confirms their biases.
• danielrpa 5y ago
  "Quarter" have other popular usages that are deeply ingrained in American culture. "Quarterback", "Insert a quarter", "This quarter's results were good", "quart" (measurement), "it's a quarter to one" etc. Actual math aside, it's simply a more familiar word.
  • canadaduane 5y ago
    Good point. Maybe "Quarter Plus Pounder" would ride on that familiarity.
• namelessoracle 5y ago
  A&W's third pounder just didnt taste that good, and the fries were mediocre things that reminded me of school cafeteria fries. When I wanted a bigger burger Wendey's had better offerings, and when i wanted a cheaper burger McDonalds had better offerings. Also the store locations tend to be in not so great spots compared to their competitors, and their food offerings aren't good enough for me to go out of my way. I've also never seen a coupon book for A&W in my mail so that doesnt help. Cherry to top it all off is the last time i went to one. The root beer tasted bad. (pretty sure the machine was running out of syrup)
• jefftk 5y ago
  A&W used two 3oz patties, and when McDonald's gave the "third pounder" a try they used one 6oz patty. Both of these are 3/8lb, which is 12% more than 1/3lb!
  • dtwest 5y ago
    Important to note that that is the weight before cooking, a frozen patty will lose a lot of water weight in the cooking process, so what you end up getting is not a full 6oz.
    • jefftk 5y ago
      Sure, but that applies equally to the quarter pounder, which is 4oz before cookie.
• danpalmer 5y ago
  I recently called out my bank for advertising a "0.10%" savings interest rate, a similar problem I think. To anyone here it's obvious that this is the same as a "0.1%" rate, but I do suspect that to a not-insignificant proportion of the population, they'd consider "10 > 1", and conclude that this account is better for them than another one offering "0.2%" interest. I realise this might be a stretch, but to look at it another way, should a bank be allowed to advertise their savings rate as "0.100%" or "0.10000%"?
  • huehehue 5y ago
    This sounded silly until I remembered that software versioning trips me up just the same. I always read 1.2.11 as < 1.2.2
    • xcskier56 5y ago
      This is so true. The other day I spent a good 10 minutes trying to upgrade a gem to > 2.3 when it was already at 2.11
    • Hamuko 5y ago
      I find normal version numbers pretty simple as a software developer (general population seemed to be buffled by how macOS 10.9 could ever be followed by macOS 10.10) but I always get confused when I see Cyberpunk 2077's version numbers that go 1.22 → 1.23 → 1.3 → 1.31. It just doesn't compute that you go from minor version 23 to minor version 3.
    • dylan604 5y ago
      Yes, but #.#.# is not a valid number/decimal/monetary notation. You cannot enter that number into a calculator, and I'm not sure you'd even be able to use that as a valid numerical value in any programming language. For anyone getting confused that 0.1 == 0.10, then how is that the writer's fault? There are formatting requirements that require a significant digit number of places (scientific notation as an example). I don't know that actually applies to bank marketing material, but it could be a style guide type of thing to keep numbers formatted the same. Either way, it does not change the value of the number. If you misread it, it is not the company's fault. They have provided factual information.
• jmaygarden 5y ago
  I guess Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr. took this information into account when they went with “Thickburger.”
• millisecond 5y ago
  Kinda reminds me of all the early Twitter clones where you could post 141 or unlimited or whatever size posts. Just thinking that mathematically bigger is immediately better in all dimensions seems like a common fallacy.
  • koala_man 5y ago
    Remember when consoles were all trying to beat each other on word length? We had machines marketed as "128bit" for a while.
• johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago
  >More than half of the participants in the Yankelovich focus groups questioned the price of our burger. "Why," they asked, "should we pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as we do for a quarter-pound of meat at McDonald's? You're overcharging us." Honestly. People thought a third of a pound was less than a quarter of a pound. After all, three is less than four! Why not create a fifth pounder then?
  • adamrmcd 5y ago
    Or a 113 grammer!
  • mywittyname 5y ago
    Double-eighth burger!
  • david422 5y ago
    I can just see that backfiring as well. "I paid for more meat and all I get is this tiny thing."
  • maxk42 5y ago
    Or rebrand it the 5-ouncer. 5oz being juuuust below a third of a pound, but still more than a quarter pound.
• toolslive 5y ago
  There's this famous (in Belgium anyway) meme of a Belgian football player that goes "What? 1/3th bonus? that's not enough! I want 1/4th!" (Brilliant keeper though)
• lmilcin 5y ago
  I pretty much think it has nothing to do with americans sucking at fractions. Let's face it. Quarter-pounder sounds way better. What does even third-pound mean? When I read the article title I haven't even immediately recognized it as meaning one-third of a pound. I am sure A&W would fare much better if they introduced "bigger quarter-pounder".
  • drdec 5y ago
    But does quarter-pounder really sound better, or is it that that has always been the name of a burger for us? The same way The Beatles has always been the name of a band and seems like a great name until you think about it and realize it is the same quality pun name as is common to use for hair salons.
• mig39 5y ago
  What's always interesting to me is that in Canada, A&W is almost "premium" fast food. More expensive than the competition, and generally better quality. They also advertise a lot of "no hormones, grass-fed, cruelty-free, local farmers" etc in their advertising. And they were the first big company to sell the "Beyond Burger." Seems really different than the American version.
  • ecf 5y ago
    I don’t know of a single A&W around where I live that isn’t an addon to a more popular chain like KFC. It almost seems like corporate wants it to be an afterthought in America with cheap vibes attached to the brand. Whatever their plan is, as you mentioned the brand doesn’t resonate well with Americans.
  • tomjakubowski 5y ago
    Canada A&W and US A&W have been entirely separate and unrelated corporations since 1972.
• marstall 5y ago
  this explains the "double quarter pounder
• h2odragon 5y ago
  If you pile more inedible crap on my plate, it's still not a bargain. I don't want it in the first place. The only A&W I ever tried had taken over the old "Sonic" location, and the comparison made Sonic positively glow in every way. I think they stayed in operation 3 months or so; and they were across the street from the town hospital. The hospital had better food.
• racl101 5y ago
  That's some Idiocracy shit right here. Hollywood writers couldn't make this stuff up.
• system2 5y ago
  Knowing how basic American people want their words to be, just call it double-quarter pounder to compete. See, you doubled the word, I know it is not exactly double but who cares.
  • jonny_eh 5y ago
    or "Quarter+ Pounder"
• killion 5y ago
  As you scroll down the page the article starts filling your browser history. If you scroll all the way down there will be at least 12 items in your history with variations of the page title. It appears to have something to do with how they populate the content below the article.